It's been a HUGE week

And I'm not talking about picking a videographer or deciding on and ordering my dress. I'm talking about much bigger things...

On Wednesday, Ryan got into college. They interviewed him and accepted him on the spot. So in September, while Paul and I are on our honeymoon, Ryan will be moving into Lesley College dorms. Paul's jealous, because Ryan will get to live like 3 blocks from Harvard Square.

Today, we got our box of books. I can't tell you how proud I am of my Paul. He handed in the manuscript in October, so we've been waiting a long time for these babies... It's going to be a best-seller... just you wait and see.



If social media perks your ears, check out Paul's The New Influencers site. It's chock full of goodies having to do with the book. It's also currently the only place you can read the acknowledgments.

I'm bursting with pride for my fiance. And with love like I've never known and never will with anyone else. He's my hero in so many ways. And now he's an author, too.

Videographer chosen

I used Craigslist to list the videographer gig for our wedding. I got a few good responses, but eventually landed on a delightful person named Julie Hathaway Spilka. She posted a few vids on YouTube for me to watch. Now for the coincidences...

• One of the vids she posted for me was shot at Penn State, my alma mater. She even captured the lion shrine in the beginning, which was wonderful. That was her best friend's wedding.



• The second vid she posted was her own wedding. Julie teaches videography production at a public high school in the area and had her students film her video. She edited the montage, I think. Julie's new husband, Dan, works at TechTarget, where Paul and I used to work.

So, welcome to the madness, Julie!

Wedding colors

The predominant wedding color will be light blue, with yellow as the accent color. Here's what one site has to say about what those colors mean:

Light blue in your wedding suggests health, happiness, patience and creativity.

Yellow symbolizes intellect, friendship and cooperation.

And to think I picked them for the color of our eyes and hair! :-)

Relief and excitement

Maggie, Joe and I went to Maggie Flood today. They don't have the color swatches in that we ordered quite yet, but they were willing to talk "Dana's dream wedding gown." When it was all said and done, I picked out "fabric" and put down 50% of the total. It's done. Ordered. It's been living in my head for over 2 weeks now, so it's a relief to share the image with other people, especially since those other people will be creating the gown... I can't divulge details, bc Paul's being a stickler about not knowing anything about it until he sees it, but it's going to be a gorgeous dress. I can tell you that it's a different version (again, fabric) of a knockoff of a VW gown that Maggie Flood made apparently a few years ago, because it's nowhere to be found on the Internet or on the VW site. These women are amazing -- they just saw a picture and created this beautiful dress, which I tried on and proceeded to use to then dream up a "Dana special."

No details, but I can tell you it's white. ;-)

I can't thank Maggie and Joe enough for humoring me these last few weeks and going to "another dress store," as Joe keeps reminding us. I was hunting for a dream and the dresses I saw all fueled the creativity fires in my head. What I'll end up with won't only be a dream gown, but my specific dream gown -- literally; I've been dreaming about it. And the patience of Maggie and Joe (Maggie's patience totalled about 10 hours in this one task alone), not to mention Maggie's astute fashion sense in this area, allowed me to flit and flutter and then focus. Thank you!