Josh & Kallie get married

booking online

tallhalls — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:33:45 +0000

Just a quick post to let you know you can book at the discounted rate online by following the below link:

http://www.wyndham.com/groupeventsnew/pitup_sealockhallwedding/main.wnt

Devil’s in the details

tallhalls — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:39:36 +0000

Kallie is putting the final touches on the physical invites as we speak. I’ve updated the main website with hotel information and working on getting some profiles of our wedding party up there too. We still have a bunch of details to work on the actual event schedule, but we *think* there is light at the end of the tunnel. In conjunction with all the wedding planning, there’s house planning as well. We have next weekend as a tentative painting weekend, and we plan to get the top floor painted at minimum. After that, sometime in june will be the floor weekend, where we rip up my old pink carpet (it will be a joyous day indeed!) and put in flooring. Our friends, Reed and Kate, are doing there floors, so we will most likely go help them so we learn the skills to do it with them.

We’ve got our good friends, Chris and Christian, getting married on the 30th of May, this will be the 2nd wedding this year. So many weddings to partake in, and I’m sure we’ll be looking at similarities to what we wanted to do and maybe even getting inspired…is that wrong? I hope not.

The bachelor week activities are pretty much set as well. We’ll make our way to Philly for a Billy Talent concert on July 25th, do some go cart racing, play some soccer, do an open mic, and ofcourse a night of binge video gaming. I’m definitely looking forward to that!

Face lift

tallhalls — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:21:51 +0000

We’ll keep the blog here, but I’m moving the domain name to point to our new site. It’ll be a lot more geared to the wedding and details on our events! It has a lot of integrated features like an RSVP system and directions. you can get there directly here: http://www.ewedding.com/sites/tallhalls

It’s raining it’s pouring….or maybe just showering

tallhalls — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 04:40:09 +0000

Josh and I just got back a couple days ago from a week back in California visiting my family for Easter. As I’m transitioning from one job to the next, I found myself with a few weeks off and the perfect opportunity for one last trip home before it officially counts as “vacation time.” (This is not as a big a deal for Josh who can wed, honeymoon, and still have time to spare with his 5 weeks of vacay a year!). With plane tickets at extremely reasonable prices these days, we both jumped on the idea of getting out of town. Since my next visit to Cali won’t be until the reception in November, my lovely sisters Jamie and Jessica decided a shower with all of my California girls was in order during my time at home. In short order, the put together a delightful party full friends and family! I was overwhelmed by the love and enthusiasm extended my way; nearly everyone invited showed up to help us celebrate, and on the day before Easter no less! With so much of our focus as of late on the wedding, by far one of my favorite things about the shower was that it had me thinking more about all of the joy and journey that come after that when we are actually married! All the placemats, napkins, candles, towels, and lingerie (tee hee!) has me thinking more about our home and the real life that will follow the party…mostly, I think Josh just thought it was great to get a huge stack of awesome presents without ever having to be the center of attention. He spent the afternoon of the shower hanging the guys playing baseball during the unofficially designated “Man Time.” In addition to a great shower/man time for Josh, we had a great time visiting with family. It literally was raining the first few days of our visit, but not enough to stop us from visiting Folsom Lake and the prison, daytripping into San Francisco and across the bridge to Muir Woods, and taking walks with the family around the neighborhood. By the weekend we had sunshine and warmer weather, which we took advantage of with an Easter Egg Hunt (during my shower no less!), a campfire with all the siblings and spouses (except poor Mike who was stuck working in Baltimore), and a baseball game with my big dad, Gina, Wal and Jess. I got to show Josh around Sacramento a little, which we didn’t have time for last trip, where we thoroughly enjoyed all the blooming flowers and green trees! All in all a great visit. The shower also served as a reminder that there are still lots of wedding arrangements to be made, so we dedicated today to finally getting our save the dates sent out, as well as working on other details like invitations, and centerpieces. I’ve decided that Josh is among the best fiances out there because he helped my dig through sale bins for purple ribbons and even contributed to invitation design! A special thank you to all those Hall girls for years of conditioning this man of mine.
Click here to see Jessica\'s pictures of the shower and the weekend
Here are mine, no shower pics really…I was a little busy

Aruba, Bahamas, come on pretty momma

tallhalls — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:07:36 +0000

The honeymoon is booked. Check that off our list. We’re headed to the Royal in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico for 7 nights, leaving Monday, September 7th.

