Bachelorette Party in South Beach

Last weekend was my bachelorette party in South Beach.  It was so amazing!! 5 of the 8 of us flew in Thursday night so we stayed closed to the FLL airport then took a shuttle down to South Beach the next morning.  Whitney did an amazing job planning the whole thing and surprising me with all the details!

We got a suite at Loews Miami Beach and we were on the 5th floor, overlooking the ocean.  It was absolutely beautiful!! Whitney had champagne delivered up to our room right when we walked in.

We spent Friday down at the beach and didn't think it was too hot.. apparently it was nearly 100 degrees but it was so windy and overcast we didn't realize how burned we all got! I'm still peeling 5 days later :(

Friday night Whitney gave us all gifts and everybody gave me a little special something

Mangos for dinner!  

 We spent Saturday in a private cabana at the pool.  It was amazing! It was so nice to have shade, sun, ac and amazing service!

Saturday night we went to Mansion... so much fun dancing!

What an amazing weekend with all of my closest friends!!!

Three months until the big day!

I can't believe we are getting married in three months! We have so much to do, it's going to be a busy summer!  I have my bachelorette party this weekend in Miami, fingers crossed this potential summer storm won't impact us too much.  The follow weekend we are attending our friends wedding in Cincinnati.

After we get back to Denver, it's time to make the invitations! We bought all of the paper products for our wedding from Paper Source last week (note: sign up to receive emails and you get a 10% off coupon.. that saved us way too much money since we spent a lot).  We need to start assembling everything and send it all out.

The biggest thing we have left is to get the transportation booked. That's been a total pain in my opinion, and we've been putting it off for months.  I will feel relieved when that's crossed off the list!

Once we finish transportation, it's down to the details! 

• Make Welcome Guest Bags
• Work through the timeline
• Create wedding program & determine readings
• Create place cards
• Create do not play list for DJ
• Buy Groomsmen gifts
• Buy Bridesmaids gifts (halfway done :) )
• Create favors
• Buy Guest Book
• Order Wedding Rings

The  majority of the is creating and designing paper products, which I've been enjoying so far!

We moved!

We moved over the weekend to our new place, 4 blocks south.  We're loving the larger space (almost double) and two bedrooms.  We bought a new sofa and haven't sold our old one yet so we're storing both in the main room right now.. that's making it rather difficult to maneuver around the place with boxes though!

Matt rented a truck on Saturday and some of our friends helped him move all the furniture.  We made 7 trips earlier in the week to move all of our boxes and clothes.  I spent Saturday unpacking and waiting for DirecTv to install everything.

Around lunchtime we decided it was time to grill out and have some beers as a thank you to our friends.  It was about 75 and sunny, perfect weather to enjoy our new backyard!  It was hard to continue unpacking after that event, so we were pretty worthless the rest of the night!  We still have a lot of unpacking to do.. but we're slowly making progress!

Using our new wedding champagne flutes for a toast on our first night!

Sunday we went to our old place and cleaned for several hours... hoping to get at least 50% of our deposit back! I swear you always get scammed no matter how much you clean.  That night we had a concert at Red Rocks - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.  It was such a good concert! It's one of the few bands Matt listens to that I actually enjoy.  I wish it wasn't on a Sunday night though, work (jury duty) was in the back of my mind the whole time!

Monday morning I woke up after 5 hours of sleep (I need 8 hours, so this was seriously rough!) and biked to Civic Center Park for my jury duty. I had never done it before and it was just as mundane and long as I expected.  My number was one of the first to be called, so I was in the courtroom by 9am.  They called 50 people in that court room and then narrowed it down to 25 people to sit in the jurors chairs.  The prosecutor and defender asked questions for probably 1-2 hours that everybody had to answer.  This helped both sides determine who they wanted to be on the case.  I wasn't one of the people to have their number called and sit up there, so I was excused once they determined their jurors.  I was excused around 12:15!

It's going to be a busy week with month end, a visit from corporate, and my bachelorette party this weekend! I'm leaving Thursday night for Miami, so excited!!

Berteliu Wedding Weekend

Two weekends ago we went to NYC for my brother's wedding.  We got in late Thursday night and started our weekend bright and early on Friday.  Eric rented a car and we drove around Manhattan - LES up to Harlem and back down - to show my Grandma the city.  Her family grew up in the city so she had a bunch of addresses we drove by for her to see. 

I headed to my hair appointment at Dry Bar in Tribeca.  I've never had a blow out before and really enjoyed my first one!  However it felt like it was impossible to hail cabs for some reason so I was constantly running around town.  We all met at city hall at 1:00 in the afternoon.  It was my immediate family, grandma, Orchid's parents, her friend Travis and his boyfriend Daniel, Eric's two college roommates Drew and David, and my cousin Chris and his wife Yvonne.  Orchid's friend was taking pictures of the event as well.  

