Nick ‘n’ Amy

We only had space on the RSVP cards to write the bare minimum (pork, salmon, vegetarian, or kids meal), so I wanted to give a further explanation of your meal options here.

Pork: Sauteed Pork Medallions with Apple Brandy Sauce with Pinenut & Dried Fruit Couscous and Fresh Green Beans

Salmon: Seared Atlantic Salmon Filet in a Lemon-Chive Cream with Pinenut & Dried Fruit Couscous and Fresh Green Beans

Veggie: Wild Mushroom Risotto with Fresh Spinach, Tomatoes, Basil and Parmignana-Reggiano

Kids: Chicken Tenders with Corn and Roasted Potatoes

We hope those sound good to you!

-Amy

One of the more difficult things for us in planning this wedding has been people not getting back to us. It’s happened on a lot of issues, sometimes the wait time is only a few days, others it’s been months.

The prime example: our caterer. If you’ve planned a wedding, you know this is the bulk of the money you’ll spend - upwards to half of the budget. That said, Amy and I have been shockingly surprised at how difficult it’s been to get a response, to find anyone that wants to take all that money.

We met with a caterer we really liked back in January, he promised a menu in the next few days. Queue two week’s time, Amy calls and asks about it. Several more phone calls and some response on their end and two more weeks, we finally had a menu, but no pricing. Excited about the menu we asked for pricing and to continue the process to sign a contract with them. By this point in the story, March has rolled around and we were well on our way to a three month dance with the caterer, phone calls about pricing and no response, emails about pricing and no response. More phone calls, more emails. Maybe they’re just washing their hair every time I call.

Not wanting to be stood up for the big date, a month ago I got in touch with our back-up plan. Surprisingly they are allowing for much of the flexibility and artistic flair we desired - what drew us to the first caterer. Two weeks after meeting with this caterer we had a menu and detailed pricing breakdown - of which Amy and I plan to comb over tomorrow. With any luck this catering thing will be laid to rest along with the resulting stress and constant dull rejection very soon.

~ nick

Hey folks, Amy here.

I know a lot of you will be traveling from out-of-state and thought I’d give you some helpful considerations for saving money/time getting here.

In the “The Area” page under “Our Wedding”, you can find a link to Willard Airport.  That is the airport here in Champaign.  It’s small and more expensive than the bigger airports further away, but more convenient.  Your best bets for flying in are the Indianapolis Airport or flying into Chicago.  Thoughts there?  Unless you’re planning on seeing the sites in Chicago, flying into Indianapolis tends to not only be cheaper, but it’s only a two hour drive (rather than 3) to Champaign and the traffic isn’t as scary.  My suggestion would be to check out kayak.com and compare prices into Chicago, Indy, and Champaign.  You can also check Bloomington (about an hour away) but they tend to be as pricey as flying direct into Champaign.  I’ve found kayak to provide better deals than those found on Expedia or Priceline and is somewhat easier to navigate.

In summary: Check out kayak.com and compare Willard (Champaign), Indianapolis, Chicago, and Bloomington.

I know figuring out ticketing and travel can be a bit of a pain, so best of luck!  We look forward to seeing you all in August!

Well after a lot of time with photo software, massaging CSS, HTML, and PHP, it’s finally here.

I moved the site to the production URL this morning.

Enjoy!

~ nick

Well we’ve been engaged for almost 7 months at this point with just 6 to go. A lot of the larger details are falling into place: Ceremony Venue, Reception Venue, Photographer, Officiant, Wedding Party, Bridesmaid Dresses and Bride’s Dress, etc.

While Amy plugs away at contacting caterors and discusses colors with me, I’ve been using my nerdary to create this site.

We invite you to keep up with us here as the wedding nears. We can’t promise we will post often (see our personal blogs as an example of post frequency).

~ nick