Ben and Rachel’s Wedding Blog

Ben and I have been very busy finishing the final details for the wedding.  The last two days we’ve been hard at working finalizing our song list, finishing the seating chart, and designing the programs.

We sent our ketubah to be framed today and it is so pretty!  I can’t wait to see it all put together.   I love the sentiment of it – since you may  not all be able to read it at the wedding… here’s what it says.

On the first day of the week, the seventeenth day of Tevet,
in the year 5770, which corresponds to the second day of
January, in the year 2010, in New Albany, Indiana, the
groom, Benjamin Goldenberg, son of Barbara and Marc,
and the bride, Rachel Nix, daughter of Katherine and
Philip, joined each other before family and friends to enter
into the holy covenant of marriage, and with love and
compassion each vowed to the other: “Today I love you
completely, as I did yesterday and as I will tomorrow. I
will be there for you when you need me most. I will hold you
in my heart just as I hold you in my arms. I will share in
your dreams, delight in your joys, and comfort you in your
sorrows. I will be your confidant, your counsel, your friend,
and your lover. When you are not within my sight, you will
be within my thoughts. You are my life; you are my dreams;
you are my joy; you are my love; you are my everything.
At this moment you are all that I know and all that I see.
As we grow old together and our love matures, may we
hold on to the passion and affection for each other we feel
today. Our commitment to each other seals this document.”

RSVP cards are due today so stick it in the mail or shoot us an email if you haven’t sent yours in yet.  We have 17 of 127 still to come!

Also, be sure to book your hotel soon, we release the blocks in 2 days!  You should be able to get the reduced rate after then but you may not be near others in our party and the hotel could fill up with other guests.

We have all the big things done and now its down to the details, what songs to play, where to have people sit, how to organize the whole day… I’ve got a to-do list made and am checking things off every day.  It’s hard to believe that I’ll be spending more money in the next month than I have EVER spent in this short of a time until we buy a house someday.

We’re a month out and Ben and I are beyond excited to get married.  I still can’t believe it’s almost here!  If you have any questions, check out the tabs above and if you can’t find an answer feel free to leave us a comment or send an email.

So much to do, just 32 days to do it, so I’ll get back to work and wish you all happy December, we’ll see you in January.

My Grandma Linda gave Ben and I our quilt as a wedding gift on Thanksgiving Day.   Almost a year ago, she asked me if I would like a quilt for our wedding present and I was thrilled.  We talked about it and she had been saving black and white fabrics for years because she had a pattern she had wanted to make but had never gotten to it.

I LOVED the black and white idea and said YES PLEASE!  So, for the last several months she has been sewing away on a quilt that we will keep forever on our bed!

In addition to that, we’ll be using it as the covering for our chuppah during the ceremony.

Be sure to make your hotel reservations soon.  Ben and I have to release any unused rooms in our blocks on December 3rd (2 weeks from Thursday) and after that you will not be able to get our special rate.  The rooms will be open to anyone and may fill up before you can get in.

We currently have 2/3 of both hotels on hold so take advantage of the deal while you can – we look forward to seeing you there!

Ben and I did our official cake/pie tasting last Thursday at Sweet Stuff in New Albany. Thanks for all your votes on the big debate and we hope what we came up with makes everyone happy! We’ll have red velvet cake, lemon cake, caramel apple pie, cherry pie, key lime pie, and chocolate chip pecan pie. A little of everything, I guess!

We also picked up 11 pairs of Chuck Taylors for our bridal party. The yellow ones are SO CUTE and I wish I could wear them now! I can’t wait to take pictures of all of us in them.

I got a box in the mail today of yellow ties too! We found a great deal online so our whole group will look really snazzy.

The RSVPs are starting to roll in with only 2 weeks left to let us know if you’ll be joining us on the big day!  We have all the major plans set now so its all little details from this point on… 47 DAYS!

You have 1 month to RSVP to our wedding!  We really hope everyone can make it to celebrate with us and it is so much fun getting the mail everyday and seeing all the postcards.

If you have any questions or need information about the big day, look through the tabs at the top of the page for hotel reservations, events, directions, and more.  If you can’t find what you’re looking for, email me at rachelg2010@gmail.com

If you haven’t yet, remember to vote on your favorite dessert and favor idea!