Once we got inside city hall, we had to take a number  we were surprised at how long it took!  We were C755 and they were only on C735 when we got there.  It took about two hours of waiting in the building for the number to be called.  The first time they called your number, I think you had some paperwork. Then you had to wait again for them to call your number for your ceremony.

C755 was finally called! 

We all went in a quaint room and had the ceremony, which lasted about 3-4 minutes.  It was very intimate with only 15 or so of us in the room.

We took a few pictures around the building and then parted ways for a few hours.  We met up again a few hours later for dinner at Edi & The Wolf, an Austrian restaurant.   It was a beautiful venue and had delicious food! Although I'm never going to dislike anything Austrian!

Matt order spaetzle and I had schnitzel. Yum!

The next night was their big party.  They rented out the rooftop of a bar/restaurant and had about 70 guests. Before we went to Hotel Chantel, the immediate family went over to Eric and Orchid's apartment to eat some pizza and hang out beforehand.

Hotel Chantel was beautiful inside!  If only it was warmer the roof could have been retracted, but it was still very pretty to look at.  Just behind the bar was a beautiful view of the Williamsburg Bridge.

The next morning we all went to brunch and then flew home.  We were delayed 3 hours and didn't get home until 1am!  It probably took 4 days to recover, but it was such a fun weekend!

Memorial Day Weekend 2013

We spent Memorial Day weekend packing up our apartment and camping in the mountains.  Friday night we decided to bike to dinner.  It was a beautiful night in the 80s and we opted for a Mexican restaurant about 1 mile away.  We had never been to Lime before but their large patio was tempting on such a nice night. The next day I somehow realized that I drank too much the night before and opted out of yoga sculpt that morning.  Apparently a large margarita and 3 beers over 6 hours is too much for me to handle. I'm getting old.  It was probably for the best because we ended up packing about 10 boxes.  We're probably half way done with packing at this point.  I would like to pack up more stuff, but there is seriously no room to store the boxes!

Sunday we drove to Buena Vista, which is about 2.5 hours away.  It is a beautiful drive and actually very flat the last hour.

A friend of Matt's from college was staying at a friends cabin for the weekend and he invited us.  We ended up camping in their backyard for the night.  There were probably 20 people or so staying the weekend in the house, tents, cars, etc.  We tried a new hike, Ptarmigan Lake, about 15 min west of Buena Vista up Cottonwood Pass.

We got there around 11:00 in the morning and were shocked that we were the only ones in the 10 car parking lot!

We quickly realized it was so empty because there was 2 feet of snow....

Some spots didn't have much snow...

And in other spots we would sink and get stuck.

We turned around at about halfway in because we lost the trail and couldn't figure out where to go.  The trail was so snowpacked we couldn't see the trail and shoes were drenched and causing our toes to go numb.  Despite the snow, I was still in shorts and a tshirt since it was 75!

We headed back to the cabin and had some drinks in the sunshine.  Beautiful day!

We got up at 6:30 the next morning and packed up to make our way back to Denver.  Random weekend, but fun.  This week is full of packing and moving!! With a FOMR (Film on the Rocks - Red Rocks) tomorrow night! Back to the Future!

We're moving... 4 blocks away!

We've been living in our current place since I moved to Denver at the end of September 2011.  I came out here for my final interview in August and realized that was my "free" (the company paid for my flight) opportunity to look at potential apartments if I got the job.  My interview was Monday morning so I asked if they could fly me out first thing Sunday morning.  I rented a car and drove all around Denver going to different apartment showing appointments I had previously set up.

I ended up getting a pretty small place, but it was new, clean and about 5 blocks from the park.  It was only 575 square feet, but that was plenty of space for just me.  Then Matt moved out here.  And things got tight.   The first 6 months or so weren't bad but then we started to get really frustrated when we couldn't go to the bathroom/bedroom when the fridge was open because it was blocking the hallway, or I had to stop blow drying my hair and move out of the way for Matt to get to his dresser.

Last month in April 2013, I had my wedding shower back home and we brought all of our gifts back with us (so happy we were able to fit them all in our checked bags!).  I don't want to sound ungrateful because we were so excited about all of our new gifts, but we were pretty much busting at the seams at this point.  We have boxes everywhere and the dining room table is covered in random stuff.  Needless to say, we're SO excited to be moving in a few weeks!

We found a place on craigslist that was within our budget and surprisingly cheap for being that close to the park (0.10 miles) so I emailed the landlord right away.  We had an appointment two days later to see it in person. Within two hours of seeing the apartment, we had already paid the deposit and signed the lease!  Apartments go so quickly in Wash Park!