Xapa to the World

Tag: Getting Married

I’m getting married June 1st, 2013! These are my posts on the prep and process.

  • Getting Married: 39 Weeks – The Dress

    Preface: The dresses you are about to witness are not, I repeat, are not THE dress that was purchased for the wedding. No spoilers here!

    Yes, that is what I did today: shopped for my wedding dress. Let me preface that I have not really ever spent my time daydreaming what I would wear for my wedding one day. I admit that about a month before Matt proposed, I thought that I should probably get an idea of what kind of gown I should like. I may have perused some magazines or photos before, but nothing in earnest. I’m also not one for shopping and especially not for clothes shopping.

    So, after we got engaged I really began to look through the various options out there. Wedding dresses are so expensive! The one we finally settled on (we, being my mother and I) was a bit more than I had anticipated spending, but it looks amazing and Mom insisted. 🙂

    I called about a month and a half ago to set up my appointment with David’s Bridal and then began favoriting some of the dresses I really liked. There was one in particular that I absolutely loved from the picture, but I added a few others that I thought might be nice. I don’t have a problem with pure white dresses, I just think they sometimes look bluish in certain lights, so I was hoping for an ivory or an off-white. David’s Bridal seems to only have white or ivory…with some pink *cringe* dresses too.

    I called on Tuesday to confirm my appointment. Much to my shock, I wasn’t anywhere on the calendar. :/ The woman apologized profusely and got all my information again, guaranteeing that I would have a consultant to work with and accommodations for the 10 people who were hoping to come with me.

    You read that right, I had an entourage. My mom and two sisters were there, as were my two nieces who are my junior bridesmaids. My matron of honor and other bridesmaid also came to watch and throw in their oars (much, much appreciated!). We would have had a couple others with us, but there were unforeseen events which prevented their participation. They were missed. 🙂

    I knew she’d be good because of how cute her skirt was.

    When we arrived, I checked in with the woman at a desk in the front of the store. There was a lot of activity going on, but when I filled out the contact information sheet, I found that they already had my favorites printed out so they could grab them quickly! I was so impressed!

    My consultant was cute and fun Kelcie who really helped keep things going and was great on advice and finding other gowns to try which I may not have known about.

    Did I mention that I love her skirt? Amy, Lanna and I drooled over it for a little bit.

    I didn’t try on a ton of dresses, but I knew I wanted to save the “absolutely love” dress for last. I was thinking that I might fall in love with one of the others before trying that one on…it came real close to happening, but nope…I really did save the best for last.

    So pretty…love beadwork and lace 🙂
    The train was gorgeous on this one and would have cost as much as the dress to alter, probably.

    They even got me to try on some headgear – this is one part of the dress fashion that I’m clueless on…however, I think we could probably rule out this option:

    I’m not a huge fan of veils (for myself) and they really don’t work well with the chosen dress, but I liked how this picture turned out:

    Look! I’m wearing a tiara! Eeek…

    I was so nervous that the dress I loved wouldn’t look as good on me as it did in the picture. That fear was soon dispelled. I had to tell Mom to turn away a couple times because she was getting all teary-eyed.

    Mom wants me to tell you that it was actually her sinuses that were bothering her…you can believe whatever you like. 🙂

    I threw Kelcie for a loop when I asked her to find a couple of the most hideous dresses for me to try on and get a picture with. Rest assured that neither of these are the dress.

    This actually didn’t look too bad once it was on, but apparently Kelcie hates it. I think Amy and Lanna wanted it by the time I took it off. It had soooooo much going on!
    “Hmmm…what if we take a monstrously huge ribbon and wrap it all around squiggle-like? Perfect!” Oh, and I have a green light coming from my belly…

    I am so excited to have both of these ladies in my wedding. They are so special to me…yes they might be super-prego balloons by the time it gets here, but I still love them!

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    Me and my gals!

    Can’t wait for you to see the dress in all its glory!

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    —————————–

    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

  • Getting Married: 40 Weeks – Flowers!

