I decided I'd start a thread to track the progress of our wedding planning similar to the way our photothreads track the progress of our cars.
March 9, 2009: Belize - Here we are on the first of our 3 shore excursions for the trip. I had just proposed after dinner the night before.
The ring:
0.77ct Center Stone with 0.40ct side stones. Round cut. H Color, VS1 Clarity, minimally inclusive on a 2.5mm 24k white gold band. Very nais!
September 2009 - Over the last few months, we've been busy. We had selected September 19, 2010 as our desired date and began looking for a banquet hall to accomodate us on our day. All-in-all we looked at
18 banquet facilities and had finally narrowed down our search to our top 3 halls:
#3 - The Empress Banquets - Addison, IL
#2 - The Avalon Banquets - Elk Grove Village, IL
#1 - The Cotillion Banquets - Palatine, IL
Each of the places had their pros/cons and all that was left to do was taste the food. So, over the span of 3 weeks, we tasted the food at all 3 locations, eliminating one of the places in the process (The Avalon; Place/people are nice but the food is baaaaad)
After much deliberation, we chose the Cotillion. They were the most expensive of the 3, but the location/food/staff are all excellent. Also, we got the owner to knock quite a bit off of the price to make it more even. We were sold.
September 29, 2009 - Months ago we had set a deadline for ourselves to sign a contract at a banquet hall by the end of September. With the deadline closing in, we set up an appointment to lock our talons on 9/19/10 and move onto the next phase of planning.
Alas, when we were about to sign the contract, Tom decided he would double check the calendar. Lo and behold, his partner had ninja-reserved the date for
another couple! Unfortunately, we were unable to sign then because Tom and his partner had to clear things up with the other couple first. So we had to wait a few days.
October 3, 2009 - I get the phone call from Tom informing me that the other couple had to change their date anyways due to a scheduling conflict with their DJ and Photographer. The 19th is ours! We rush over there and sign the contract at 12:37pm.
It's official. I'm getting murried...it's in the contract now. 9/19/2010
October 20, 2009 - So last night, my fiancee and I met up with an old friend of mine. I used to call him Jon back in the day but now he's going by "DJ Noyze". Wina had never met him before so it was dually an introduction as well as meeting with our potential DJ. The long story short, she feels very comfortable having him DJ our wedding, especially because I know him personally. I'd much prefer to give my money to someone who I know will do a good job rather than some stranger I met at a bridal expo.
Anyone in Chicago looking for a top notch event/party/club DJ...
http://remixmyparty.com/default.aspx
and Jon 'DJ Noyze' Cabalfin's profile
http://remixmyparty.com/DJNoyze.aspx
October 21, 2009 - At the request of my fiancee, I am posting this as an update. I finally got back to the gym yesterday! It's been almost 10 years since I've had a steady workout routine and my body definitely shows it. When I was in high school I was a full-full-full-time athlete. I played football in the fall, wrestled in the winter, threw diskus and ran the 200m dash in Track & Field for the spring as well as Silver Gloves Boxing year round. My workouts typically consisted of (Football/Wrestling/Track) practice from 3:00-5:00ish and then boxing practice from 6:00-9:00 Monday through Friday. Needless to say I was in fantastic shape. At 5'2" I weighed 128lbs, benched 225 and ran a 5:28 mile. In the (almost) decade it's been since my athletic youth, I have gained a whopping 50lbs, I struggle to push 135lbs on the bench and my mile time is barely under 7:30.
So now that I'm starting to work out again, I may make a progress thread for that. My fiancee has asked me to get in better shape so that we can have a long, happy,
healthy life together.
Sooooo......
The goal? 40lbs lost by the wedding date (~140lbs)
Updates will be posted as they occur for anyone interested
We're very excited! 
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