At my shower, everyone had to try and answer some questions about Brett and I. Here are the questions. How well can you do? You can see the answers Brett and I gave by clicking “Read More” at the bottom.

1. How long have Brett and Lisa known each other? (the more specific the better)
2. How did Brett and Lisa meet?
3. Where did they go on their first date?
4. When was their first kiss?
5. How many times did Brett and Lisa see each other while Lisa was living in Utah?
6. What was their main form of communication while they were living in different states?
7. When did Lisa move to Arizona?
8. Where was their first date in Arizona? (Yes, Brett and Lisa I know this could be a trick question.  Give me the answers for first ever date in Arizona and also your first date after Lisa moved there.)
9. How did Brett propose?
10. What was the first thing Lisa said to his proposal?
11. Name 2 things Lisa has sewn for Brett.
12. Name something Brett has made for Lisa.

Bonus! What languages do Brett and Lisa communicate in?

Read more »

So the dress was finished and it was beautiful and I loved it. My mom helped with some of the last hand stitching. Before we got to that point I had to do the loops for the lacing.

I got a piece of freezer paper (no idea how to use that in the kitchen, use it all the time in the sewing room). I marked off half inch segments on it because I decided that’s how wide the loops needed to be for my one inch ribbon and also that far apart. I ironed two pieces of twill tape to it side by side and then marked a quarter inch away from the edge of the twill tape because that seemed like a good size for a loop. Then I took a 1/8th ribbon and wound it back and forth along the marks, taping it all down in the middle. Then I sewed it a couple of times and pulled off the tape and freezer paper and cut the ribbon between the twill tape. And I was set!

I also got a picture of the skirt lining so you can see just how far around it was. That’s basically the whole width of the front room in the apartment. It was much easier to lay it out with all the furniture gone. It was big!

The dress was great. I ended up making a few last minute changes to it to take care of some minor issues that nobody would even notice so I’m not even going to mention them. I can’t wait to see more pictures of it.

Back in 2006, Brett was driving me to the Phoenix airport after one of our dates and somehow a möbius strip came up. He’d never heard of them before. And didn’t believe me that I could show him a piece of paper with only one side and one edge. So I found a long-ish receipt in the car and crudely made one to show him while we drove. He was amazed. I decided if I ever did marry him, I wanted his ring to be a möbius strip in some way or another.

So when we did start planning on getting married, I had to figure out how to make that work. You can buy rings that have the twist of a möbius strip on them on the internet, but that’s not what I wanted. I didn’t want a big bump on a ring. I didn’t want it to be obvious what it was. So I had to figure out another way to do it. And how I did it ended up being super simple.

I bought a plain gold band and then took it to a local jeweler to see if they could engrave it for me. I left a verbal description with the jewelers wife and even drew a crude example on paper. Wife and Jeweler weren’t able to agree on what I’d said though, so they asked me to come down and show the jeweler. He gave me the ring and a marker and told me to draw what I wanted. So I drew one diagonal line on the outside of the ring, and then on the inside of the ring I drew another diagonal line. If you were able to look through the ring you’d see an X there, a symbolic twist if you will.

If you take the ring and trace along the edge and when you get to the bottom of the diagonal line on the outside follow it up to the top edge, and then go around and follow the diagonal line on the inside down to the bottom edge, the ring has just one edge, and thus only one side. (We just pretend that the edge space between the top and bottom of the X isn’t there, it’s a symbol after all, not a perfect representation.)

So not only is it the eternal symbol that a ring is, having no beginning or ending, but it is also a symbol of two sides becoming one side, two edges becoming one edge, two people becoming one.

We have a few pictures (we didn’t take any ourselves). If you took any, we’d appreciate it if you could email them to us or burn a CD/DVD and send them to us.

Here’s my favorite of what we have so far (from one of my in-laws, I’m not sure whose camera it is):

Our photographers were absolutely awesome and I can’t wait to see what kind of pictures they got.

Thank you all of you for being a part of our wedding. Especially thank you for reading all of this over the last few months.