Funny story, Kallie and I watched the Super Bowl with some of my close friends, the Bonnells, and Drew and Val were recently married, and Drew told me he went to Liberty Travel to book their trip. I scoffed at him. Drew, if you don’t know, was one of my role model computer geeks growing up, and to hear him say he didn’t book everything online himself was nearly blasphemy. When I tried to call him out on it, he said that he did try to do it on his own, but Liberty Travel was able to beat all of his prices and packages that he could find. I certainly doubted this, but a few days later, Kallie and I stopped in the downtown office and spoke with Robert.

Robert was awesome. I was still skeptical, trying to dodge any subconscious sales tactics or hooks. We left with some literature on destinations, some price quotes, and even some homework from Robert. We had a few emails go back and forth with questions to the point where Kallie and I just needed to make a decision. We stopped in another time a few weeks later with some more questions, and Robert remembered us right away. We didn’t immediately; Shocker, I know. We kept bringing it up in conversation between us though. We had resolved to give Robert an email after about a month of no activity, but he beat us to the punch with a friendly email saying he had walked by the University Club and thought of us and just wanted to check in. To allude to Jerry McGuire, he had me at “Hello.” I mean, after like 2 months of us telling him where we were getting married, he really cared enough to remember. Quality is all I have to say. So we made a decision that day based one some good deals Robert passed us. Since then, I think our costs have gone down by nearly 25%, just from Robert keeping an eye on things for us. I’m a new customer for life.

Time to register

tallhalls — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:04:28 +0000

Wow, it’s March and we haven’t posted in a while. We’re still doing stuff, I promise! We actually went to register at Bed, Bath, & Beyond last Monday and then Target on Friday. We’re learning a lot about each other as a result…

We’re certainly in an unusually difficult situation.

We both have lots of good stuff on our own
We’re not familiar enough with what the other person has
We’re not sure how “light” we need to be to stay “mobile” if we decide to move
We have different tastes in styles, and we haven’t lived together enough to have a style that reflects both well
We both have different tastes…

Kallie mistakes my opinion for disapproval of hers, and I mistake Kallie’s opinion as stepping all over mine. We have to constantly remind ourselves and each other that this is just stuff, not a reflection of how happy we’re not going to be in a world of constant disagreements. I need to be more sensitive to Kallie because she’s just trying to create a home for us. At least we can manage our list online now and rework it a bit. Maybe I need to let go a little and just let Kallie do what she wants to, but I just like doing things together (and getting to put in my 2 cents).

We had a premature save-the-date go out to some guests, but we’re not sure how we’re going to proceed with those now. Should we just send out the same thing to every else? Finish it, then resend it to everyone again? Or, should we just walk away from the save-the-date since everyone who is important knows when it is anyway. We’ll try not to spam you too much.

Still a lot of decisions to make and money to spend though. We’ll try to keep you (and the site) posted!

Lessons in Love and Humility

tallhalls — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:35:54 +0000

I think Josh might have mentioned before that we’ve been reading through a book Heather gave me called Sacred Marriage, as well as doing our best to read the Bible in a year (yes, we’re in Numbers now, so it’s a bit of a dry patch). The combination for planning a wedding and reading together has been awesome. And by awesome I mean it is stretching, growing, and challenging, or in more blunt language, freaking hard,but also really rewarding.

Both of us are what nice people call “natural leaders,” and what honest people call, ummmmm… “control freaks.” We lead because we know good ways to do things and we like when things run according to our plans. In planning this wedding together however, both of us are having to slowly learn how to let go. Can I just say how terrible I am at this? I honestly feel humbled daily as I realize just how very selfish I am. After 26 years of making decisions that are in my best interest, I’ve entered a whole new world in which IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT ME. I know this shouldn’t be a novel discovery. I’ve never really been the center of the universe and as a Christian, am even more aware of that. And yet, I’ve always determined the day to day elements of my life. I decide how I spend my money, where I’ll live, when I’ll move, what I’ll eat for dinner, what colors I like in my room, etcetera, etcetera, and now there is someone else in the equation; someone I love dearly.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m a bad loser. One of the most commonly told stories in my family, is one that happened when we were over for a game night at our friend’s the Lamy’s house. After a long day and getting brutalized by the other teams, I broke down into tears playing Monopoly….at 16. So yes, I was tired, and tend to cry easily when I am, but seriously? Monopoly? To this day I get harassed for it, but I think it illustrates pretty well my distaste for not being on top. Since dedicating my life to Christ, I’ve learned a lot about humility and God’s call on my live to die to myself and live in him, but I have never experienced it so consistently as I do now that I’m exploring what it really means to model a relationship after the one between Christ and the Church. I’m realizing that it’s not about me winning, or letting Josh win, but in fact about honoring, serving, and loving him above myself. When I look at a concession as not getting my way, or losing, it suddenly becomes a game, and with that there is a score, and a winner and a loser. But wait, am I not marrying this guy because I want to be on his team?