    This week, I had my official meeting with the florist about the flowers for our wedding. I love flowers so much! When I was in Japan, there were so many new kinds of flowers that I didn’t know that I was taking photos all over the place of them, earning myself the nickname of “hana-otaku” or “flower nerd.” I also love the meanings behind flowers. For this reason, I do not like the idea of having lilies as wedding flowers (completely personal preference. I think they’re lovely flowers, I just don’t want them in my wedding flowers), since they have been traditionally funeral flowers. I’m allergic to mums, don’t like orchids (in wedding flowers), and don’t want daisies or roses. Where in the world does that leave me!?

    Our colors are red and yellow, which you can see together on my Pinterest board. I would have thought this color combo would be easy to find examples of, but it’s not really. I like the idea of having a uniquely colored wedding, but it makes the prep work a little tough. I’m glad to have another 40 weeks to get this all together.

    The primary flowers are sunflowers! I absolutely looove sunflowers. I even have a Pinterest board completely devoted to sunflowers. (I also have one for elephants, if you’re interested.) The great thing about sunflowers is that they’ve increasingly been dyed a lovely red color, so this works will for my plan.

    sunflowers – pure and lofty thoughts

    I just needed a good red flower to complement the yellow suns. The first one that came to mind was the lovely red poppy.

    poppies – pleasure

    There were some that grew as wild flowers in Japan and I loved how light the flower is, but how deep the color is. Unfortunately when I spoke with the florist the first time, she said that poppies are hard to get in June. So, we had to come up with an alternate. Enter the ranunculus.

    ranunculus – I am dazzled by your charms

    Making its debut here in a gorgeous red and yellow (hmm…can anyone say, perfect?!) I was just looking up the meaning for ranunculus, and you’ll see above that it means, “I am dazzled by your charms.” There was also a funny little story that accompanied this:

    Legend has it that the mythological Coyote was tossing his eyes up in the air and catching them when Eagle snatched them. Unable to see, Coyote created eyes from the ranunculus/buttercup.

    …

    Interesting, huh? And notice that the buttercup is part of the ranunculus family? I love buttercups and have always wanted them in my wedding bouquet.

    buttercups – riches

    *sigh*

    We also thought about including anemone, which looks quite a bit like poppies. Oh, and don’t worry, I am having fake flowers for the reception, so I’m sure I can get poppies in there somehow.

    anemone – unfading love

    Last but not least, woman cannot live on red and yellow flowers alone. I love the idea of having white accents in there too. There was one flower that the florist mentioned, but I can’t remember its name. I’ll try and look it up for you. But also, jonquil works really well, especially with a yellow center. Also known as a daffodil or narcissus and called “suisen” in Japanese, this flower has a special place in my heart. The woman who I began to call my Japanese Mother loved these flowers so much, especially since they are an early indicator of Spring coming, much like the crocuses here in the states. That reminds me, I’ll need to plant those in the garden beds. 🙂 The yellow ones.

    jonquil – return my affection

    There you are, the flowers…or the gist of them. This week, we also went and scoped out wedding bands. Rather, a wedding band for Matt. I’ll post more about this later. No purchases were made as yet.

    We perused the kitchen section of Target a bit too, and tagged some pics of what we really liked. More to come on that in the future too. Thanks for stopping by!

    —————————–

    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

  • Getting Married: 41 Weeks – Interests, Hobbies, and Dates

    I’m running a bit behind this week, but here’s the next blog entry! 🙂 Enjoy!

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    Work always seems to get in the way of having fun and doing what we want. I’m sure that resonates with you, but work is a necessary thing in life, so we grin and bear it. Matt and I both have kind of goofy work schedules, especially with him being on swing shift, so when we find we both have free time, we do our best to get together and do something fun.

