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 :)