It seems like Ron and I got engaged just last week—I can’t believe it’s been seven months already! We’re enjoying living together, and I’ve been settling into my new job as an account executive at an advertising/marketing agency just outside of Philadelphia.

With the move to Philly, I haven’t had much time for wedding planning, but the good news is that two girls on my account team at work just got engaged—one two weeks ago, the other this past weekend. They both have gorgeous rings that are so sparkly I can hardly concentrate on work. Because you already know how much I love talking about weddings, these two engagements have started to provide for a lot of fun conversations (in between important meetings and projects, of course).

Since Ron Burgundy and I have been engaged for six months, we decided it was time for us to live in the same city. I was sad to leave Washington, but excited to finally be with Ron in Philadelphia (and also to watch him on the news, which makes me giggle). I can’t stay away from DC for too long, though—I’ve already been back twice in two weeks. And I’ll be back many more times before the wedding for food tastings, dress fittings, the bridal shower, etc. So even though I’ve moved, it won’t really feel like I’m gone.

Ron and I drove down to DC last weekend for the wedding of our very good friends, Jessica and Matt. Jessica and I have been friends for 13 years—half our lives! We met in middle school and then went to Madeira together for high school. I was thrilled to be her maid of honor.

On Sundays in fall, a lot of people think football (my fiancé included). But now I think weddings. So one Sunday afternoon last month, my mom and I decided to meet at Tysons for a day of wedding research. Our primary goal was to check out invitations at the Crane & Company store, but once we got there we of course got distracted and wandered around the mall. We ended up in the DeBeers store, where I proceeded to try on almost every wedding band they had (for fun, of course—just to get some ideas).

When we did manage to make it to the Crane store, we met with a sales associate, Marisa, who also happened to be engaged. We started by looking through three large sample books.

Eleni, right, with her maid of honor, Deborah.

This week’s post is going to be a random assortment of wedding planning. I’ve been doing some things here and there, so let’s get right to it!

First, Ron and I finished our registry at Crate & Barrel. I have to say that we actually found the whole experience to be much more user-friendly than Bloomingdale’s. Adding and subtracting items from our registry list is incredibly easy on the Crate & Barrel Web site, and after we were done in the store, they gave us a cute heart-shaped glass bowl!

Second, I’ve been shopping around for a veil. I’d tried one on in August when I actually bought my dress, but I wasn’t really focused on it and figured I’d just look later because I have plenty of time. I’m pretty anal-retentive (no surprise there), so I wanted to be able to try on my dress while choosing a veil versus just buying one on its own.

Judging by some comments from my post last week, I think I need to make sure everyone understands that, yes, of course I’m excited to marry Ron Burgundy and celebrate our love with all of our family and friends. I just thought that people would rather read about dresses, flowers, and registering more than they’d want to read about how in love Ron and I are.

I surely hope people can see that I exaggerate somewhat for story value (it’s a blog, after all!), and I’m just trying to put a bit of humor into my writing. Because this is a wedding blog, I figured it’d be more fun to write about all the stuff you have to do to plan a wedding. I think it’d be pretty hard to talk about planning a wedding without mentioning any of the material things that go along with it! But let’s skip all that this week and talk about how much I love Ron Burgundy.

It finally happened: Ron Burgundy and I registered! Remember how I said trying on wedding dresses was the most fun ever? I may have spoken too soon. Registering was so much fun. It’s like shopping, except even better because you can choose the things you want and other people will buy them for you!

I wanted to make sure we registered before the save-the-date cards were sent, so Ron and I went to Bloomingdale’s last week. We will also register at Crate & Barrel, but we decided to start at Bloomie’s. We met with Judy, the registry specialist, who helped us with the paperwork (free wedding magazines and Bloomie’s coupons? Yes, please!) and then walked us through the dining, kitchen, bed-and-bath, and home-decor areas.

Eleni and Ron at their favorite restaurant, Lauriol Plaza.

About a month after Ron and I got engaged, I bought him a book called The Groom’s Game Plan. This handy little guide gives the groom sound wedding-planning advice, such as “Be agreeable and don’t argue with your fiancée about the details.” Some men would be annoyed at such a gift, but Ron is patient with me, so he said thank you and read the book as voraciously as he would, say, a Stephen Ambrose historical work.

After we got engaged, Ron and I had agreed that he would plan the honeymoon. The groom’s guide also suggested that planning the honeymoon is a good way to include the groom-to-be in wedding planning. This was fine by me because Ron and I have the exact same opinion when it comes to vacations—they should be lazy and on the beach with lots of cocktails and good food. More to come on this in a later post.

Ron and I also agreed that he should be in charge of finding a rehearsal-dinner site, which made sense because Ron’s parents will be paying for the dinner. About four months ago, Ron started doing research on restaurants where we could have our rehearsal dinner. Four months later, we still have no restaurant.