wedding recap quickie

so i need to post something, and i want to be able to post about all sorts of details about the wedding in detail (because i was all about details), but i wanted to  give you a little taste of how the day went.

well, first off, remember when i wrote about how worried i was about the weather? the weather on my wedding day ended out being (in the words of our photographer) "the most perfect weather day of this years wedding season." it was 75 and sunny with little to no humidity. we had white puffy clouds during our photos, clear blue skies during our ceremony. the temperature was PERFECT. i was hesitant about an august wedding and that it would be too hot. but it was perfect.

so here are some pictures other people have posted--just want to give you the idea, and we'll get into the good stuff soon. 

we got in last night at midnight from our honeymoon, have a lot to do, andy's got a cold, and our landlord re-did our bathroom while we were gone, which is great, but there is dust EVERYWHERE. so i need to clean the toaster before i can make breakfast.

anyway, here's some photos:

bouquets

bridesmaids: twin, sister, and sister-in-law

the guys (including dads)

ceremony

and for full effect

oh yeah, the kiss.

we did it!

place cards

first dance: I'll Always Be Right There by Bryan Adams

dance with dad: Then They Do by Trace Adkins

fingerprint tree guestbook

sweetheart table

my sister and i and our husbands :)

yes, that's the one i just married. and yes, he's on the floor.

party time! (and this photo features my boston friends)

hope you enjoyed them! it was a GREAT day. the PERFECT day.

so long 2011, hello 2012!

2011 was by far dominated by ups and downs. i started off the new years with andy's family out in northwestern PA, while my parents packed up the home they had lived in for my whole life and moved to texas. andy and i had started looking at houses in late 2010, and we spent all of 2011 continuing to live in our rented 1890s farmhouse. 

we had some adventures:

Texas (San Antonio & Houston)

Promised Land State Park (PA)

lots of kayaking

river safety patrol

Madison, Wisconsin

Siesta Key, Florida

 We reached some milestones:

100,000 miles on the Echo.

and a car with 7 miles on it.

 We had some setbacks:

my poor echo

a basement full of water

We spent some time with family and lost some family.

I took up a new form of exercise (hot yoga!!).


I had some major work projects come together, ones that i put together all on my own and saw them through to completion. [hey, maybe a promotion in 2012?]


and of course, the most exciting news of all- we got engaged!

maybe you can't tell it from my face, but at this point, i'm still in disbelief.

the last two months of 2011 flew past as we set a wedding date, picked a place for the ceremony/reception, booked a band, ceremony musicians, a photographer, and i bought the dress! 


we spent thanksgiving with andy's family, and christmas with my family (almost all of them!)

just the grandkids (mom's side)

dad's side (minus 3)

earthquake, hurricanes, snowstorms in october... all in all, i'd have to say 2012 was good, even with the pretty rough patch in the middle there. hopefully 2012 will be good all around. i have a feeling that august 18, 2012 will be an especially good day! :)

happy new years!

wedding teaser & hot yoga re-cap

it's still hard to believe this is all happening. we have been engaged for three weeks now, and we are full swing into wedding planning. i think 10 months is plenty of time (i still do)--now that we have some of the big things out of the way (place, date). lots of people are saying "wow, 10 months, not a lot of time to plan a wedding!" 

NBD i say to them. i know what i want. and when you know what you want, you just go for it (within budgetary restrictions, of course). 


so, now i can tease you with our ceremony & reception venue. i'm so excited about it. here are some photos, taken quickly, without great care, no editing (so please just imagine how beautiful they will be on August 18, 2012).

outside the reception building - the Lodge

practice?

cocktail hour lawn & the Lodge

love love love the chairs and the windows

by the lake (a short drive from the ceremony/reception spot)

our wedding night cabin

yay! :)


in other news... it snowed. in october. which was awful. i made andy drive me to my first hot yoga class, in case i passed out and didn't feel well enough to drive home. but in the end it worked out, because he could drive me home in the horrible road conditions. 


hot yoga = awesome! i'm not ready to give up pilates or bodypump, but i'm totally ready to add hot yoga to my workout mix. i never felt like i was bloated all the time, but since saturday morning, i feel like someone deflated my stomach (which is a great feeling).


things i learned:
- after your done sweating your salty sweat, you sweat gross other sweat.
- it's okay to lie down if you feel ill. and it's normal to feel nauseous after some of the poses.
- i'm going to stick by the 'drafty' side of the room until i get this figured out. ('drafty' = probably only 95-100 degrees)
- i think i went swimming in my clothes subconsciously during the 90 minute class.
- 90 minute class really takes up half your day--arrive 20 minutes early, then 90 minute class, cool down, change out of your disgusting clothes, and then go home (i was there from 10am to 12:30pm). 


and all i wanted to down when i got home was shower, and as soon as i stepped in and turned on the water, we lost power. which is not okay when you have a well. 


luckily, we only lost power for about 5 hours, so i did get my shower eventually.

