Engagement pictures

We got TONS of pictures to choose from, once I edited them a little bit and found my favorites and now I can say I LOVE them. Here are the favorites I chose (most of them at least):

This is my absolute favorite of all of them :)
This sign just says it all! haha

In both these pictures there was writing on the bench, but I was
Able to do a little editing to make it look more normal :)

Like I said...I LOVE our photographer! I think she got our personalities really well in them and even got Larry to genuinely smile in them ;) It's pretty surreal to look through OUR engagememts, but it makes me excited for what's to come!

9 1/2 Months! (Long Update)

So last weekend we got to meet with our photographer (Natalie Lundberg) and get our engagement pictures taken. I'll definitely be posting our favorites when we do get them (which should be by this Friday-hopefully). I have to say I was nervous meeting with her, if you don't get along with a photographer it could mean pictures don't turn out as well as you'd want them to or like, but I LOVE her! She made us laugh, found cute poses for us, and knew just where to take the best shots. I emailed her a few days before and gave her some pose ideas I liked and she ended up agreeing with me, which was probably the biggest relief for me. It's got me very excited about the rest of the pictures we get to take with her! I probably won't be doing my bridals till May so we do have some time, but I'm looking even more forward to it now than before :)

We did decide on some favors, but we won't be revealing them as that almost feels like it defeats the purpose of them, but I'm also trying not to talk them up so that people are disappointed-so just know they have been chosen ha ha. I've also been looking up fun bridal/wedding shows to go to. Even though I've been to MANY of them over the years, it's probably been about 5 year since I've been to the last one, so I'm really looking forward to going to them and having a purpose this time!

We're currently "shopping around" for an officiant. The one I really wanted says she has a wedding in the middle of the day on our day so she most likely won't be able to do ours, but I emailed another officiant I found, also recommended to us by Natalie, so hopefully she'll be available because otherwise I have no idea who I'll be going with. We also decided we'll be doing our registry next month-September-since I'm focusing on one major thing at a time, after that it will be the dress (EESH!). I can't tell you how antsy I am to finally try them on. I've seen way too many episodes of Say Yes To The Dress to know what I need to be on the lookout for. Although I think it's got me overthinking it as well, so I'm stopping that show until after I start looking haha.

Other than that we're just taking it one thing at a time and haven't really thought too much past all that stuff-except me bugging Larry about when we can book our honeymoon! We've also been working a lot on cleaning our home up and getting our guest room and office set up better. We finally got a guest bed (Thanks mom!) and an old entertainment center/tv for that room as well, now it's just about decluttering and trying to find some movie shelves for our crazy collection!

Oh and last, but not least: Larry got me into running! I'm not sure how he did it, but we started running last week at our neighborhood fitness center and I can run so much better now than I used to be able to, longer and easier as well. So I'm really happy that I now actually look forward to (and LOVE) working out each night, unlike before where I dreaded it more than anything and would find any and every excuse to get out of it-I'll be in great shape for our wedding at this rate.

Wedding closeup!

So I've felt like I was doing nothing but wedding stuff this past month! I was surrounded by centerpieces, favors, DIY wedding crafts, photo ideas, new engagements, other weddings, dress talk, mishaps that come up, showers, bachelorette parties-really the list could go on and on! Oh and none of this was our wedding related. You would think I would get sick of nothing but weddings right? WRONG-O! I loved it-it made me look so forward to Larry's and my big day. I'm definitely one of those where I love to learn from other's "mistakes" you can call them so I definitely learned what to do and what not to do for our day. One big one on the list: don't stress! I know that's really wishing the impossible because everyone gets stressed before their wedding, but if I've learned anything from these weddings-I want to make it simple, relaxed, and I want to smile. A LOT. I want to keep in mind that we're going to be married and together forever after that. I want to know that my big day was one of the happiest days of my life. One of my friends-Rachel-was literally glowing on her wedding day. I don't know if it's because I didn't see the moments right before they actually got married when everyone is trying to get everything into place, but all I saw was her smiling and laughing and being so happy that everyone could be there and eat their (oh-so-yummy) ice cream. That's exactly what I want!

