Is Wednesday too late to post about my weekend?

Well, hello there.

Against all odds, I'm finally making an appearance in the blog world this week. There's been a lot going on, one of them being me losing my gas cap this morning and calling several gas stations to track it down. I did track it down, thank goodness, but that is neither here nor there.

Side note: While complaining about this to Jonathan this morning, he texted me saying, "Count your rainbows, not your gas caps," which put a big smile on my face and made me laugh. This, along with many, many other reasons, is why I love that man.

I'm leaving for my annual work trip tomorrow...at 5:30 a.m. to be exact, so I've been busy all week preparing for that. I also had the most amazing weekend. I know you're all probably thinking weekend posts are for Mondays, but just go with it.

Friday night was perfect. We were trying to figure out if we wanted to go out or stay in when it started monsooning outside and we decided that staying in was a pretty good idea. We made an awesome seafood dinner, watched a movie and drank several glasses of red wine. Life has been jam packed with family gatherings, wedding planning, work, etc., so this was exactly what we needed.

Saturday we headed to Jonathan's grandparents' house for a big family get together. Jonathan's aunt and cousin were visiting from California and we even had my parents joining us, which I was so very happy about. We ate, we drank, we danced, we re-enacted our proposal for Jonathan's aunt and talked a lot of wedding stuff. Such a perfect day and can I just say that having a dance party with my mom and my future in laws was absolute perfection?

My dad headed home and left my mom with me for the night because we had big wedding dress shopping plans for Sunday. We hit the road to spend the night with my sisters and had such a great time gossiping and spending some quality time together.

Sunday was the day I've been waiting for...wedding dress shopping! In all the wedding details I've planned so far, the dress was one thing I hadn't started looking for yet, so I was anxious to hit up a few salons and see what I liked. After my momma, sister and I met my maid of honor, Taryn for a big breakfast, we headed off to our 1st of 3 appointments, where we also met up with my friend Laura so she can join in on the fun.

I'm pretty emotional and as I've been planning our wedding, so many times I've found myself getting super emotional when I think about our day. I do have to say though, putting on a wedding dress for the first time made everything so real for me. Finding a dress I loved at my first appointment really made me envision walking down the aisle on our day and I was completely overwhelmed with joy.

Like I said, I did find a dress I loved at the first place, but my mom encouraged me to head to our next appointment so I could try on a few more and compare the dresses. I liked my consultant at the first place, but my second appointment is exactly what you envision your wedding dress shopping to be like. We walked into The Collection in Winter Park and the girls immediately started looking through the sample racks while I checked in. We were greeted by our consultant, Mimi and I loved her immediately! The girls had picked two sample dresses to show me, so I told Mimi I definitely wanted to try them on first. Long story short, I found my dress and I couldn't be any happier about what I'll be wearing the day I say I do. I'm so surprised by the style I went with, but it is true when you find the right one, you just know it. Even better, it was a brand new sample dress and we got a great deal on it!

After purchasing my dress, we headed up the road to celebrate with a champagne toast outside of our venue. We took lots of photos, drank and celebrated, then headed to a late lunch in Winter Park to continue the celebrations.

Momma and I

This day is one that I will never, ever forget. Sharing these moments with my mom and seeing her genuine excitement and emotion when I came out in my dress is a memory I'm going to cherish forever. Being able to share this day and so much excitement with those ladies was so amazing. I'll never forget calling Jonathan to tell him I found it and just being flooded with tears of joy on the phone with him.

Needless to say, I'm so excited about finding my dress and I can't for Jonathan to see me in it on our wedding day.

Things are slowing down a bit in the wedding planning process since we have most of the big decisions made already. I'll be in Philadelphia for a week working, so I won't have much time to do anything else. We are focusing on the honeymoon right now and I'm looking forward to getting that booked soon. It's going to be a hectic few months, so we'll be looking forward to the vacation!

I hope you're all having a wonderful week!

Weekends are for Wedding Planning

I'm just kidding, but it does appear that way lately. We met with the DJ on Saturday and got that booked, so now that most of the bigger decisions have been made, things will calm down a tad in the wedding planning department.

Aside from meeting with the DJ and preparing our save the dates to be mailed, we did we actually went out both Friday and Saturday night, which we hadn't done in a while.