    When I was younger, I thought that the best kind of relationship was one where man and woman shared exactly the same interests and goals in life. The goals part is probably still true to a point, but I have learned that it is vitally important that each person has unique interests and hobbies. Matt loves to do things with his hands – working on cars, taking pictures, taking care of his home and serving others through the gifts God has given him. I love to learn things through reading or boring documentary movies/tv shows (yes, I spent most of the weekend watching a BBC doc on the history of the monarchy in the UK), making things with my hands and being creative, traveling, and being informed of world affairs. Matt loves goofy movies, yes, even A Goofy Movie, and I love musicals and sci-fi fantasy movies. We can usually agree on some things like funny tv show sitcoms, antiquing and wanting to understand how something works. We also just enjoy being together, exploring the natural world that God designed, and having a good meal. We admire ingenuity of others and the joy of Christian fellowship. There are so many more things, but I’m going to get on with the rest of this blog.

    We had a day and a half off together. We had planned to run down to visit his grandparents in Kentucky, but his grandpa hasn’t been doing so well (prayers! please). So, Matt had worked out a surprise outing for us that fit both of our interests very well – The Air Force Museum.

    Dayton, Ohio claims the birth of aviation with the Wright Brothers, starting in the bicycle industry, who invented the first manned, double-propeller airplane. This event sparked an interest in aviation in Dayton that has lasted through the years.

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    My roots! This picture is perfect: a heart, Italian colors, and an airplane. Yep!
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    If you can’t read that, it says “Martin U.S.A.” – my fiance’s last name!
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    I love my Butler County. 🙂
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    At least it isn’t Bad Horse. *shivers*
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    Um…I think they forgot the “H?”
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    We started getting really hungry and it was amazing how the planes started to look hungry too! om nom nom nom
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    They’ve got pockets…with pens and such in it!

    On another note, what do you think of this wedding hairstyle?
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    😀

    —————————–

    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

  • Getting Married: 42 Weeks – Making “The House” Our Home

    Matt and I have been reminding ourselves and learning to use phrases like “the house” or “our house” and the like instead of personal pronouns “my” and “your.” It’s surprising how much the words we say become habit. I knew that he would probably be proposing soon, about a month or so before the fact, so I had been talking with friends and some coworkers that I thought I’d be getting engaged. Even now, I find myself saying that to people when I mean to say, “I’m getting married!” So silly!

    This post title will probably be coming up again in this series as Matt and I get things together and move more of my own stuff back in. Here’s what I’d like to show you so far. Enjoy!

    This garden bed, we managed to clean completely of weeds about mid-summer. We try to touch it up when we get a chance, but I’m very proud of it. That azalea bush is gorgeous in the Spring!
    We bought this shovel when we decided to tackle the garden bed above. I had been pulling out prickly lettuce from the other beds when Matt tried to dig out another set of weeds that had grown taller than the little evergreen bush on the corner. The weed won…
    After some more intense work, we defeated the weed, freed the bush to the light and fresh air, and avenged the shovel!
    In just the 30 minutes or so we were pulling up those weeds, I got a whole slew of mosquito bites. I’ve always wanted to have a bat house in whatever backyard I have…now is prime time! I think that we’ll put it “up there.” 🙂
    I know that Matt’s parents gave this patio glider and tables to him for his birthday, but I’m pretty much claiming it as a gift to us. 🙂 It’s ok. He said I could.
    I bought these a few years ago at the antique mall. I can’t wait to restore the design on the front and then fix up the kitchen to match. Can’t you just picture those in front of a gray-blue wall? I sure can.
    We’ve been collecting glass bottles for the centerpieces at the reception…and I’ve also brought some of my mugs over. I may have a little bit of a collection. :p
    We’re making one of the bedrooms a work room for me, since I love to create stuff and need someplace to do that. I can’t wait. Mom had bought this table for me a few years ago. Lanna and her husband were using it for a while but no longer have a need. Sure looks nice here! (You can see a chair I painted a few years back hanging out behind the table.)

    —————————–

    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

  • Getting Married: 43 Weeks – Bridalrama

     

    This is a pretty long post this week, but I think you will find some good info. It’s basically a review, so stick around and, hopefully, you’ll find something you may enjoy!

