So much is happening ... dresses, DJ's, and photography.

Well, where to begin. The biggest ordeal of them all, that of which I was most fearful, is now over much sooner than I expected ... Mimi found a wedding gown! Just when I really thought she was soon to go Bridezilla on me. (Not that I would've blamed her ... the whole process was insanely frustrating.) I'm sure she can describe the experience much better than I, so I'll let her do that in her own post. But I couldn't be happier ... that's a major tick on our checklist, wahoo! She found the dress at Shaw's Clothing in Wauseon, so props out to them.

To get the party started right, we're going with Sihasi for our "DJ, MC, and Entertainment Experience." These guys seem very experienced, but it was really the personality of the DJ that won us over -- he's not one of those young, slick kids with spikey hair that you know spend more time focussing on the bridesmaids instead of the music and atmosphere. Not to mention they've got a pretty good lighting and sounds system, too. We had really considered Tradewind Sounds, too ... two big bald guys who DJ together -- how cool is that. However, it wasn't clear how much wedding experience they had, they don't seem to have any references, plus they seem a little too much on the goofy, party animal side of things. (Maybe because the only pictures of them on their website have them wearing Hawaiians.) Still, it was a tough decision.

Finally, photography! At some point about a month ago, Mimi and I decided this is one of the most important things to us in planning this wedding. In fact, it's the only area in our budget that we've allowed to expand -- and pretty significantly at that. Out of the three we looked at, Grand Lubell definitely sounds the best ... we really like all of their past work, their philosophy, their personalities, their connections, and the time they've spent with us. And by "they" I'm usually talking about Bob, who seems genuinely excited to shoot our wedding. So, we booked them just last week!! Considering Lilies was a close second ... she has great artistic skill at putting the storybooks together, but we felt that Lubell is just better at really capturing the moment. Take a look at their gallery, it's great...

... make sure to check out his "Art" gallery, too. (Reminds me a bit of our friend Matt's work.)

(And whatever happened to Decisive Moment? Well, we don't know either. Decisive hardly seemed the operative word. We never heard back from them, and apparent they only take phone calls on 3 days of the week, for only 4 hours, during business hours. How's that for customer care?)