Friday, we met up with a few of Jonathan's guy friends for a few beers. His best man moved to New York today, so I'm glad we got to see him before he left. It was funny because on the drive over, we were discussing all things wedding, and when we got to the bar, Jonathan said, "No more wedding talk. Let's go have fun." I laughed because I knew that wouldn't happen. We hadn't seen a few of these guys since we got engaged, so the night consisted of wedding and lots of bachelor party talk. He didn't mind it one bit and it was fun to celebrate with the boys.

Saturday morning I woke up with a hangover. I had 4 beers the night before and was somehow hungover. This is when I realized I am super lame.

Saturday night, we headed downtown to meet up with my Maid of Honor, Taryn and a few of her friends. We had an absolute blast!

the ladies :)

Love her so much.

Taryn doesn't live in Orlando, but she has been working down here for a few weeks and should be here for most of the summer to help me with wedding planning. She has already been a huge help and I couldn't be more thankful for this girl.

We ended the weekend with a family dinner at Jonathan's uncle's house on Sunday. On our way home, we stopped to bring dinner to his sister who recently started a job with FOX35. She gave us a tour and we even got to sit at the news desk. It was pretty cool to see the set and goof off a little bit.

Bringing you a super serious new report :)

It was another jam-packed weekend and the next few should be a lot of the same. Next weekend, I'm going wedding dress shopping for the first time and I can't wait! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Linking up with Sami for Weekend Shenanigans!

Everyone has an opinion

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

Today I'm going on a bit of a rant and I hope you don't mind.

When Jonathan and I got engaged just a few weeks ago, I had so many questions for him. How long have you been planning this? When did you get the ring? Oh, is that what you were doing the day you said you had a "work thing?" Did your family know you were about to propose? Who else did you tell?

He filled me in on the details and told me that while his family was fully supportive of his plans, several friends, neighbors, acquaintances he told weren't quite so supportive. He said he stopped telling people after getting comments about how he is too young to settle down, how he hardly knows me, how we are moving too fast, etc. He just didn't want to hear all the negativity and I can't blame him.

From a friend saying we spend too much time together, to a family member saying "Don't you think that's a little fast?" when Jonathan gave me a key to his house, we're used to the criticism. That's life, I guess. People are always going to have an opinion. I'm sure you or your relationship has been criticized a time or two so you know exactly what I'm talking about. We typically brush this kind of stuff off because none of it matters. When it comes to relationships, my thinking is this:

If you aren't in the relationship, you are in no position to criticize it.

Anyway, getting back to our conversation on that most wonderful day, I reminded Jonathan that this is only the beginning of dealing with the opinions of others. If it's not people criticizing our relationship, we'll have people who don't like the food we have at the wedding or people who don't like the music the DJ plays. People will have an opinion on what we put on our wedding registry, what we choose to name our kids, how we discipline our children, the list goes on and on. We decided right then and there that we have to stay true to ourselves and we can't worry about what others think. Just because everyone is entitled to their own opinion doesn't mean we have to let their opinions affect us.

Unfortunately, as I'm wedding planning and making arrangements for us to move in together after the wedding, I'm finding this whole "don't worry about what others think" thing so much easier said than done. 

See, we have some decisions to make as we move into the next phase of our lives together. One of the more controversial decisions we've made is about our pets. Jonathan has a cat and as you all know, I have a dog. We both love our pets. Unfortunately, we haven't had much success in getting our pets to get along. I don't mean they haven't become best buds (I obviously never expected that to happen). I mean they don't even tolerate each other. We have to keep the cat locked in the bedroom while Blake gets the run of the house. If Blake sees the cat, he attacks. We've tried to introduce them on multiple occasions and we've tried a few different approaches. They are no closer to getting along now than they were the very first time we introduced them. Add to that the fact that Blake is really bad with children and you have a really difficult situation. 

While it's easy to say one of us just has to get rid of our pet, this just isn't fair. If I give Blake away and we keep the cat, Jonathan will always feel guilty and I'll always feel a little bitter about it and visa versa. Nobody wins in this situation. The only fair thing is for both of us to find a good home for each of them and start fresh. This breaks my heart, but I know it's the only fair thing to do. I also know that it will save us the stress and frustration of trying to manage both animals who don't get along.  I also can't imagine trying to bring children into our home with Blake being so bad with kids. I'll feel a little better finding Blake a new home with a close friend or family member, so that's what I'm hoping for. As you can tell, it's a tough situation. 

While I don't want people (my family, specifically) to criticize me for giving Blake away, I have to trust they know me well enough to know I don't take this lightly. I'm not a cruel person. I love Blake and the thought of giving him away breaks my heart. This is difficult for me, but I have to do what's right for Jonathan and I. At the end of the day, we have to live with whatever decisions we make. Other people may criticize, but that isn't something we can control, unfortunately.