I’ll put up some pictures and thoughts and stuff when I’m officially back online. (I wrote this post before I went offline and just set it to show up today. Don’t worry, I’m not weird enough to be on the computer right after getting married.)

You can now count the number of days left on one hand. And since I’m planning to go offline tomorrow till after the wedding, I thought I should get a few more thoughts/updates out there.

Some weddings have themes. These can range over a whole bunch of different things. I kind of figured our “theme” would just be that we were getting married. But as things have gone on, we seem to have found a theme. And that theme is us. More specifically, all of the little fun things between us that mean something to us.

That’s why we’ve used binary on everything, why there will be a few turtles, the linen stuff, the ribbon stuff, the pansies, the quilt design, all of it has some meaning to us. And whether it means anything to anyone else is completely irrelevant because it means something to us. And we’re enjoying it.

There is no aisle to walk down in a temple wedding with your dad. Last month I actually commented to Brett that I’m real glad that he and I will enter our wedding together, not separately. There’s something powerful about that.

But I am planning something special with my dad, and those plans are why we won’t be having  “wedding breakfast. ” (You’re on your own if you want to eat something that morning). My dad and I have run together my whole life. So on the morning of my wedding, my dad and I are going to go for a run, just an easy couple of miles. But I’m really looking forward to it. Because I made it a point for a while to tell Brett that I would be running that morning rather than spending an exorbitant amount of money having someone do my hair, he was actually a little worried I would show up at our wedding with my hair pulled back in a pony tail. I assured him that wouldn’t be the case. I actually did a second trial run of my hair yesterday for church. He didn’t know that’s what I’d done but he did like the way it looked. We’ll see how the different weather in Utah affects it. Convincing my hair to curl some times takes more than an act of Congress.

And it looks like we weren’t quite finished with my car problems. Friday and Saturday it started not starting consistently again. I took it back to the shop first thing this morning and they replaced the starter. We knew a car problem couldn’t be as cheap as an oil change to fix. And it wasn’t. But it should be fixed now. Now I’ll get a good night sleep tonight and be on my way in the morning.

I’m going to try to get one more post about pretty dress #2 this evening before I leave. Then check back after the wedding for pictures and thoughts and what-not and what-have-you.

I can’t think of that phrase without thinking of Star Wars. Does anyone else have that problem?

Tuesday Brett came over so we could watch Biggest Loser. He sat down on the couch and started to get out his Greek book and I told him first he had to do more leaves on flowers. So he trimmed the foundations on all of the leaves for the tables and then put leaves and backs on all of them. While he did that I figured out my bouquet and put that together. And the flowers are finished! And they look lovely.

Tuesday morning I also finished the quilt. So that’s ready to go.

Wednesday morning I got on iTunes and bought the last few songs for our reception. Be ready to do some dancing!

My rental car while my car is being fixed is a refrigerator box on wheels (Chevy HHR). I’m not a huge fan of box cars. But the seats fold down and so I put almost my whole storage closet in it to move to our house. Saturday morning the ward will help us move my furniture. Last night I packed one box that was just my Harry Potter books.

And my professors that I have class with and work with have been very understanding of the fact that while I would’ve been fine with just the wedding, the wedding and the car accident pushed me over the edge this week. My professor today even gave me a reference to a tailor to finish my dress if I need to and told me she’d pay for it (she noticed that my shoulders were up somewhere around my ears during the department lunch because of the tension). I work with amazing people. I should be okay with it though. I’ve finished all the real hard parts.

One interesting thing, I’m not much of a hand sewer. I avoid it if at all possible. But a LOT of this wedding has been hand sewn (90+ flowers will do that). I have calluses on my thumb and finger that feel real weird. They’re so callused that I barely notice when I try to sew them to whatever it is I’m working on. I think I’ve only drawn blood three times so far though, which isn’t bad considering how many pins and needles are everywhere.

Things with the to-do list are coming along. I have most things at the “almost finished but not finished enough to cross it off the list” stage and just need to sit down and finish a bunch of things.

