Wedding day

Not the wedding day, but earlier this week the fiance and I took a day off from work and accomplished the following:

1.)  Obtained our marriage license from the Chicago City Clerk.  All things considered, this was much less painful than we imagined.  I've spent hours in that same City Clerk's office before trying to get a copy of a birth certificate or passport or something, so I was expecting a long wait, a lot of form-filling and general unpleasantness.  But I think we were out of there in 10 minutes, and the woman helping us was nice.

2.)  Picked our wedding cake.  Our Blackstone Hotel reception includes a cake from Take the Cake, which I'm even now more excited about since we met with Mary Winslow.  I'll save the details for the post-wedding vendor reviews, but will just say if I had to grade Take the Cake now it would be an A+!  

3.)  Purchased our wedding bands.  We went back to the jeweler that the fiance worked with (secretly) to custom design my engagement ring.  Again, will save the details for review time, but really nice people to work with and produce some beautiful jewelry.  

4.)  Food tasting at the Blackstone.  We asked two friends to accompany us to our tasting, one for her food allergy knowledge and tendency to voice her opinions (and I mean that in the most loving way :) and the other chosen by the fiance for another guy's perspective.  It took us about three hours, but we settled on five passed hors d'oeuvres and the four entrees from which our guests will choose.  

It was a long day, and at the end of it I was completely full and didn't think I'd be able to eat again for a few days (of course I was able to eat two pieces of pizza for lunch the next day just fine, thank you!).  Totally well worth it, and now I can't believe how fast the real wedding day is approaching.