We're Back!

We made it home safely from our honeymoon extravaganza. We nearly ran into Santa on our way home Christmas Eve. Luckily our pilot was experienced at dodging reindeer from past experiences.

Here is a picture from our honeymoon. Don't worry, It is G rated.

1 MORE DAY!

16 hours and 45 minutes till I am married! How cool is that? I never thought that this day would come but I guess it is coming quicker than I thought.

Things are going smoothly so far. We have our rehearsal dinner tonight and that should be a great time had by all.

I picked up my tux yesterday and, Dang I look hot it in. Hopefully it still fits tomorrow.

This will be my last post until after the honeymoon. Hopefully I survive.

Bachelor Party

The Bachelor Party was a success. No one went to jail and no one froze to death at the game. Thanks for everyone who made it to this event and sharing a special day with me. It was awesome.

Temple Endowments

Joo Lin and I had a wonderful time at the temple this past Saturday. It was an amazing session at the temple and we thank everyone who made it out to the temple to be with us on this special day. Thanks!

5 days and 4 hours and 59 minutes!!!

Reception

The wedding reception will be at 6 pm on Saturday, December 17th. We will be having the ring ceremony at 6:15 pm and we will be eating shortly after that. If you need directions please go to the wedding website (www.kelleyandjoolinforever.com).

We are also registered at the following places. Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Target. Just put in our names at the stores or you can access the the registrys at the website that was mentioned above.

Temple Sealing

Just a reminder that we are getting sealed next saturday (December 17th) at noon at the Portland Temple. If you haven't RSVPed for that event you still have time to do so. Go to the wedding website, www.kelleyandjoolinforever.com or email me at december17@kelleyandjoolinforever.com if you would like to attend this portion of our wedding.

TEMPLE

Joo Lin and I are going to the temple today to get our endowments!!!! What a huge step to getting married that we are taking. One more week until the big day!

Joo Lin's Bridal Shower

Joo Lin had her last bridal shower on Friday. She had a great turn out as 20 or so people showed up for it. She would love to thank everyone that showed up. Special thanks to Dori for making her look like a cheap hooker.

Marriage License

Joo Lin and I got our marriage license yesterday. It looks like they will allow us to get married now. Lucky us!

Marriage License

Joo Lin and I are getting our marriage license on Friday. Well, we are turning in the paper work for the license. It should take three business days to get the actual license. I guess there is no turning back after this. :)

Almost December

It's almost December and that means that I will be getting married shortly. 16 days and 21 hours and 35 minutes according to my count.

Plans for the wedding are going well. We are figuring out the logistics of the reception and ring ceremony.

Plans for the Bachelor party are going well. I purchased eight tickets yesterday and these are the people that will be attending.

James Butts
Ryan Andrews
Scott Morris
Shane McDaniel
Greg Knips
Josh Woodall
Brian Bullard

It should be a wild and crazy time but don't tell Joo Lin that.

Also Joo Lin is having her last Bridal Shower this Friday.

Joo Lin Quiz

There is a Joo Lin quiz on the website. Check it out to see how well you know Joo Lin.

Fine China

Joo Lin and I went to Bed Bath and Beyond yesterday and picked out our China that we liked. You can go to the gift registry and check it out if you like. Not sure if people still buy this for people but we thought that we would register for it anyway.

First RSVP

We got our first RSVP yesterday from our group of people that we sent out invitations to. How exciting is that? Very exciting if you ask me. Hopefully they keep flowing in.

Invitations Mailed

We mailed the first batch of invitations today. So people should be getting them within the next few days or so. I am excited for everyone to get them. I think they turned out really nice.

We are close to running out of invitations so we are getting some more printed out. That will put the number at close to 250 invitaitons.

Thanks again to Dale for robbing Fred Meyers and getting us cheap stamps with the coupon books. I am not sure what we are going to do with 20 $1.50 off dog food coupons. Maybe we will send them with the Thank You cards after the wedding.

Wedding Website Update

The wedding website is almost 100% complete. Joo Lin and I updated a view of the remaining links to it and we added a special thank you section to it. We started working on the the family/friend section and that is almost complete. Joo Lin needs to write up stuff about her family and then it should be finished. I need to write up some stuff on the sisters too. I think there are few small pages to finish too but we want to have it complete shortly after we send out the invitations.

Congratulations Dale!!!

Congratulations Dale for finally figuring out how to get on to the wedding website. He even RSVP'ed to the wedding. So far we have four of them and we havent even sent out the invitations yet.