    Sunday afternoon (July 29, 2012) in Cincinnati was a celebrated biannual event called Bridalrama. I’m sure other cities have similar events, but I’ve been hearing about Bridalrama since I was young with a sort of hesitant curiosity. I’m not really a shopper. It wears me out and makes me a bit irritable if I’m not in the right mood of it. But, seeing as I am now engaged (and my sister scored 4 free tix to the event), I decided to go.

    Most of my friends are married, but it’s still fun to go and scope out things wedding-related. My “Friend of the Bride”, Amy, and our friend Dannie, headed down to check out what goodies we could find. Since I already have the ceremony and reception venues, photographer, and caterer, I wasn’t interested in too many stands except cakes, flowers, and potentially, videographer.

    As it was a Sunday afternoon, we met up after church and drove down to the city. I always park in the Race Street garage when I’m downtown. It looks like the kind of place one would find zombies or see in a B-movie horror flick, but the men who run it are extremely nice and keep great tabs on the vehicles in their care. I highly recommend them…but not too much because I want to have room to park when I’m down there.

    We walked around the block to have lunch at It’s Just Crepes on 4th Street. This is one of those purely Cincinnati treats (only three locations with two downtown and one in nearby Crescent Springs, KY. It was my friends’ first time there and I wish I had taken a picture of our crepes. They have an amazing selection of fully customizable crepes, dessert and savory. I got a chicken Florentine with onions that was so hefty, I couldn’t finish the last 4th of it.

    After lunch we headed to the Duke Energy Convention Center where Bridalrama was being held. There were so many vendors! I can’t even begin to tell you about them all, so if you want the complete list, you should go here. Like I said, I’m not a fan of shopping, but I’m also really good at ignoring salespeople who I don’t need to talk to. I was there to see what was available, talk to people I needed to talk with, and taste everything that could be tasted. I was not disappointed. We all had kind of wished we had gone a little lighter on our lunch, but we managed to have room for all the treats. I’m going to break down the vendors that stood out to me by category:

    Videographer

    This is something I had not really considered as being something important. I like photos, but my friends were recommending a video of the wedding to get a different perspective of the day. Of the three videographers present, Spirit Video Productions, Inc. stood out to me the most. I spoke with one rep who went through the offers with me and I was pretty impressed. You can ask for two videographers, one to stay at the front of the church and one to stand on the balcony above the entrance door. They go through the pre-ceremony moments with the different groups of the bridal party, the ceremony and the reception. They then compiled it into a quick video of the highlights and put it on a USB for easy sharing. The cost was a bit more than we would be interested in paying, but they also do wedding/engagement photos and family portraits. They are also Christian-based, which is always wonderful. Go ahead and check them out!

    Photo Booth

    Photobooths has become all the rage lately. Not sure what one is? It’s where people have a cloth put up and silly props and then someone taking pictures of the guests in fun poses and such. Like this:

    Oh, how I wish my Pappy could be here for a pose like that!

    I’m not sold on the idea for ours, but I did chat with one vendor, Inlight Photography. I have a $100 off coupon here for them, and they seem to have a lot of fun stuff to offer, but it is still quite a bit out of our price range, especially after we are not holding back on the cost of our actual wedding photographer, who is amazing…see previous post. Also, there are four different ways they posted their website on their printed material and only one of them will actually take you to their site. They should pay a little more attention to detail.

    Cakes and Desserts – the good stuff

    The Bridalrama website only lists 4 cake vendors ad we apparently hit them all! They all tasted really good! For me, I’m more concerned with taste and texture than appearance. Yes, I want a cake that will look nice, but I don’t want the decorating to compromise the flavor. All of the samples we tried were super moist, no fondant and amazingly yummy!

    Simply Delicious – tried their Champagne flavored cake with, I believe a raspberry filling, and it was to die for. They have a bunch more flavors, but you’ll have to call for an appointment, because they don’t seem to have a website. 859-359-5382

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    Sweets by LaDawn – I remember trying a sample from this stand, and I remember it being very good and talking with the woman about how I’m glad they don’t use fondant and why, but I can’t remember much else besides the cake pictured on the left. Matt’s only comment was, “That certainly isn’t traditional.” I thought he’d a bit more excited about it. 🙂 She has a lot of variety, so go check her out.

