What to choose????

As we prepare to mail our Save the Dates to our family, a few loose ends have come up. First, we need to make sure that we have set aside enough hotel rooms in our blocks to accommodate our LARGE amount of out-of-towners. Our guest list has been relatively stable for the last couple of months so we can finally begin to plan with some real numbers. Second, we need to piece together our registries! :)

Jessica, my Matron of Honor, and I sat down with our laptops one Saturday and began going through Macy's and Bed Bath & Beyond's websites. I was so overwhelmed and glad to have someone who's been through it with me. Jessica was able to tell me what she actually uses, what she likes or doesn't like about certain products, and what she should have registered for. This helped me tremendously. And it allowed me to set a good base to go from when Tim and I get a chance to finish adding things. Jessica and I pretty much got through the kitchen stuff, and Tim and I have been slowly adding somethings here and there as we come across things. The items that have been the most difficult to decide on so far have been casual china, flatware, and bedding.

Tim has one request (well, it's really a demand) of the casual china. He wants them to be square shaped. This is a fun idea, so I'm on board with it. However, it did make it that much more difficult to find plates that are square and fit in with some sort of decor that I had in mind. (This "decor", by the way, is really more of a feeling at this point. I'm still trying to figure out what I want my "big kid" decorations to be like.) I was walking through Macy's one day and there they were - the perfect plates! Seeing them helped me envision how other things should look so that everything can flow well together. The only snag is that they're seasonal, so they may not be in stock until the wedding. We'll see. If we don't end up being able to get those, there were a couple of other settings I saw that could work and have a similar feel. But I really really like these, so hopefully it'll work out.

Flatware.... Tim and I both really like the same style of flatware. It's just really hard to find at an affordable price. It's really hard to find a balance between nice/durable/what we like and priced so that we may actually get it. Anyway, we'll see. Our ideal flatware has been "out of stock" for months according to the sales people, and the closest thing we could find is twice the price.... Maybe I'm worrying too much about it, but I'd hate to end up with 3 settings or worse, none at all. I also definitely have this fear about the dinnerware I talked about above.

As far as bedding goes. I still have no idea. I can't find anything that I can picture with our furniture or curling up with Voltron in. The search continues!

Any tips on the "Must"s and the "Must Not"s?

Getting down to it

It's starting to feel kinda close-ish! We have about 8 months before the wedding, so deadlines are approaching! We have a lot of stuff already taken care of but some things are still up in the air. Take my shoes for example...

So I fell in love with a particular pair of shoes. And when I say love I mean full-blown lust. I dream about these shoes. They're amazing. They're everything I never knew I always wanted. I heard that in a movie somewhere but it doesn't come to mind now. :) Anyway, come to find out they're over $400. That's so not happening. Sad face major. :( So I've returned to the search for shoes. I can't get my dress altered until I find shoes, but we still have time so it's no big deal. Yet.

Our Save the Dates are designed and about ready to go! The general layout and content of the programs has been set up, officiant booked, and a bunch of other fun stuff. It's been different working on things from Marietta. I work on things on my own time and at my own pace and then something comes up from Augusta that reminds me that I'm not doing this by myself. Ha. I'm grateful for the help and feedback, though. My parents have been great throughout this. They had a big wedding meeting with our coordinators yesterday. I was kinda upset that that I couldn't be there. It's weird, their planning my wedding without me. We had a big talk the other night, though, about what I've been thinking of and what Tim and I want, and judging from what they told me about the meeting they really presented that at the meeting.

I'm also thankful for our coordinators, Carol and Dianne of CPR Distinctive Events. They have kept an eye on the details as well as the big picture. I feel a lot better being away from everything and focusing on my clinical rotation knowing that they're there to make sure everything gets taken care of.

It's kinda weird not being at home. Everything's changing. My little sister is in NYC, my little brother is being smart and stuff at Tech, and my baby brother is going to be making a big change in his own life soon, and I'm planning my wedding. Life's nuts. And it doesn't get old. No matter how much time has passed, I still get crazy excited that Tim and I are getting married. I'm so excited and looking forward to being together all the time... as well as living with the puppy full time! This part-time mommy thing is not my favorite. Although, it felt really good seeing how excited he was to see me last weekend. He even blew off Tim to follow me upstairs! :) I love my Voltron!

