Wedding DVD and "guest book" + Updates

A few things I must re-cap.

1. I mentioned back in November about how we scored a fantastic deal on a digital camera on Black Friday (and used it to capture the wedding proposal...) 
2. and I think I've mentioned before that my paramedic "bro" is incredibly tech savvy and used to do sound at churches and for live bands... and that he's also done a few weddings and helped his roommate our with AV systems... 
3. And since we lost our church building... our church's sound system (which is portable) is going to be sitting in storage...

So, mix all that together and what do we get? Our wedding video taped for Free!!!

We will have microphones set up so everyone will be able to hear us and my bro can slice the sound (which will be recorded separately just in case as a back up) and one of my fiance's brothers (who is not in the party) will be able to video tape our wedding for us! My "bro" also offered to do all the editing for us to make sure its perfect!!!!! and we can get our first dance and the reception highlights on tape so we can't forget them either. Depending on Battery life (we also will bring the charger with us), we'd like to get our guests to leave us a video message during the reception.

This makes me so excited because when I called the wedding planner to let her know about the smaller number of guests coming to the wedding, I wanted to see if it was still early enough to get a "credit" to use towards another hour of photography (we would only need a credit of $225 to get another hour of photography) since well need less apple cider, tables center pieces, refreshments, etc... since we originally planned 70 guests we have only 50 coming...

and they told us no... Its funny how everything is now about the "contact" (even though a lot of this stuff could be easily changed in terms of amounts since we called them awhile ago about it).  So i'm expecting refreshments and cake to feed 70... or they break contract.

So I was bummed about this because of how much money we wasted on people who told us they would come and aren't anymore.... But then figuring out the whole wedding video thing is just so darn fantastic that my whole outlook has changed. I'm just thinking about the great and the awesomeness that is to come!

My "bro" is also picking out a huge nice black picture frame and mat for an 11x14 photo which we are using as our "guest book." We are going to have our guests sign the mat and put our favorite photo from the wedding in it. So the video and the frame our his gifts to us and I think they might be the things I treasure the most... My Bro is the best (I sure know how to pick em)!

I'm going through all our music to make our wedding play list as I type this. We are making 2 set lists. One for  background noise while we finish up our pictures, then one for the "real" reception.

My "bro's" girlfriend (my bridesmaid and yes I totally set them up-- we will be planning their wedding next year), got 2 of her friends who have their beautician licences to do all of our hair and make up for $35 per person! So we are going to have a bridal slumber party the night before so we can wake up and spend the morning getting PRETTY. I was going to get my hair and make up done as a gift at a salon... but when I tried calling and getting my appointment set up, the lady who told me she's do my hair and make up just hasn't returned my calls... and the wedding is less than 3 weeks away... :/ so i'm just going to have these gals do it.

My Bridal shower is Sunday...We have our next meet up with the Pastor on Monday (since we finally finished our homework packets for marriage counseling)... Then Wednesday is my work shower... Then that Saturday is the bachelorette party... then the in laws get in that Wednesday... Rehearsal Thursday... Slumber party Friday... Wedding Saturday!