Wedding Day

Let's be honest here, I am not actually posting this today, I have it set as a delayed post, I am certain that keeping up with this is not on my to-do list or even relatively close to my priority. However being slightly OCD I have mastered the "schedule post" setting on here and have managed to schedule one to be posted today (because I can, not because I actually think I will have anything that riveting to say). And I am totally random and think it is fun to think there is a post going up on the morning of my wedding.

First off I can't believe today is actually here! Seriously!

Anyways. Today's schedule for me is:
9:00 am - Hair appointment
1:00 pm- Pictures begin
3:30 pm -Wedding
4:30 pm - Pictures at the Arb
5:30 pm - Reception


I couldn't be more excited, when we got engaged last summer June seemed like forever away, seriously, however here is not only June but June 8, it's go time, time to get married.

For those of you who know my love of Disney you will appreciate this. So down the back of my dress, there are a TON of buttons and every third button has a cluster of beads in a particular design. While all of the bead clusters are fun and what not, my mom had the lady while doing my alterations switch out the last bead cluster for this, a hidden Mickey. Mom knew my love of finding hidden Mickeys while at Disney World and Disneyland and thought it would be fun to hide one on my dress. In all reality 99% of the people will never even notice it, but I LOVE IT! It is the very last bead cluster at the bottom of my train. Ridiculously fun for sure.

I will at some point post more pictures of today but for now - you get a glimpse at my hidden Mickey.


Did you have any Disney shout-outs at your wedding?
Did you have anything a little silly that you were excited about that didn't matter to most people?

Nervous

I run the Fargo Half Marathon this weekend.
I am nervous.
I have spent far too much time on a treadmill and not enough time on the roads.
My excuses are lame.
I will run anyways.
I will finish.
I will get my medal.


I am excited to have a day in Fargo to hang out with friends, tomorrow and into tomorrow evening. I will go watch the 5k runners. Hopefully they all do well and the heat index is exponentially lower than it was last year, it was crazy town for sure.

The day or two before a race is always hard for me. I am awful at tapering and I think about the race with every moment of my day - or so it feels. I pick out my race outfits (yes, I pick out a few due to the uncertainty of the weather), I make sure my watch is charged, I review my running playlist and make changes to it as needed, I charge up the Ipod, I go for some easy runs, and I pack my bags. I try to pack oatmeal so that I can heat it up with hot water from the coffee pot in the room, I have found that oatmeal seems to sit fairly well in my stomach while I run.

Unrelated excitement: This wedding deal is getting real fast. I am picking up my wedding dress tomorrow. It seems a bit surreal since I bought it back in October. Now the question is where to store it for a few more weeks until we actually get married.

Surreal

Today I am off to Fargo to go try on my wedding dress again (seriously haven't seen it or tried it on since October). The wedding/being married stuff is becoming real really fast. It is a bit nuts to say the least. While I am excited to go try on my wedding dress and all that fun stuff I am also excited to hang out with one of my friends for a few hours and eat yummy food.

It seems strange that things are finally falling into place and everything is really happening. We are 43 days away from wedding day, I am jazzed, I am ready to be done with this strange period of transition, I am ready to be done with the planning and the craziness of it all. I am ready to be married and on with it. Although I am super super super excited to see family and friends I have my fingers crossed that from when they start arriving till Sunday afternoon goes slowish and that I take at least 10,000 photos (I LOVE pictures) and that I have the mental capacity to remember it all! [Yes, I know this is a utopic dream - but I don't care]

Living in a small town I always get jazzed when I get to go to a bigger town so that I can have a wider variety of food. The problem always comes in only selecting one place to eat.

Perks of going to the big city:

• great yarn shopping
• yummy food
• friends are near
• chances of running into people from work is lessened
• I remember that I don't like a ton of people and am happy with my little town

Downfalls of going to the big city:

• I have to drive
• I sometimes dream of living closer to a city (2.5 hours to big cities in nearly every direction sort of sucks)
• it pretty much sucks up my whole day

Unrelated side note: I did get up earlyish and got in a great run with my sweet puppy - the distance isn't quite what I would like to be at right now and the transition from the treadmill to the road is always a roughish one for me.

Any tips for transitioning back to running on the road?

Anything exciting happening in your world today?

Do you have to go somewhere to get to the "big city" or do you live there?

Any good runs happening out there?