Target Gift Registry

We completed registering at Target on Saturday. We went a little over board but I think we covered a lot of our basic items. It took over two hours to complete and by the time we were done we added over 100 items to it. So if you don't have any clue what to get us for our wedding presents, go to Target or their website and you should have plenty of options.

Invitations

We are getting our invitations a few days later than what we expected. We are going to get them on Tuesday and hopefully we can get our first batch sent out Wednesday. We still need to get tissue paper for them since we are adding our picture in them.

We had some problems with our pictures at Costco so we had to resubmit our order today. They should be ready tomorrow evening, all 200 of them. Hopefully we send out 200 invitations so that we don't have left overs. If we do have left overs, they will make nice christmas presents.

Bachelor Party

I have created a website with some information about my bachelor party. I am trying to get a rough count of who is going so that we can get seats together.

http://oregonstate.edu/~riceja/BachelorParty/bachelor.html

I am planning on celebrating at the Seahawks - 49ers football game on December 11th. It should be fun. Tentatively we are going to drive up Saturday afternoon/night and I am hoping that we can crash at a friends house up there. We will see if that works out and I will keep everyone posted.

Special Thank You's

I was thinking about adding a Special Thank You section to the wedding website. A lot of people have been helping us out with the wedding and I think it would be tacky to not show our apperciation to each of them. So I think by having a link on the website will help accomplish this feat to show our gratitude.

Photo Shoot

Joo Lin and I had a photo shoot tonight. We had to deal with the fact that it gets dark at 5:30 in the evening now so the majority of the pictures were indoors. We did venture outside for a little bit an got some nice pictures. One of our friends is helping us out and she is doing our wedding for free and she said that she would take engagement photos of us too. Thanks Sonny!

It was hard during the photo shoot because all I wanted to do was kiss Joo Lin but she thinks it is tacky to be doing that in your engagement photo but I got a few in when she wasn't paying attention though. Lucky me.

We might post a few pictures from it depending on what they look like. I will keep you posted though.

100th Visitor

In a little over a week we have had over 100 visitors to the webpage. My goal is to have it over 1,000 by the time of the wedding. If we don't get that high, Joo Lin will be sad! Don't make Joo Lin sad!

Wedding Sealing

Here our the times for the certain temple related events.

December 10th -- 1 pm -- Endowments
December 17th -- noon -- Sealing

If you would like to come please email me back at J.Kelley.Rice@gmail.com or RSVP through the website for those events. Currently, I do not have the endowments session as a RSVP but I will within the next couple of days.

Canby Cougars Football

Congratulations to Tdawg and Evan for winning their medal game on saturday 19-0.

Invitations Update

We dropped off our invitations today with our friend that is going to be printing them for us. We picked up another box from the Paperzone this weekend. We have a total of 200 that are getting printed out. That is crazy. We know that we wont have that many people at the reception but we know that we have to send them off to all of our friends and family friends.

We saved some extra money at the Paperzone store this weekend too. We went to pick up one more box of them but we ended up buying two more boxes. They were having a sale and if you bought this plastic bag for $3 and filled it up with stuff you would save an extra 20 percent off the total. So we are planning on taking back two boxes to the store in Salem. So to make a long story short we are getting a box of invitation card stock for free. Saving money is great!

We are planning on getting the printed invitations back on Thursday and we are planning on sending out the first batch of invitations out on Saturday. So people should be getting them next week.

We are also planning on adding a picture to the invitation too. We weren't going to do it at first but Joo Lin really wants to do so. What Joo Lin wants, Joo Lin gets. We are having a friend of ours take some nice photos of us this coming week and then we are going to get those developed and printed out by Thursday or Friday.

So we have a busy week ahead of us. It should be fun though.

Invitation Preview...NOT

We have decided that everyone will have to wait to see what the invitations will look like once they get them in the mail. SORRY!

Atleast you should have something to look forward to in the next couple of weeks.

Wedding Website

The official Kelley and Joo Lin wedding website is now online. To visit this website please go to the following link

http://www.KelleyandJooLinForever.com

ENJOY!

Congratulations Mommy!!!

For some odd reason my mother wasn't able to view the wedding blog before but now she can!!!

I am really excited that she can see this now even though she still has no clue what a blog is.

HI MOM, I LOVE YOU!

Gift Registries

Joo Lin and I are now registered at Target and Bed Bath and Beyond. We think that these will be the only two places that we will be registered but if we add something else we will keep you posted. We hit up Bed Bath and Beyond pretty good but we weren't quite sure what we were suppose to do at Target. Are we suppose to register for the same sort of stuff at both or should we just have bedding and stuff like that at one and then kitchen stuff at the other??? It was confusing and hopefully we will get that worked out and make the approiate changes.

