First Married Date Night :)

Posted in Uncategorized by Chocolate Covered Race Medals

Success.

To many more date nights to come :).

13Sep2013

How Our Wedding Compared: Knot Style

Posted in survey, wedding by Chocolate Covered Race Medals

I hope you guys don’t mind that I’m still talking about the wedding, because to be honest with you guys. . . I still get all geeky talking about it.

I mean how AWESOME does it sound to say “my husband.”

I still find myself caught off guard sometimes when I catch a glimps of Zach’s ring. . . and have moments where I just feel this overwhelming happiness. It’s such a cool thing.

I want to hold onto this feeling forever. . . and promise to do everything in my power to do just that :).

I keep wanting to do a review of the big day and do a highlight post, but to be completely honest I feel like I am still processing the whole event. So hold tight a little longer for me and I’ll have it for ya soon! Hopefully you aren’t sick of me and the wedding by then :).

But, that doesn’t mean I still don’t want to talk wedding 🙂

This afternoon I was doing a little internets stalkin’ and came across an interesting article on TheKnot.

Read the article here

The article is a review of a survey conducted of more than 17500 brides during the 2012 year. It addresses everything wedding, my favorites including:

budget
age
length of engagement
guest counts
honeymoon
wedding party size
costs for specific elements (think flowers, dress, venue, etc)
most popular time of year to get married

The list goes on and on.

Having just gotten married last week, it was fascinating for me to go through these statistics and see where Zach and I feel within them for our big day.

Lets talk numbers 🙂

Average Wedding Budget: $28,427 (excludes honeymoon)

Out of respect to our families I don’t feel comfortable talking about our specific budget — but this number surprised me.

Average Marrying Age: Bride, 29; Groom, 31

Zach and I are 27 and 28 respectfully, so we fall just under that. With that said, I actually think late 20’s early 30’s do seem to be the PERFECT time frame for such a huge life choice though.

Average Number of Guests: 139

I believe our number was right around 85 for our big day. We planned for anything UP to 125, but never thought we’d get there. To be honest, I can’t imagine our wedding being any larger. I recognize that it was destination for most of our family and friends, so pulling out 80+ people made Zach and I feel very honored. While we may have only had 85 people, it felt like we had 200. There was so much love and energy the entire night. I get chills thinking about it. . .

Average Number of Bridesmaids: 4 to 5
Average Number of Groomsmen: 4 to 5

Zach had 4 groomsman, including his brother who was also the officiant, and I had three bridesmaids. For me, it was 3, or like 8 or 10. In the end, we decided to only have CLOSEST family and friends, and just be sure to include everyone else in as many of the festivities as possible. Being in a wedding is a lot of work, and we also recognized that.

Average Length of Engagement: 14 months

We were right around there at 15 months. It would have likely been shorter if we didn’t have a huge move across the country in between there, but we actually ended up really enjoying the extra time. Gave us the opportunity to enjoy being engaged.

Popular Wedding Colors: Blue (33%), Purple (26%), Green (23%), Metallics (23%)

Our colors were navy and coral (leave it to us to be so specific). The colors worked beautifully together and I can’t wait to show you all with the professional pictures 🙂 The room was AMAZING.

Percentage of Destination Weddings: 24%

This surprised me. Zach and I’s wedding wasn’t destination for us, but it was for about 80% of our guests, so I think we fall into that category in a way.

Kind of fun, right?

The article also talks about some trends in weddings that were found, a few of which Zach and I fell right into.

YEAR OF THE GUEST. Brides are concentrating on creating an experience for guests

Zach and I wanted our wedding to be the best night of our lives, but also were VERY cognizant of all the time and effort our loved ones had put into our relationship and wedding. We absolutely spent the MOST of our budget on things that would enhance the experience for our guests, and less on things for ourselves (like a wedding dress that cost under 1000).

LESS-FORMAL STYLE. Casual and fun weddings grow

Hello suits for the groom and groomsman! Flowy dresses for our bridesmaids, and a fun dress for myself as bride. We were all about practicality and comfort! And I must say, I think we all looked pretty damn good 🙂

WEDDINGS LESS RELIGIOUS. Number of weddings taking place in religious institutions declining.

Our wedding ceremony, cocktail, and reception all took place at Boettcher Mansion. It was important to us that we found a place that represented the two of us as a couple for our ceremony, and that meant mountains. We did NOT want our guests to have to do a lot of mountain traveling, so we knew we wanted it all in one, beautiful, place!

SAVING THE DATE. More couples opting for Save-the-Dates

It wasn’t until recently that I realized Save The Dates are a new thing! We sent out ours about 6 months before the big day, knowing most of our guests would be traveling. I thought it was just a part of the wedding planning process.

OK — enough wedding talk for one post. Definitely check out the article if you find this interesting like I do. There is SO much more than I even mentioned here.

Oh man I love being married 🙂

13Sep2013

Another Rainy (Fri)Day

Posted in Work out roundup, workouts for the day by Chocolate Covered Race Medals

Good Morning and Happy Friday all 🙂

Oh sweet lord. . . how hysterical/adorable is that?

Unfortunately I was called into work as normal today, so no more extended vacation for this girl.

But honestly, can I complain? NO. It’s Friday :).

It’s still raining pretty consistently here in the Denver area and probably will be through tomorrow. Thankfully, seems like we should be back to much more normal weather patterns of sun and 80’s.

I got a text from my boss around 645 am letting us know that we were opening as normal (Hello cruel joke. I TOTALLY thought that as the text I had been waiting for, like total snow day moment…then it just said come on in! BOOO)

Since I was now jolted awake, I was pretty aware of my sore legs and knew that going back to bed was unnecessary. So. . . I got myself out of bed and dedicated myself to 20 minutes slow on the treadmill to loosen up my legs for a long run tomorrow.

“Workout for the Day” 20 minutes/ 2 + miles on the treadmill

I honestly did feel better after this quick run and was thankful I crawled out of bed when all was said and done. This is the first time I’ve used this strategy of a very short run on a rest day, so I’ll let you all know tomorrow how it goes!

Fun Food/Picture Review of the Week

So Friday’s I normally do my workout and fun food recaps…but this week has been quite abnormal you could say :). With the wedding I never made a workout schedule, or any schedule for that matter. BUT my workouts looked like this for the week:

Saturday 9/7 – 4 mile run in Boulder
Sunday 9/8 – Wedding Rest
Monday 9/9 – 8.3 mile Hike
Tuesday 9/10 – 4.25 mile run + 20 weights
Wednesday 9/11 – 60 minutes total spinning + 30 minutes weights
Thursday 9/12 – 75 minute vinyasa yoga class and 4 mile run with mile repeats
Friday 9/13 – 20 minute 2 + mile treadmill run

Not to shabby . . . but please know that I am making up for it in cake and sugar.

And of course, some pictures of my favorite grub of the week 🙂

The wedding cake that I have been eating for 4 days straight. Yes. Who says cake isn’t a balanced food group?

The chicken ceaser salad and wine that I had Thursday before the wedding. Honestly I was so stressed and STARVING by this point, it was probably the best meal I’ve ever had. Thank you DiCiccios in Arvada, CO!