I promised doughnuts to anyone in my ward who brings a pick-up truck this Saturday to help us move my furniture. Hopefully we’ll get a good turn out. Right now we’re taking a few carloads of stuff a week and stacking it all in the Tigger room. Brett’s real good with the stacking thing.

Last week was supposed to be a great week to get things done but then I spent the first part of the week figuring out why my car wouldn’t start and getting that fixed, and the second part of the week dealing with a car accident. Neither of those were on the to-do list right now and have taken up more time than I would’ve liked. Full story on the car accident tomorrow on Random Giggles.

So here’s the run down:

• Card and guest card baskets are finished.
• Guest card pens are wrapped in ribbon and have a feather attached. (ask me some time why the pens have feathers)
• Flowers are almost done (need leaves on the loose flowers (Brett does that), and arranging the bouquet, other flowers are finished ( guest table, cake table).
• Quilt needs to be sewn up where I flipped it and have pansies attached in the center.
• Dress – the lining is done. The dress is partly sewn. I need to attach the netting to the lining, put in the loops for the lacing, attach the lining to the dress, and finish the neck and sleeves.
• Teach motivation class on Thursday – we each take a turn teaching the class, and my chapter is Thursday. So I’m studying and preparing for that.
• And my knee has stopped hurting. I spent pretty much all of October with the tendon running down the side of my knee just killing me and making running very difficult (which might have something to do with my stress level). It’s really screwed with my marathon training, but we’ll see how it goes.

But, we get married this month. That’s just super duper cool!

I had to laugh a bit when I got the email about the upcoming activities for the single’s ward here in Tucson. This one just seemed real funny to me:

YSA Regional Conference
Saturday, November 14th, 1pm
Church Ballpark
Hope on the Horizon – an afternoon of interactive workshops, a keynote speaker, dinner & games.

I think that on that day and at that time I’d rather attend this activity:

Brett & Lisa’s Wedding
Saturday, November 14th, 1pm
Bountiful Temple
Hope, joy, love, and all that eternal stuff – a day of family and friends with food and dancing followed by an eternity of the best of everything.

I don’t know. Which one do you think sounds like more fun?

Because I make quilts, I’m making one for Brett and I. I was always planning on it, but it wasn’t always in the works for before the wedding. But when I saw that the JSMB would provide, free of charge, an easel to display any quilts we had, I decided I needed to get ours ready to display before the wedding. Odd motivation, I know, but it doesn’t end there.

Brett is in complete awe at my quilt making abilities. He escorted me to the local guild’s show in January and came away being able to identify two different blocks – the log cabin and the star. He also said it was okay if I was never as good as some of the quilts we saw, that he’d love me anyway.

So keeping his quilt knowledge in mind, I designed a quilt that is perfect for us. It’s one BIG log cabin quilt. Traditionally the center square is supposed to be red because it’s the heart of the home. Instead of red, I used a piece of fabric from my sealing dress as the center square. I then used green and purple, our two favorite colors, to build the log cabin. So we’re building it together.

The corner squares are a pattern called “Jacob’s Ladder.” While Brett can’t identify that one, yet, it seemed perfect since a large part of our relationship is studying the scriptures.

I’ll be tacking four of our pansies in the center as well.

Because of time, I won’t be able to get it hand quilted before the wedding. So instead I decided I’d tie it for now and the ties would be the basting for when I do quilt it. So I set it up on my frames in the only area big enough to spread it out completely – over my bed. And here’s the other odd motivation. I had to get at least half of it tied so I could have it rolled far enough to sleep on at least half my bed that first night. So, technically, I’ve already slept under our wedding quilt, because the frames were over my bed. At the bottom of the tall picture you can see my bed peaking out underneath.

The quilt is all tied now. I need to sew closed the hole I flipped it through and put on the pansies, and then that’s finished. Yeah!

Brett hasn’t seen the quilt yet, but he knows it’s coming. I basted the edges in his living room after all. But I thought I’d explain why it looks the way it does for you.