Needless to say, I know we'll be criticized for this, and many other things throughout our life together. Heck, I'm sure a few of you are even judging me right now based solely on our decision about the pets.The worst part I think (and the reason I am writing this post) is that I am criticizing myself, too. I shouldn't be concerned with what other people think and especially need to stop judging myself. 

At this point I'm kind of just rambling so I'll just stop, but I feel a little better. Thank you for reading. This is why I blog, to sort out my thoughts and get things off my chest. At the end of the day, I'm not perfect, Jonathan isn't perfect...we are both just trying to do what is right for us. End of story. 

Remember when I got engaged then disappeared for a whole week?

First of all, thank you all so much for your sweet comments and well wishes on our engagement. We are absolutely thrilled and cannot wait to be married!

One thing is for sure...this blog has been the last thing on my mind since our engagement on June 29. See, just a few days in I learned our dream venue was pretty booked up and I just didn't want to settle on a new place. So we booked the venue for January 3, 2014 and jumped right into wedding planning madness.

I know 6 months to plan a wedding is a lot to take on, and we were both a little overwhelmed at first, but we can totally do this. Neither one of us wants an extravagant wedding and January works best with Jonathan's work schedule. He can easily take time off for the wedding and honeymoon without it impacting his business too much. We don't want a long engagement. We're ready to celebrate our wedding with the people we love and start our life together. Why wait?

After a week of planning, we've already chosen our venue, picked our colors, placed our cupcake order, narrowed down our photographer options, chosen our wedding party, created our guest list, ordered Save The Dates and chosen our officiant. I'd say we've got it under control so far. We have lots of smaller details to figure out like flowers, centerpieces, etc., but here are a few things that have caught my eye.

I like the blue vases for centerpieces.

I need these.

We have so many people who love us and are jumping in to help us plan. I have a day scheduled in a few weeks to shop for dresses with my mom and bridesmaids and we are taking care of the big decisions early so we can focus on the small details in the next few months.

At the end of the day, I know if we stay focused on our relationship and doing what is right for us, we'll have an absolutely perfect wedding day. I found this on Pinterest a while back and it's the mindset I'm sticking to when it comes to planning our wedding.

So many times throughout the past week, I've found myself staring down at this perfectly gorgeous engagement ring and I'm overwhelmed with love and joy. I honestly cannot wait to become wife to this wonderful, wonderful man. The best is really yet to be :)

You have my whole heart for my whole life.

Happy Monday everyone! I've been working on this post all morning, but I keep getting distracted by the gorgeous engagement ring on my left hand.

Jonathan proposed over the weekend! 

Needless to say, I was absolutely shocked. We have talked about the future a lot but I had no idea when he would pop the question.

We've had plans for several weeks now to visit my parents over the weekend. They bought a new house a few months ago and invited everyone up for the housewarming party. The party was Saturday and we spent the day hanging around the pool and around the bar my dad built in their dining room.

Later in the afternoon, while we were all standing around the bar, he grabbed my hand and told me he wanted to make a toast to my parents and their new house. He started his toast by talking about how wonderful my family is and then starts talking about how special I am. This is about the time I started rolling my eyes and getting mad at him for making the toast about me when we are celebrating my parents' housewarming. His voice started to crack as he said he started saying he doesn't know how he could ever live without me and this is when I realize this isn't just a toast to my mom and dad anymore.

Then he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. This handsome, loving, sweet, supportive, funny, kind man proposed to me. I obviously said yes and kissed my future husband as my family celebrated around us. This will forever be one of the best moments of my life.

I've never really had a particular scenario in mind when I thought about getting engaged, but I can't tell you how special it was for my family to be there for this. Seeing my mother's reaction is something I will always remember and I'm so thankful for that.

With all the more reason to celebrate, the party went on and we all had an absolute blast. I was sure to FaceTime my older sister right away since she lives in Buffalo and wasn't able to be part of it. We snuck off to my parents' bedroom to call her and before going back out to join the party, we took a few minutes to ourselves to let it sink in before heading back out to join the rest of the party.

I am absolutely overwhelmed with joy right now. I can't believe this is my life. I don't know what I did to deserve this wonderful love but I thank God for bringing him into my life.

So, how was your weekend?

Linking up with Sami for Weekend Shenanigans