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Boy, was yesterday a busy day! Being the first day that Sara and I have both had off at the same time for several weeks, with the exception of Christmas Eve which was just chaos, mind you, we were pretty much out and about all day long, and actually got quite a bit done in the process…

Wedding Menu – done!
Well, close anyways. Our first stop was out to the hotel on the beach to do a tasting of some of the dishes that we thought we’d like to serve at the wedding and surprisingly, every last one of them was a hit! We first sampled appetizers – a variety of swedish meatballs, spanakopitas (small pastries with spinach and cheese), and assorted canapes (those little breads or crackers with meat and/or cheese on top) – and all were good, but the meatballs clearly took the crown for that round. As for entrees, we sampled both a jerked chicken and a mahi mahi with tropical fruit salsa, and needless to say that it didn’t take long for us to know that our decision had been made! Impressively, Sara doesn’t really even like fish, but she thought the mahi mahi was great. I’m still not sure which one I’ll personally have myself that night (leaning towards the chicken, but I might argue for a bit of both, you know, being the groom and all!), but regardless, it’s now official that we’ll be serving chicken and fish at our wedding!

Gift Registry – almost done!
Next stop was JC Penney to put together a gift registry. This has been a tough decision for us because unlike a lot of new couples, both of us have pretty much been “out in the real world” for a while now and thus we pretty much already have everything that we need for around the house. Sure, we could pick stuff just for the sake of getting new everything, but it just seems like such a waste because most of the pots and pans and towels that we have now work just fine. So a week or two ago, we signed up for a Disney Honeymoon Registry and setup some items there for people to be able to help pay for anything we might want to do the weekend following the weekend, and just to try to round things out we did the one at Penneys this weekend, too. It gave Sara a chance to run around with the scan gun, which she loved, and even though we really only picked maybe a dozen items, we still had a good time. I mean, I know it’s fun to dream, but you’ve got to feel just a little guilty when you spend so much time basically spelling out what people can buy you for gifts… :O

Give Life – painfully done.
As we parked at the next mall on our list, Sara noticed the Blood Mobile parked outside and seeing as we were planning on seeing a movie that night anyways, why not get free tickets for donating blood? Thankfully, my second time giving went a little smoother than the first, even though the needle stick itself was a lot worse because the lady just jabbed the thing into my arm with the bedside manner of a cranky wildebeest drilling for oil, but nonetheless I didn’t nearly pass out this time and that spells SUCCESS for me!

Tuxes – thankfully done!
Sara got this crazy notion that she wanted to see me in a tux while we were at it, so we took a trip over to Afterhours Formal Wear in the mall and ended up just picking out the whole darned thing. Oddly enough, she never did get exactly what she had wanted, as apparently they’ve only got random pieces in the store to actually try on – not samples of each exact get-up, but we got to see it all come together on a mannequin so I guess that was ok. Honestly, it wasn’t nearly as fun as I thought it might be because every tux looked the same to me and the colors were really already decided by her bridesmaids’ dresses, so she might as well have just chosen them herself. Don’t get me wrong, I still think us dudes are going to look pretty sharp up there, but it wasn’t nearly as fun as I’m told dress shopping has been thus far for the ladies.

All I can really say is that they’re white, well ivory actually, and my biggest question is still in wondering if I’m going to sweat to death standing at the altar…

The Movie – bleh.
So to round the day out, we used our passes to see National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets because we just watched the original again on Christmas Eve and Sara’s really been looking forward to the sequel … and it pretty much sucked all around! The conflicts seemed forced, even more so than in the first movie, and we were both scratching our heads as the credit rolled because we didn’t really see how anything had actually been resolved. Frankly, I didn’t like the first movie, and the sequel made the first installment look great, so you do the math. Also, the theater seating was just horribly uncomfortable and we’ll be sure to avoid that theater altogether going forward, so meh.

Regardless, though, it really felt good to make so much wedding progress because we’ve kind of been at a standstill for quite some time now. Next steps will be to put down deposits for a DJ and hopefully one other, along with finally sending out save-the-date cards and getting our wedding website updated with the registry stuff, hotel info, etc… The fun just never ends!