Now that Skyler and Jena's day has passed I joke I'll give them a week before I go full Monty into our wedding talk. Theirs was VERY beautiful and I cried like a baby-but if you know me then you know that's no surprise. I'm a BIG crier, I cry at funerals (even if I don't know the person who died), weddings, some movies, and even books (though that's really only happened once). She looked so beautiful in her dress and he looked so happy to see her. The march song they picked fit them perfectly and just everything about their day seemed to go pretty smoothly, you could tell they had a good time. I was very happy to be a part of it and know I got to see it from start to end. I realized it's been about 3 years since I've done anything with weddings-just enough time to forget how much really goes into it so it's a good thing they got married before us-good way to jog my memory a bit.

We'll be doing our engagements on Friday, we went out and got outfits then I realized that I didn't like them and I liked what we had in our closet much better. But we do need to go get shoes-so at least I'll get to pretend it's kind of new still ha ha. I decided dress shopping will be put off till October since I'm not in a huge rush for that. I've been doing nothing but watching Four Weddings and Say Yes To The Dress on TLC these past few weeks and they have been useful to giving me a few ideas of what I want to do in our wedding. I also made a list the other day of what we need to do that doesn't involve the reception center. Since they are doing everything I thought it would be pretty easy, but the list was MUCH longer than I thought it would be so now I've got my lovely to-dos. Again, if you know me you know that's a good thing and I love lists :)

But for now, after everything, I'm going to enjoy this wedding-free weekend. Go visit family, get some house stuff done. Maybe go visit Stace (who is here for the weekend) and just relax and sleep..sounds blissful right about now :)

Until next time...

Vegas...for free

So I'm not sure if I told anyone, but last year when we went to Vegas right as we got in they offered us another stay for free. We decided to risk it and see if it was really free...all we had to do was sit through a short (and I do mean short) timeshare presentation. We went this past weekend, staying in the Luxor-which I don't think I'd recommend based on the rickety elevators and almost broken everything in the room. I'll admit it-I was pretty tempted to get the timeshares, they were really nice, but we ended up telling them (with very little argument from their side) that we couldn't afford it right now. They ended up taking us to this room and gave us another free cruise to the Bahamas. It's going to be the same line we took in February, so this time I think we'll upgrade the room (the other one we got says it's more for 1 person than 2-so we'll definitely need something bigger) and stay at the resort to make the trip longer and enjoy the island (they only do 2 day cruises on the ship so to make it longer you have to stay on the island-but who could argue that?). Honestly, though, who on earth wins 2 FREE cruises in a year, PLUS a free Vegas trip in the same year. We'll have 3 trips that we paid half (if not just 1/3rd) as much as we normally would've to take all of them! This definitely helps us save up for our wedding/honeymoon next year! I'm very excited about all of this.

Our trip was short but here are some pictures:

It literally got to be 112 degrees at one point...HOT!

I thought the view was cool from the elevators.

Seeing The Excalibur show

We were in the Dragon area-basically we got to root for the bad guy

Perfect view of the pool!

...I mean pools apparently lol

We saw Peep Show Saturday Night

Tournament of Kings Friday Night

The free cruise we won

Larry reached 1234 miles on his new car.

Oh and I don't think I mentioned Larry's new purchase:

He got himself a brand new 2013 KIA Rio. Since his car wouldn't last too long driving all the way to his work he wanted something with a lot better mileage. It's so cute, not my size, but so cute and he loves it. Unfortunately he got his first ticket driving home Sunday, he wasn't too pleased about it-we may need to paint the car so he won't be on their flags anymore.

As for wedding stuff, we will be doing our engagements on Aug 24th and possibly sending out Save The Dates sometime in September. I also found the lovely hotel I want to stay at for our Honeymoon, it's pretty and not too expensive for Larry so I'm pretty stoked to get that part done :) It's the part I think I care most about besides the photos! Other than that I'm just waiting on Jena and Skyler's wedding (which will be in 17 days now!!) to really start working on ours.

We asked ourselves...

When we first moved (or rather, the few weeks before we moved) I asked myself (and sometimes we'd talk about it) how the cats would take the move and being in such a new place...

I think they like it :)

 (by the way this is their favorite part of the mornings-when they get to smell and hear what's happening outside)