Friday, November 2, was our 5 year dating anniversary and also brought us exactly 1 year until the wedding!

Suddenly my Inbox is full of countdown emails from various wedding websites and we can finally say we’re getting married in less than a year!

For our actual anniversary we went to the local Greek Food Festival but didn’t stay too long–last year we closed it down and then came home with friends to play cards until 3am–this time we were home in jammies before 10pm! Then, Saturday night we had a slightly more “proper” anniversary dinner at Buca di Beppo, which recently opened in the mall, followed by going into every jewelry shop for some impromptu wedding band shopping.

Todd went in thinking he wanted a brushed-and-shiny two-tone look, only to find he liked the look of highly polished Tungsten Carbide band.

Tungsten Carbide Band via Kay Jewelers

And I’m still set on an open-work band with plenty of sparkle.

Sterling Silver & Diamond Band via Kay Jewelers

Not necessarily that ring, but something along those lines. We decided a while ago that, rather than getting a ring custom-made to fit around my engagement setting, I’d get stand-alone ring and wear my engagement ring on my right hand. At first I was against the idea, but then had so many problems with the setting that not wearing it every day seemed like a not bad thing. And, hey, it’s more shiny things for me and I’m not going to fight that!

Ring shopping was a nice way to walk-off dinner but it wasn’t all fun and games. We went into one of those all-but pawn shop jewelry stores, just on a lark, and I regretted it immediately. There was a very wrong feeling in that place and we made a polite circuit of the cases and got the hell out of there. Not that I really expected my dream ring to be in there, but a bride on a budget needs to examine all options.

One more thing I decided, with a year left to go, was to scrapbook this last year of wedding planning, Project Life-style. This will not only get me to take more photos of us and our wedding activities over the next year (something we’ve been really bad about, so far), it’ll also be nice to have a definite reason to scrapbook again. It’s a hobby from way-back for me, but now I do it digitally.

The Cover page to our Project: Wedding Album!