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    .Patricia’s – I had to make sure I remembered this woman’s stand. She had several samples out and I tried a couple. On man! Were they good. My favorite, though, was the caramel cake with apple filling. If I were having a fall wedding, I would HAVE to get that in one of the layers! She’s definitely in the running…I may have to do more “research” though. Her website.

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    J Annette’s Cheesecakes – Last, but definitely not least, is this little jewel. It was funny, this is the very first stand we went to. Dannie was telling us about this place in West Chester who has amazing cheesecakes, as we picked up one of the cheesecake samples. I’m always a sucker for cheesecake. I was getting ready to tell Dannie about the raspberry cupcake I had had on that Friday night, when we both looked up and saw that it was, in fact, the very same business both of us were talking about! Matt’s cousin was celebrating her birthday and her mom had picked up cupcakes from her favorite place, J Annette’s, and grabbed a postcard with info for me. There was a red and yellow decorated cake in the window and she thought I would just love it. What I loved was how the cupcake tasted! It’s hard to get a really moist, flavorful cupcake, but this woman nailed it! To hear Dannie confirm that she was top-notch at cheesecake as well really puts J Annette’s at the top of my list. Matt loved the chocolate cupcake he had that night too. Again, I think more research is necessary, though. 🙂 Her website.

    Miscellaneous

    Kreative Dezines Chair Cover Rental – I saw a friend from high school at Bridalrama with her own business. Lindsey rents out chair covers (I’m still not sure how I’m going to really decorate the reception hall) and decorates the tables. What she is able to do with strips of colorful fabric is so lovely! I would definitely recommend you check her out. Website.

    One Little Band – The girls and I got a bit distracted at this booth. Julie has such a great selection of adorable accessories for weddings. I have spent quite a bit of time perusing her Etsy shop.

    Have you used any of these vendors? Do you have any suggestions/recommendations?

    We ended the afternoon at Bridalrama a little early. We still had an hour before the dress fashion show was scheduled, so we decided to walk down to the new Smale Park right on the Ohio River. We had quite a bit of snacking and lunch that we needed to walk off a bit before heading back home. Of course, we had to make a pit stop at Orange Leaf at The Banks. I finally got to taste their Wedding cake flavor. So very yummy!

    Thanks for sticking around for this really long post! Hope you enjoyed!

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

     

  • Getting Married: 44 Weeks – The Church

    Some of you stopping in might think this refers to finding the right church for the ceremony. For us, that was the easiest church question. My church has a fairly large sanctuary and Matt’s doesn’t. End of story.

    But not the end of this post, thankfully. For us, the biggest, toughest question about church is: Where will we attend once we’re married? For some people, that’s not a big issue. But for both of us, it is.

    Matt has been with some of the members of his church since he was born. Their church has moved around a little and had a name change, but essentially, it’s much the same group. His church is small, but intimate. Everyone knows everyone and there’s as much a sense of “family” there as I’ve seen at family reunions, but sweeter. Some of the big points is that it is Church of Christ, they don’t have any musical instruments and it is about 10-15 minutes drive from The House (“The House” refers to Matt’s house which we will be living in once we’re married). I have been to two Sunday morning services there so far and a Wednesday night study. I like the acappella worship style and I LOVE that they serve communion each Sunday. Communion is such a dear ceremony to me. Oh, his immediate family attends there as well.