Wedding Dress Shopping

Done. Check one more thing off the to-do list before June 8.

I have to admit I was not overly looking forward to dress shopping. I hate wearing a dress 99% of the time and would much rather wear jeans and a sweatshirt than a dress any day. Either way, I am getting married and it does require a dress (yes I know there are pant suit options and all sorts of other ridiculous options but really I should probably wear a dress to my wedding). I realize that this is the day (or months in some women's lives) that they look forward to since they are young girls. I on the other hand dreaded the idea of going wedding dress shopping. I hate shopping particularly for dresses, particularly fancy dress shopping where I feel pressure of one sort of another.

This past Saturday after the Fargo Mini Marathon, my mother, and a good friend and I headed out on what I knew would be a daunting task. I knew I had to try on what felt like a bazillion dresses. I had two appointments, one at a small bridal store and one at a all too common bridal store. I tried on what felt like every dress the small bridal store had and had two dresses (totally and completely different from each other) that I liked at the end of our time there. At store number two I tried on what felt like another bazillion dresses, although the nice part at store two was I didn't have to try on several styles of dresses as I had tried on those styles at store one and knew I hated them. All throughout the appointment we kept comparing every dress back to the two dresses from store one. After store two we went back to store one again and I tried on those two dresses again (twice each) and ended up picking one of the dresses. I had a really hard time choosing a dress, both were nice for sure. I wasn't sure how to choose which dress, I knew I wouldn't have the over the top experience that some people have that leave them in tears the moment that they put on a dress, but I was hoping that I would at least have teh gut feeling that "this is the one" and as I went back and forth between the two dresses the one I chose just seemed right.

I sort of am annoyed at the wedding industry most days, I find it obnoxious that their sizing required me to buy a dress that is four sizes bigger than my pant size, seriously, why can't they make their sizing normal?! I am also annoyed at how big of an industry it has become and I really am trying to not make this wedding over the top and materialistic. I really am trying to focus on what is important and not spend a ton and a half. I really am trying to keep it relatively simple. But I keep hitting a wall with the wedding world, it is a crazy crazy crazy world!

At the end of the day as annoyed as I am with the wedding industry I am jazzed that I have a wedding dress and don't have to go shopping for a dress again. I am thankful for friends and family who will witness to our wedding, hold us in prayer, and will help us as we journey into life as a married couple despite what the wedding industry is or is not.
 

Wedding Craziness

I am super excited to be getting married this coming summer. I can't wait to be married and continue the adventure with my fiance. He is fabulous. As you can imagine since getting engaged we have been on the journey to planning a wedding: setting a date (finding one that works with the church and finding a reception site that worked with the date), finding a reception site (harder than I imagined), asking our attendants, and sharing the news with friends and family. Other than those types of things I have begun to do some hoping and dreaming about how we want to decorate and all of those types of things, but it is OVERWHELMING!
The wedding industry is crazy. The other day I was looking online at a few to-do lists of when what needs to be done in terms of months out from the wedding and some of it was ridiculous. Some time lines were yearS in advance. Seriously YEARS! Who plans a wedding for years? I was committed to being engaged for less than a year, too much longer seems crazy. I don't need all the excess stuff, this does not need to be a multimillion dollar event. I can't fathom spending that much money on a wedding. There are lots and lots of things I was looking at and thinking about how over the top it was. My friend Lynneskies sent me a couple bridal magazines, they have been fun to look through and get some ideas and laugh at the over-the-topness of some of it.
There is a piece of me that was seriously disappointed (granted some of this comes from working in a church) but in most of the stuff that I have read or seen it appears that there is little to no emphasis on the actual wedding but rather on the reception and party after. Why does the ceremony get little to know focus and almost seems to come across as a means to an end?!
I am excited for the ceremony, to gather with God, family, and friends and to be showered in prayers and love as we make promises before God. I am excited as well about the reception and celebrating life together. It will be marvelous.
I haven't been doing a ton in terms of wedding stuff. Although I did just finish making our save the dates. I used this idea from pintrest, ours are brown and green. They were fun and not too challenging to make. At some point I know I need to go start looking at wedding dresses for myself, I am overwhelmed even thinking about it. It is crazy to think of all the options and to try to decide where to even begin. It'll happen soon hopefully.
That is my wedding rant of the moment. While this is the first I am certain this will not be the last, thanks for reading, feel free to include your point of view on weddings.