In the book Sacred Marriage, Gary Thomas launches a excellent discussion about what it means to honor one’s spouse, and it’s been on my heart since we read it this past weekend. He starts by quoting Puritan author Francis de Sales, reminding Christians to “have contempt for contempt,” and to remember that one’s partners is the ally not the enemy. As we work through the tiny details of the wedding I feel like I am constantly battling to choose loving Josh over having it my way. It’s not that showing him love and respect aren’t my desires, goodness knows when I think about things logically, I usually realize how petty I am and want to give him what will make him happy, but my gut instinct seems to be so self-seeking and self-protective. I feel like this should be kind of defeating, but as I marvel at the depth of my own sin, intertwine with to pain of being humbled is a deep joy because I recognize both God’s, and Josh’s continual grace with me. I see no other way to love Josh as he deserves, than through Christ, and am both relieved and honored that He is with me through this process. One thing Thomas says that I loved was to adopt an attitude “that our spouse has the hardest road to travel and that we miss the mark most frequently- and then act accordingly.” It has me thinking about what I can do to make live easier/better for Josh, and appreciating even more all that he does for me.

Photographer…check!

tallhalls — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:38:28 +0000

We’ve struggled a bit in deciding how much to spend for a photographer. We both agree that great pictures of the day are something we want, but also realize that after 3 years those will likely spend most of their time on a shelf, waiting for our kids to be old enough to care…so when is that, when thay are getting married? After looking through TONS of photographer listings on pittsburghwedding.com, I came across one that seemed to fit the bill, both literally and figuratively…and of course, figured it was too good to be true. Nonetheless, I sent out an email and to my delight, received a call later just a few hours later. I met up with Roger to look over his pictures and talk wedding over lunch on Friday, and the conversation flowed so freely I was there for two and a half hours! It was like having lunch with my dad or, maybe more closely my grandpa Equally important, his pictures were wonderful, so it looks like we’ll be getting a steal of a deal. Another item to check off the list.

The Dress

tallhalls — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:29:54 +0000

I was told when I put it on, I would know. Buy the one that makes you feel “like the belle of the ball”, “a princess”, “the most beautiful girl in the room,” is what everyone told me. It wasn’t until my third dress shop that I discovered the feeling they were all talking about. Being 6’2, shopping for clothes, wedding dresses included, isn’t always easy. But then I walked into The White Orchid, a local bridal shop recommended by a friend from work. After a quick explanation of sizes, height and what I was looking for, the consultant told me I needed to try on the dress on display right next to the dressing room, then went back to pull another 6 or so for me to try on. And the display dress turned out to be the one! It fits me to a T and I love it. Even better, I love that the prettiest, and most expensive article of clothing I’ll ever own was the first thing I got to charge on Josh’s Mastercard Being the victim of some credit card theft (thankfully noticed and stopped by Chase with no harm to my savings or credit score), I wasn’t able to charge it to my own card. Thank goodness a new one is in the mail since I’m sure it will get a lot of use in the coming months!

Covenant Partners

tallhalls — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:03:43 +0000

This Sunday, January 25th, 2009, Kallie and I will become covenant partners in the Open Door, and I was asked what that means. Here is how it is defined:

Open Door Covenant Partner Vows

Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, I turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world.

I affirm Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior

I will follow in the way of Jesus obeying his word and showing his love with God’s help and the help of my community.

I will be a faithful partner of this community participating in its worship, mission and practices by:

Listening: With the help of God and one another we will seek to practice listening by setting aside focused time to be attentive to and aware of God’s still, small voice each week. We will follow Jesus’ example of seeking time alone with God and trust God’s promise to meet us when we come to Him.

Learning: With the help of God and one another we will seek to grow in the wisdom, knowledge and experience of Christ through scripture and life each week. We will seek to learn through God’s Word, which is living and active and useful for shaping and molding us. We will seek to take on Jesus’ yoke and learn from him because he is gentle and humble at heart.

Eating: With the help of God and one another we will seek to follow Jesus in eating with friends and strangers each week. At the table we will seek to create places of conversation, community, trust and hospitality where Christ works in and through us.

Encouraging: With the help of God and one another we will find intentional ways to encourage people through words, gifts or actions each week. We will seek to pass on God’s encouragement to others through tangible acts of kindness, empowerment, lending courage, and giving strength as God has done for us.

Giving: With the help of God and one another we will look for regular and spontaneous ways to give away our time, money, skills and passions to others and the world. We will strive to follow the way of Jesus by humbling ourselves and giving to neighbors, strangers and other communities, to serve them and grow the Kingdom of God.