Ben and I traveled to Columbus on Wednesday to visit family and for my 2nd wedding shower.

My mom has been collecting wine bottles for me for the centerpieces I posted about last week and brought them to me when we came to the shower.

My mom, Barb Goldenberg, and I had some extra time on Thursday afternoon and decided to go ahead and paint the bottles.  I am really excited to have them all done and not have to make a HUGE mess outside my apartment… having a garage really helps!

The bottles turned out really nicely, especially the black ones which ended up being kind of shiny looking!  On the way home from Columbus, I picked up 75 of those white vases from IKEA.   Now my vision is really coming to live and I can move on to playing with what flowers I want in them all.

My future Aunt Kathy (Ben’s Mom’s Brother’s Wife) and Debbie King (Mrs. Goldenberg’s best friend) threw me a wonderful shower on Thursday night. It was recipe themed and everyone gave me a favorite recipe and some sort of kitchen gadget to use to make it.  I couldn’t believe how much great stuff I got!

I spent a good bit of the afternoon today clearing out my kitchen cabinets to make room for it all.   My little sister will be getting her own place next May so she’ll get all my old hand me downs!

By the way IKEA is ridiculous! I can’t even describe how huge and crazy it was… I could have spent a whole day there!

I think I’ve finally come up with what I want to do for table centerpieces.  After much internet searching, meeting with florists, and crafty imagination, I have come up with a really cool idea.  It seems like I can get a lot more for a lot cheaper by doing it myself instead of relying in a florist to do it for me and charge $40 a table for what I can do for $20!!

I want to have a couple little white vases with yellow billy balls and possibly another small yellow flower in them.  Then in the middle of the table, a vase or wine bottle that I’ve spray painted either black or yellow with white and yellow bigger flowers in it like gerber daisies.  I also saw a cool idea where they used the painted wine bottles to hold table numbers by sticking the corks back in and attaching the papers to that.

Here is the collection of pictures that I plan to meld into one idea!

I found out those cute little white vases are from IKEA and I can buy TONS of them easily!  They’re only $2 each!  The wine bottles will be free thanks to help collected from my mom and her friends.  I’ll just need to get them, soak off the labels, and spray paint.

I’m still looking to find out where I’ll get the flowers.  Since I’ll have a florist for my bouquets, etc.  I may be able to have her order them but it could be a lot cheaper online through stores like fiftyflowers.com.

I’m looking forward to being crafty and putting it all together!  Spray painting 50 wine bottles should be fun… I’ll be sure to take pictures!

Our potential DJ was doing a wedding at our venue tonight and invited Ben and I to stop by to see him work.  It was really neat to see the place all dressed up with lights and music!  In a couple months, that will be us!

When we walked in “Love Shack” was blaring and he had everyone on the dancefloor clapping along.  He then led them all in a conga-line around the room and got 90% of the wedding guests out on the dancefloor (which is pretty darn good!).

When we got home, Ben and I started talking about our “do not play” and “must play” lists for music at the reception.  Surprisingly, we agreed on quite a few more popular songs that we just don’t want to have any part of our big day… the chicken dance, the macarena, fergilicious, etc.

Its going to be hard for me to just trust the DJ and not give him 4 hours worth of music and say – here, play this!  Hopefully, I’ll be having such a great time at the wedding and won’t notice if he accidentally plays a country song.

What I think I will do is make a list of songs for before the ceremony and between the ceremony and dancing that are more of Ben and my style and then play some pop music people will dance to for later.

What do you want to hear?  Leave a comment!

At this time last week, Ben and I were stuffing all 127 of our wedding invitations to send to you all.   The good news so far is that everyone is coming!  We’ve gotten a handful of RSVPs and everyone is in.   While I know probably everyone won’t be able to make it, it so exciting opening the mail every day and looking for the yellow postcards.  I am getting more and more excited for the big day – its less than 3 months away!

We hope to hear back from everyone else soon.  Be sure to vote online for your favor and dessert choices – we really do want to know what you think!

I met with a florist on Wednesday to talk about flowers and table centerpieces and it was fun.  She had a really good grasp of what I wanted and gave me a lot of great ideas.

I’m hoping to met with another couple florists to see what kind of ideas they have and then make a decision in the next week or so.

The picture to the right is over the arrangements the florist I met with Wednesday came up with.  Pretty cute, huh?