I will be posting the web links to access the registry's online once they are up and running. It takes a day or two to get them up and running online.

Invitations

We were talking with one of our friends yesterday and as a wedding present they are going to print out our wedding invitations. So the plan for invitations is to get what we want on them figured out and then we are going to drop them off next weekend while we are up in Portland and then it should take two days to have them all printed. This is exciting for us because we are getting to the point were we are trying to safe money and every bit helps.

B of M challenge

As many of you know, the President of our church (President Gordon B. Hinckley) has challenged us to complete the Book of Mormon by the end of this year.

Joo Lin and I are excited to say that we are attempting to complete this task together. Joo Lin has calculated that we need to read atleast seven pages a night to be able to complete it by the end of this year.

This is something that we know will greatly impact our lives and we believe that we will be blessed when we do read the Book of Mormon.

Rumor has it...

...that Kelley no longer work at the Target DC. Well, this is correct.

I had an opportunity for another position and I decided that it would be best to not pass it up. Although having that I can drive a fork lift on my resume is impressive, I thought that I would gain more experience at this new position.

They are paying me the same, if not more. We have not negotiated the terms of the deal yet. Plus I will have my weekends off to attend OSU football games and to hang out with Joo Lin more. That way she won't feel to stressed come the wedding. They are also working around my school schedule which makes it even better. Oh, I don't have to work the graveyard shift either. And I don't have to worry about getting hurt as often. The list of Target injuries/sorenesses/aches will stop growing too.

I started on Wednesday and so far I like it. I have a great mentor who is teaching me a lot of information. Hopefully it won't be an overload of new stuff on top of schooling.

The only bad part about this new job is that I won't be as active as I was with Target. I have dropped over two pant sizes while working their and I almost have the gut completely gone. I will have to make an extra effort to go work out now which has always been tough but I plan on keeping the weight off.

The best part of this new position is that I am working with Joo Lin again. FOR REAL!!! I accepted a position to be an administrative assistant with the Clair Company. I have goals of becoming their IT dude on top of that.

I will keep you posted on how the training goes.

Invitations Card Stock

We bought our invitation card stock tonight from the Paper Zone. I think everyone will like them. They are very simple but very elegant. They have hearts around the borders. I will scan a sample blank one to show everyone what they look like before we take them in to get printed.

The reason we are doing the blank cards and printing them is because we are attempting to be thrifty. Hopefully that works outs. We are finding that everything is more expensive than we thought and any way to save a penny will help.

Congrats Tdawg

Rumor has it that Tdawg (Trevin) intercepted the football in last weeks football game and ran it back for a Touchdown!!! Congratulations Tdawg, you are a stud!

Also, great job Trevin and Amanda on your walk-athon! I am glad that we didn't pledge per lap.

Major Planning Session

Joo Lin and I are having a major wedding planning session tomorrow (Thursday) night. We are hoping to get some of the following items accomplished.

Invitations
Website
Wedding Cake
Wedding day schedule
Day before Wedding schedule
Updated Budget
Bachelor Party Day planned

This is all that I can think of. If you talk to us within the next couple of days please ask us how we are doing to make sure we aren't slacking off.

Update

Sorry for not posting any updates lately. Things have been chaotic with work and school the past few weeks. I am also finally coming down from the birthday festivities too.

Currently we are working on the website for the wedding. I think you will all like it and I will post the URL link to it shortly. We need to get it up to our standard before we post it out.

We are also working on the invitations. We realize that we need to get these out ASAP so everyone can start planning for it.

That is it for now. 65 DAYS!!!!

First Wedding Present

We got our first wedding present today (10/5/2005). It was from Myrna Epperson, not sure what it is but as soon as my mother leaves I will find out. She is sitting next to me while I type this. She just hit me and told me that I couldn't open it until after the wedding.

Kelley's Bday

Happy Birthday Kelley! 28 years old and still kicking!

New Car

Here are some pictures of the new car. Enjoy

Wedding Presents

I saw this article on MSN and that that it was funny so I though that I would share it with everyone.

Worst Wedding Gifts Ever

Enjoy!

Problems with AOL users

It seems like people that are using AOL can not view the wedding blog. I am not sure why this is. I will see if I can check out AOL's website to see if there is anything that I can do.

For you AOL users, I am sorry that you have AOL.

New member to the family

Joo Lin and I have a new family member that we would like to introduce to everyone. The name is still up in the air but here is a picture of her.She is a bouncing baby 2005 Honda Hybrid Civic.