    My church is Southern Baptist, about 250 members, and only 5 minutes walking down the street. I love to walk to my church. I’ve been here since I was a freshman in high school, so a little over 13 years. I have been to a variety of churches in my day, both before and during my time here. I love my church so much, they are as much my family as my flesh and blood. We have two services on Sunday mornings, so I don’t always get to see everyone. I have taught the 4th and 5th grade Sunday School class for about 6 years now (I think) and, though it’s been a challenge some years, I have loved it! I’ve seen some of the kids I’ve worked with go into high school and turned into some wonderful, strong Christian brothers and sisters. I can’t wait to see what God does with them in life. I’ve had some amazing mentors throughout my time here, both men and women: Connie Proctor, Mary White, Lester Jones, Leslie Botts, Cyndi Blankenship, Gary Loney, Randy Baird, and so many more in big and small ways. I have seen the value of proper church discipline, sweet Christian fellowship, good fun, and God’s comforting hand in the congregation here. The worship in the second service might be a bit raucous and disjointed at times, but I have a feeling I’ll miss even that when I have to leave.

    My church is also very community-minded – the youth group does a Sports Camp each summer, we built a Community Outreach Center with a gym and cafe in order to have more opportunity to minister to those in our community. The last few years have been spent in brainstorming more ways that we can be more involved in the lives of people in our neighborhood, more relevant to their needs and then trying things out to see what works and what doesn’t work. That’s one thing I’ve learned from this church – failure of a ministry or event is not a bad thing, it just means God has something different in mind.

    So, after Matt and I got engaged, one of the big questions asked was, “Where will you go to church?” In fact, I think both of us can remember being asked this question a couple months before getting engaged. For our part, we avoided it until things settled down, until we had the big things for the wedding taken care of and could relax a bit. I know that I was thinking about it, and I’m sure HE was thinking about it, but we just didn’t really talk about it. Or when we did, it went something like, “We should probably talk about where we want to go to church…how about later?”

    Matt has been to several events at my church. Our young adults group meets every Tuesday night and just about every other Sunday afternoon for a Bible Study and service (respectively). He’s also spent a good amount of time with my dear friends from there. He likes them and he’s seen the bond I have with people there. I enjoy his church, but it’s not MY church yet and I don’t know if it will be. God hasn’t made that clear yet, and I just haven’t fellowshipped with them enough.  Matt’s work schedule also keeps him from attending church just about one Sunday a month. Oh, and my church is a whopping 45 minutes away from The House – not impossible, but definitely not in the local community.

    When we talked it out, we decided that once we’re married, we would go to his church, mostly. On the week that he couldn’t go to church, I would drive down to my church. I am going to be pulled away from my church, my community, everything I know well, so I think this will be very necessary for me. We both think so. He also said that once a month, we can check out other churches near our home together and see if we can find one that is very involved in community outreach. This is so important to me, that we be reaching out to those around us. I’m so glad that my future husband is concerned about it too, and taking the desires of my heart into consideration. I don’t know where God will put us and I don’t know what it will all mean, but I’m glad that we can talk about it together and that we both are willing to make concessions for the sake of the other.

    Have you had the whole “Church” talk before? Was it difficult for you? What compromises did you make and what things were on your non-negotiable list?

    I forgot to mention that both of our churches are wonderful for teaching and preaching straight from the Bible. Not only do the pastors value the Word of God but the teachers, leaders and lay people do too. This is absolutely imperative for both of us for wherever we end up fellowshipping. Sometimes we put too much emphasis on the physical or creature comforts and not on the Truth or lies that are propagated throughout a church body. A truthful church is necessity for true worship and fellowship.

    —————————–

    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

  • Getting Married: 45 Weeks – Guestlisting

     

    Thanks for stopping back! Sorry I’m a few days late in posting this. I’ve had a lot going on but am feeling loads better than the last post. This week, I decided to scrub through my part of the guest list and get it up on our website. When looking for a wedding host website, we wanted pretty themes and all, but mostly we wanted the feature for our guests to RSVP online. We checked through the various ones, but settled on http://weddingwire.com. There might be others that would do the trick, but we really liked this one.

    Matt and I have a quandary. We both have fairly large families and we have a pretty wide base of friends and coworkers who we would want to be at our wedding. However, we have limited funds and a reception venue which can only hold a certain number of people. So, how do we get everyone there and yet only having a small portion of them? We decided to have an open ceremony and a closed reception.