Happy Halloween! 

(I totally forgot and am wearing a blue shirt. Nothing to do with Halloween, at all).

mixed emotions

so this weekend was filled with mixed emotions. we went out to visit andy's family (planned), but had to cut out early before their big fall festival/neighborhood pumpkin carving event to get back for my grandfather's wake and funeral. 

but backing up--we had plans to meet with my mom at our top wedding location choice on friday, for a 2nd meeting, and we booked the date! August 18, 2012 it is! (i'll post some pictures in the next post)


after having lunch with mom, andy and i headed off to his parents' house. we spent some time catching up with his fam, talking about the wedding planning, went apple picking on saturday, prepping for their big event, and unfortunately had to head out fairly early on sunday morning. 


we headed back across PA and into NJ, and met my family for the viewing. it was so weird to have everyone saying "i'm sorry for your loss, but congrats on getting engaged!" all at the same time. i was in a very weird place on sunday. monday for the funeral it really hit me, there was little happy talk, and just very sad.


these things are exhausting. i think i'm still recovering.


and i'm just trying to keep going, and i feel guilty for not really grieving aside from monday, but i know he's happy now, and he wasn't before. so i'm trying to be okay with it.

but on the happier side of things, wedding planning is moving right along. we've been engaged for less than 3 weeks, and we have:

ceremony/reception location
officiant
reception music
ceremony/cocktail hour music (i've put in that we're looking to book, just waiting for confirmation)


and we've been reaching out to a few photographers, and meeting with a handful this weekend/early next week... and hopefully we can get that figured out next week, because they'll probably get booked soon!


so, in my efforts to look my best in a wedding dress, i'm trying something new tomorrow... hot yoga. any tips, words of wisdom?


hope you're bundling up for the SNOW we're supposed to get tomorrow!



 

life as a happy person

although upsetting thoughts occasionally creep into my mind, i try to push them back. although i would love a house of our own (and a potential dream house--in a reasonable price range, but still out of ours--is on the market), i just have to be thankful that we both have good, stable, full-time jobs, a roof over our head, and enough money to pay our bills. i thought about getting a second job for a while, just to bring in a little extra income, that could go to savings to help pay for a house someday.

but, i've put that idea on hold for the time being, especially since we're coming up to the season where i get to spend a lot of time with Andy (late Oct-mid January is his 'slower' season). 

but i've done some form of exercise for the past 4 days, and the next few days won't be any different. i'm trying to get back on my stability ball when i'm watching TV. that's something i did all through college and grad school, and it was awesome. its tough though when your nice comfy, warm bed and/or couch is right there waiting for you...

and after all this, i feel awesome. maybe it's just in my head, but i feel like my jeans fit better after just a couple of days. and i got a compliment at the gym on monday about the way i look from a fellow bodypumper. 

and on other fronts, things are good. i miss my parents, even when they're up in this neck of the woods. during their last visit a few weeks ago, my 92 year-old grandfather stumbled getting up the stairs to my sister's 2nd floor condo and broke his hip. so my mom spent time with him in the hospital for his hip replacement surgery and then through his first week of rehab. 

needless to say, i'm excited to spend some time with them in our vacation-land, even though my dad can only be there for a few days of it.

it seems weird to me that i'm just trying to switch off being unhappy after it seemed to paralyze me for about 2 months. but as i kept being told, it's all about attitude.

or maybe it is the sunny, warm weather we're having :)

Surived the storm, little delayed on posting.

I had high hopes to write a post last weekend about our trip to Madison, Wisconsin to see two friends of mine (from my study abroad program in Ecuador) get married. Well, there was a little hurricane that came through, and the time I had allotted for blogging was spent filling buckets with water to flush our toilets if we needed to for days, scrambling to get all of the laundry done, moving everything from my storage unit living room since we've gotten some water in there in the past, making sure that anything left in the basement would be okay if we got a lot of water, etc. 

And then since I didn't sleep Saturday night, I spent most of Sunday in bed trying to sleep. We didn't lose power at all, so I spent the night pumping out the basement every hour or so, and then checking on the places water has previously gotten in, and then whenever the motion light went on in the driveway as a result of tree branches swaying and setting it off, I was checking on my NEW CAR. You can hopefully understand the panic that was going on in my head, after a tree fell and totaled my car, and we had a flooded basement as a result of a plumbing leak, all completely un-storm-related in the past month and a half. Ironic? yes. PANIC?! no question about it.

You get the point.

So, needless to say, I did not get to fixing up my photos yet, nor have I gotten around to writing about any of it. I'm volunteering for Andy again this Saturday, so perhaps some other day on the long weekend I'll get around to it!

I hope you and all of your stuff survived the storm. We were very lucky. We only lost cable/internet/phone for a few hours on Sunday afternoon. I'm thanking my lucky stars, because I don't think I could have handled any additional catastrophes this summer (especially not if something happened to my new car).