Tuxedo

I went to Mr Formal yesterday and picked out the tuxedo that I will be wearing. It's really pimp! If I can find a picture of what it looks like I will try to post it.

Joo Lin's Dress

Joo Lin got notification that her dress is at the store in Portland. We have heard to many stories of wedding dress mishaps lately, mainly stores going out of business and the bride-to-be losing out on her dress because of this. So we are extermely happy this did not happen to us.

I can't wait to see it. I have been trying to be sneaky about finding out what it looks like but I haven't been to successful at that. I guess I will have to wait till December 17th.

2473 SW Ghetto

I turned in the keys the old apartment on Tuesday. Oh the memories that I have of that place. The following is a recap of some of the events that took place while I lived there from the past 2 and a half years.

Starting over and starting sober.
Becoming active in church.
Starting to date Joo Lin.
Spencer Wilberger's move in
Attending OSU again.
My first PS2.
The great dishwasher flood of 2003.
The great ice storm of 2004.
The great flood of 2004 (great ice storm of 2004).
Toilets overflowing and causing the great flood of 2004 part 2.
Four different apartment managers.
Attempting to grow tomatoes.
Spencer Wilberger's move out.
Brooke Wilberger abduction.
Two neighbors skipping town during the middle of the night.
January 1st 2005 proposal to Joo Lin at Silver Creek Falls.
Dan Dodge and spider solitare.
Dan Dodge skanking on the couch.
The free TV.
Ticor Title.
COSINe job.
The potato incident and the 2000 fruit flies.
Target DC job.

The great ice storm of 2004 is now a distant memory and I am hoping that the new apartment brings many good memories that I will laugh about in the near future.

Joo Lin speaks out

Hi everyone - I'm finally making an appearance :) Today I have been working on my portion of the guest list. Who knew I know so many people? They're not all going on the list, but I am still tracking down addresses.

I am very excited for Kelley's new apartment. It has so much potential and I think Kelley loves it, too. Plus he can walk me home as in the old days! We're just finishing up the cleaning and then the move will be complete... besides, as he mentioned, unpacking and organizing.

I love Kelley and I am so excited that we're getting married! I also appreciate the support and thoughts from everyone. Peace out.

Move In Complete

The move to the new apartment was a great success. The apartment is coming together quite nicely but we still have a lot of boxes that I need to go through and put away. Hopefully that will be done this week some time. We had our first guests over and they really liked the apartment. Mindee gave it a thumbs up to liking the apartment even though she wasnt able to move around that well in it. Ruth liked it too. We cant wait until we are married to have sleep overs with her and the kids. Hopefully the pool will be done soon so that the kids can enjoy that too.

I really like the apartment a lot and I believe that it is a step up from the ghetto apartment that I was in before. I just hope that the ice cream lady/husband don't roam this neighborhood as often as they did the old one. Keep your fingers cross.

I bought our first accessory for our apartment today. I order a dance mat for the PS2 so that Joo Lin and I can do DDR (dance dance revolution) anytime we want. I hear that it is a great form of exercise and hopefully it will keep us fit and it won't break within the first few weeks that we have it. I will keep you posted on that.

Posting Comments

Posting comments without registering is now possible.

What is a blog?

A few people have been asking me what a blog is and to be perfectly honest with you, I don't really know what it is. The way that I am using it, is as a forum/journal of what is happening in the progress of our wedding. I hope that clears it up a bit.

I also had a few questions about how to post comments to what we write and from my understanding is that you have to be registered with blogspot (aka blogger). It is free and I will be looking into seeing if I can set it up where you don't have to be registered. I will keep you posted and keep checking back to see updates on the wedding plans.

Kelley

Invitations

Here is an update from Ron, our caterer. We are planning on saving money by having him print out our invitations. We have not picked out a card stock yet but we should have that done with the next couple of weeks. The invitations, that we saw, were really nicely done so that is why we decided we would go with him and save some money that way.

"Invitations, vary depending on the stock you choose. Figure roughly $2.00 per invitation unless you get really fancy with the stock."

Menu

After about a month of having our caterer picked out we finally have our menu. This is what we are planning on serving at our reception; Chicken Primavera, Greek Salad, Sauteed Vegetable Medley, Vegetable/relish platter, and a fruit and cheese tray. Hopefully this doesn't clash.

99 Days

The reason behind this blog is to discuss the wedding plans for Joo Lin Stephens and Kelley Rice. I am Kelley and I am excited to say that I will be getting married to a beautiful young lady on December 17th, 2005.

Today I have to wait only 99 more days until I begin something that I thought would never happen, an eternal companionship.

I Love Joo Lin and I can't wait to be married to her.