    This has brought a lot of relief while we’ve been casually putting together our guest list.  Family, bridal party, and close friends are automatically put through to the reception and everyone else is allotted an invite to the ceremony. Matt and I also have attended our respective churches for years, he much longer than I, and have built a strong relationship with the family there. While I would love for everyone to be at the reception to cut up and boogie down, I’m going to have to settle with having everyone at the wedding.

    We also have a couple ideas for age-specific groups. We plan to have a kids table at the reception with favors specifically for kids 10 and under. I also have something special planned for my girls 11-18.

    Two years ago, I spent a lot of time with some girls from church. They were in my Sunday School class and all in 5th grade. I remember what it was like heading into Junior High. I had a girl scout troop with some good girl friends, but 6th grade was the year that the 5 elementary schools of our district poured all their kids into one building. It was crazy to see how many kids were my age in the city and I had gone from an average-sized fish in a little pond to another average-sized fish in a great big pond. I’m not athletic by any means, and not overly outgoing. It may surprise some of you to know that I am, in the truest sense of the word, an introvert. (We have our 10 year reunion next month and some of my friends really want me to go. I honestly have a giant fire-ball of anxiety in my chest every time I think about it.) But back to junior high: It was intimidating. I had grown to know and love these 5 girls in my class and decided that I wanted to do something special with them. For that whole year, we would do something fun once a month. I bought them journals and made fun fabric covers for them. My first big sewing project and I was so jazzed at how well they turned out. We did all sorts of neat things: tea party, gong out to lunch after church, a painting class, etc. These girls were so special to me that year and the goal was that they could have a non-family adult to talk to about whatever and they would draw close to each other. They needed a support system before heading into that great big world of junior high and pre-teendom. And it worked! Those girls are pretty close now and on track to staying close for years. They’ll probably have a blow out here and there, but what’s being a teenage girl without blow outs. Trust me, I had plenty. I want to do something special for these girls…but I’m not writing it here. It will be a surprise! 🙂

    What about you? Have you planned a wedding and had guest-list woes? Have a special idea for acknowledging people dear to you? As much as we would love to have everyone at the reception with us, it’s just not possible. We hope that there isn’t too much disappointment and that an open invite to the ceremony will make up for any hurt feelings.

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

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  • Getting Married: 46 Weeks

    I was looking forward to the week following the last post since I figured we had the two big things booked and locked away, so I could relax a bit, enjoy being engaged. Sadly, southwest Ohio weather had another idea. I started getting a bit of a sore throat by Sunday night which progressed to a full-on sinus infection by Thursday. That made for a miserable week with barely any sleep, lots of coughing and a Z-pack.

    While I haven’t been up to par, that doesn’t mean we didn’t make any headway on the wedding plans. We decided to do our own invitations to save some money. I’m excited and have been brainstorming ways to make them fun and creative without going overboard. Matt met me near my work place on a half day to have lunch and hang out a bit before going in to work the afternoon. We stopped into Michaels to peruse. I’m glad we did. They were having a fantastic sale on paper and stationery. We got an amazing deal on the blank card stock and envelopes we need for invitations including some card stock for embellishments and our separate reception invitations. When I say, “We got an amazing deal…,” I mean, we got everything paper that we needed for under $50, plus some fun red/yellow flowery things that we can use to decorate for the reception. I can’t wait to start experimenting with designs and trying out different things. I will post some of the outcome on here for you all when I get them going.

    After chatting with my sister one night, I decided I should go ahead and schedule my wedding dress shopping date. There has been a great summer sale going on at David’s Bridal this week, but it seems too soon to go get my dress already. We’re planning to go on Labor Day weekend, hoping for a sale, and also hoping that I can get myself in a little better shape by that time. There are going to be 10 of us there if everyone can show up! It’ll be so much fun though, and I want to try on the truly awful dresses too, so I’ll have some pictures for you.

    Well, here’s hoping that this week is much better than the last!

    —————————–

    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles