More Picture News

Posted on by Jordan

I got word from Heather today that we have a location for wedding pictures!

After nearly a month of persistent calling, Heather managed to talk to the right person at the Durham Western Heritage Museum. We have a reservation there, I don’t know what that means really except that we know they will let us take pictures the day of the wedding.

After being painfully cold while taking the engagement pictures, our sense of urgency about finding an indoor location went way up. The botanical gardens are still an option, but that is still a large unknown because we don’t know how it will be decorated. There is a chance we will really like what they have in January, but my fear is it will end up looking more like a jungle safari if we tried to take pictures using their indoor area. Some of the times I have seen their indoor display setup its rather claustrophobic, very cool to look at, but it just wouldn’t work for group pictures.

Heather and I had initially ruled out the DWHM because its not all that interesting visually. After failing to find anything better we were still pursuing it, but after the cold of engagement pictures, and realizing the average temps in Omaha for January are something like 19f it became a must. I still wasn’t all that interested in it, until after we saw the results of our engagement pictures!

Some of the pictures we took I thought would look cool at the time, but many of them didn’t seem like a great backdrop. I was pleasantly surprised how amazing the pictures came out, and have a lot of faith in Cherie to produce some amazing shots even with what I considered “bad” settings inside the museum.

Its another relief to have that nailed down so far before the wedding, as our initial plan had been to almost wing it if we didn’t like the decor at the botanical gardens. With a fairly short time window, and the possibility of miserably cold weather I am glad we change that.

-Jordan

A Ring for Jordan

Posted on by Jordan

This is sort of old news, as Heather and I picked out the ring over a week ago, but I hadn’t mentioned it here.

I was waiting to post anything about the ring until I had pictures of it. The problem is that its really shiny, causing the flash to reflect and wash out the picture. I think with a tripod or something to help me hold the camera steady I might be able to get something workable, but I couldn’t freehand it. (As with about 100 other things, the tripod is already on our registry, so I won’t know if I should go buy one until late January) I suppose I could have rigged something, but never mind that….

The ring: Its silver in color, actually made of palladium has curved sides, and no designs or etching. In reality my being unable to provide a picture isn’t to important, its a basic men’s wedding band. Beyond its appearance, I have to say its an interesting thing to have bought. I wore it a little, tried washing my hands etc, seems like its not going to fall off too easily. I don’t know how long it will take to get used to wearing the ring. I was expecting it to be really strange, but based on an hour or two the day I wore it, I think I will adapt rather quickly. Now if January would just get here so I can find out 🙂

-Jordan

Engagement Pictures MK. 3

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I, with the help of her family, chose a picture we wanted to send with the wedding invitations.

Our photographer, Cherie, did a great job of getting the changes to the text etc. that we wanted done quickly enough we could order the picture Sunday.

The picture we chose:

It was really quite hard to pick our favorite out of the set.  I am really happy with this one though, and I am excited to have the last thing taken care of so the invitations can go out.

Nearly all of the work for the invitations has been done by Heather’s mom, I don’t want to sound like I am taking credit for any of that… Its just exciting to have that all moving forward, one more thing that had to happen before the wedding almost complete.

-Jordan

Engagement Pictures Taken

Posted on by Jordan

We won’t have access to any of the pictures for a while, but Heather and I had a lot of fun taking engagement pictures over the weekend.

Saturday was every bit as unpleasant as the forecast said it was going to be, so we rescheduled the session to Sunday. The change was our photographers idea, and I have to say it was a really really good move. Sunday was still cold, but without the wind and cloud-cover.

Our photographer is Cherie Phelps, I don’t think we have mentioned that before, she has a neat website here:

< http://www.cphelpsphotography.com/ >

If you look around, you will actually see a number of people from church in the featured pictures.

We started out taking pictures near the Durham Western Heritage Museum. Across the tracks, in the very run down part of the old train station. It made for some really cool backdrops, although being in the shade was really cold. While we were there we encountered another photography session, parents and a toddler.

After the train station, we headed to the old market proper. Let me just say that Cherie is a lot of fun to work with, and I think she got some great shots. We worked our way through the old market area using different areas for backdrops every time we went around a corner. It was such a pretty day, I don’t think we could have asked for a better day visually. The temperature was uncomfortably cold, but the pictures won’t show that and so far neither Heather nor I has gotten a cold :). The other downside to the day was that, being beautiful, every block had a freshly-engaged couple and photographer on it. The traffic wasn’t so bad as to keep us from doing what we wanted, but it did kind of make the whole thing seem a little silly.

Ignoring the cold and other people getting their pictures taken, it was an amazingly fun thing to do. I am sure we will have some fun pictures to show for it soon. Hopefully we can even manage to get one of them in with the invitations, but you will just have to wait and see on that.

-Jordan

One Week Later

Posted on by Jordan

Well I have been 27 for almost a week. I would like to say it hasn’t been any different, but in reality I have had more knee problems in this week than I had all last year.

I suppose that’s not completely fair, I hurt it playing frisbee the Thursday before my birthday. All the same, it hasn’t been the best week for my knee. I had to abandon my workout on the treadmill Tuesday after just a few minutes because things were bad, and getting worse. Fortunately I can still do a stationary bike without causing problems, but I find that really boring.

Beyond my knee, things have been fairly good. I am starting to get used to living in the new apartment. It still feels empty without Heather there, but she came to visit a few times over the week. I think we will manage to survive the next 3 months, but it won’t be our favorite phase of engagement looking back.

Speaking of engagement, Heather and I are suppose to get engagement pictures taken tomorrow. The weather forecast for Saturday has been getting progressively worse as it gets closer. I think right now they are calling for wind, clouds, and cold. By the time we get out to shoot anything it will probably be the winters first freak blizzard. 🙂 Could make for some awesome pictures though!

-Jordan

One Year Ago Today

Posted on by Jordan

November third, two thousand and seven… The day I met Heather.

We knew each other existed before that day, but hadn’t managed to actually meet. I can tell you Heather was captivating, beautiful, and so pleasant to talk to that day. I don’t really remember what was said, but I remember the first time I saw her.

It seems like such a long time ago… I never would have expected that we would be so happy together, or that we could do so many things in just a year.

I can’t wait to see what the next year brings!

-Jordan

Brrrrr

Posted on by Jordan

Walking outside I start to think winter might be getting here soon. I am really not ready for that yet 😦

we might make it to November without snow, but its getting a lot colder all of a sudden.

Heather returned from her loooong trip to KC last night. She brought back all kinds of exciting things! Such as an example of our completed wedding invitations, and a really cool Nebraska Football themed quilt her mom made for me, given as a birthday present. I might get a picture of the quilt up at some point. The invitations you will just have to hope to be on the list to get one in the mail 🙂

I tried a recipe I found for some low-sugar peanut butter cookies yesterday afternoon. Had the dough all ready when Heather came back, and we tried a few fresh out of the oven. Sadly no pictures, but I trust you can all imagine a peanut butter cookie. The verdict? Splenda sweetened baking still tastes a little different than “normal” cookies, but they were really quite good.

-Jordan

Another Landmark Day

Posted on by Jordan

Its now three months until the wedding. October 24th – January 24th… its also 91 days until the wedding if the countdown I have been running is setup correctly. With two major holidays and my birthday in the upcoming months, I have a feeling they will go buy fast.

At the same time I haven’t seen Heather in almost four days, and won’t see her for another two! I know, I know…. we are both spoiled, but it just makes this week seem really long and I wonder what its going to be like once Heather is living in Blair.

In other news, I just found out Left 4 Dead won’t run on my gaming rig. I knew the day a game completely eclipsed my PC with hardware requirements was going to happen sooner or later, I just didn’t expect it quite yet.

Have I mentioned I will be spending my Friday night alone? blah… its just not the greatest day 🙂

-Jordan

Picture Location Problems

Posted on by Jordan

I just got word from Heather a few hours ago that we cannot take pictures at the art museum like we had hoped. The museum was going to be a pain to schedule, and I had some doubts as to how awesome the inside was really going to be for pictures, but its still disappointing to loose it as an option.

We looked at the Durham Western Heritage Museum as a picture option, but they also have a lot of hoops to jump through, and really lack anything compelling other than a few old benches. There are some really majestic things there, but they are all 80+ feet off the ground, therefore unhelpful in picture taking.

Our only remaining option now is the botanical gardens. The gardens have some really really neat areas that would make for awesome fall / spring pictures, and given a nice day, some cool winter pictures too. They have an indoor area, but we don’t yet know what the post-Christmas theme in there will be. It may or may not be a nice picture backdrop, and the indoor space is somewhat limited there anyway.

It would be nice to have a few more options for indoor picture locations in Omaha, but so far Heather and I haven’t come up with any. I think there have to be some local hotels or something that might have a fairly ornate lobby. I suppose we don’t need that much, how many people look at the background to a wedding picture? Still it would be fun to have something really cool to use.

If readers have any ideas, feel free to post them in the comments 🙂

-Jordan