I saw my first surgery today. And I didn't even get light headed or anything. Just like a big kid. It was awesome. It was a skin graft to bilateral hands on a 3 year old. Sometimes in hydro therapy when we're removing the surgical dressings we think, "I wonder why they did that..." It was really neat to be right there next to the surgeons when they were making those decisions so I could hear their train of thought. I've been working with this patient for a few days and will continue to follow him while he's at the hospital, so this will allow me to see the entirety of his care at Grady. My CI (clinical instructor) will be leaving for some personal reasons, so Monday I start with a new CI. I'm really nervous about it because I know that their personalities are so different. Hopefully it will be a smooth transition.

This weekend is one of my oldest friends', Kelly's, bachelorette party! I'm extra excited to spend the weekend with amazing friends celebrating Kelly's last few weeks as a fabulous single lady. And on October 2 she will become a fabulous MARRIED lady! Yay!! So excited for the next few weeks! :))))

Making a Plan

Over the last few months I've been slowly putting together the ceremony program as things have been getting more solidified. I was having some trouble figuring out the layout for the program, but thanks to Lorin that's not a problem anymore! She let me use her program as a template from which to work. This has been such a help because I was having trouble deciding what should go where and getting all he names of the bridal party to fit in an organized manner. As I went through I was trying to figure out he details of the ceremony; the readings and music definitely took the most thought. 

I knew one reading that I want, but I wasn't sure how many we should have and what any of the others should be. I asked Tim's opinion, but he wasn't too concerned with it. So I went to the best source I know for nice, romantic, classic, poetry and such - my sister. She graduated in May with a BA in literature, concentrating in British literature, and is now (officially as of this weekend) working on her master's degree in teaching so she can be a high school English teacher. I put her to work on it and before too long she had given me a list of poems/book excerpts that she thought may work for us. It was definitely easier to get Tim's feedback his way. After a few days of searching and reading and discussing dozens of poems, bible readings, and other book excerpts we finally found one that we think fits us! The amount of time and effort that took to find that one reading also helped us decide that we ate okay with just the two readings. :)

Music has been another thing altogether. I've looked for and listened to tons of music, but I didn't have a great idea of what I wanted. That's the thing about doing something different. Every wedding in my family has been the same - a Catholic ceremony in a churn with a full mass service and organ hymns. We're having a non-denominational service outdoors and we can basically do whatever we want with the ceremony. As much time as it took to find 2 readings, finding enough music for the ceremony took even longer. And after a while, all the songs I was listening to started to sound the same. With the help of my future big little brother (and his roommates), I think we may have the ceremony music finally figured out! I'm excited to show the songs to my parents and see what they think! It's mainly traditional music and a couple less traditional songs. Thank goodness for YouTube, which allowed me to actually hear the music similarly to what it would sound like; this definitely helped me figure it out. As fun as this wad to watch, you can definitely NOT expect to see this at our wedding.:)

Working in the burn unit has been awesome. I think I really can see myself doing his in the future, which is a relief since it's what I thought I wanted to do. I think I'd like to spend some time in the outpatient wound clinic to see different types of wounds as well. I've spent some time on the general acute floors, and it really wasn't doing it for me. We just did the same thing basically with every patient. It's interesting to see the dynamic here and compare it to what we've been told to expect. On gen acute they don't do any wound care, hat's he nurses' job. There's also so many patients that it's impossible for everyone to get seen ad they should. The PT department is definitely understaffed. They have been interviewing lately, so hopefully his will get better soon. On the burn unit, there's only 1 full time PT and 1 prn OT, so he only patients that get seen by PT are the ones who need hydro therapy or physical rehab for mobility. It's definitely different from what I expected and leads you to prioritize who needs PT the most and who can handle his/her wound care on his/her own. I hope to learn more and be able to take on more complex cases with less input from my CI. I'm gettib there! I've already got my own case load of more simple cases and am doing evaluations of all patients independently. Of course, the patients vary from day to day depending on how quickly the patients heal. That's one cool thing about it- there's always something new to see and learn about!

Hope all the rest of my classmates are having as rewarding an experience as I am!