Trusting God for a Sucessful Marriage

I was challenged by a comment posted on my wedding blog this morning. I've probably been way too wrapped up in my own planning and haven't been giving enough thanks and praise to the Lord. Yes, I'm excited about my wedding. Yes, I have been stressed at times, but I'm also trying to let God to see me though this crazy time. I love the Lord with all my heart and I'm really excited to see what He has in store for my marriage to Brandon.

Especially during this busy time in my life I need to rely on God more for guidance in every decision I make. It's important to know my own limitations when it comes to wisdom. I'm naturally a planner and a decision maker, but I don't always do what God wants me to do. I do what I want to do because I'm human! I'm flawed! I'm a sinner with lots and lots of excuses. I want to depend on God's wisdom, knowledge and guidance for my life, because He knows what's best for me better than I could ever know. My plans will always be misguided if I don't trust God to take over.

I read something somewhere that said, "Always seek God's will, for decisions both great and small." How true is that? Especially in times like these. I don't know why sometimes I get so wound up in the small things in life and only come to God with the big problems. The littlest things still matter to him. I'm glad to have encouraging people in my life for me listen to and take wise advice from. I'm still learning and growing. I accept that I don't know what's best for my life, but I know for sure that God does.

My prayer today is to know the love of God though acts of patience and listening to His wisdom and trusting more in the guidance He provides me. I think this will all result in a happier, healthier and more successful marriage.

They're Finally Finished!!!!

After lots of hard work, frustration, hours of tedious labor and struggle, my invitations are finally complete. We sent them out Monday. I'm so excited and relieved to be finished with these. They were such a labor of love and I'm really proud of the end result. On Saturday I had my bridesmaids Lindsey and the most talented Shanda along with my mom and grandparents over to my mom's to help assemble all the pieces of the invite. We all worked really hard and knocked them in out in about 4 hours. Thanks everyone for all your hard work. I appreciate you more than you know.

Wedding Planning Continues

So my life is so occupied by this wedding. I feel like it's my baby and I'm just waiting to give birth. I'm constantly thinking about all the little details that I still have to plan and orchestrate, but I think it's all finally coming together. All the big things are planned. So I'm finally feeling like I'm ready to do this whole thing. However, I am a little stressed. This whole event is all me from beginning to end. No wedding coordinators, no outside help exceopt for my mom, it's all me. So the pressure is on, because if I don't give it my all nothing will ever get done. I know I will feel better once the invitations are back from print and I can get those out, but for now I'm confident in what I've been able to accomplish thus far. Today we are going to pick up Brandon's ring and make sure it fits. I hope it does and we can check that off our list. My wedding band unfortunately will not be here in time for the wedding :( It a custom design and we didn't know how long it would take to get in. Who knew it would take 9 weeks to get a ring back. Everything is going to be beautiful I know it. I'm trusting God to see me through this busy time and look forward to the days ahead. So way back in August at the beginning stages of planning, I did an inspiration board showcasing some of my thoughts about our wedding concept. Here is a new board with the actual things that I will be incorporating into the wedding. EnjoY!

DIY, What was I thinking?

So being the graphic designer that I am, I of course wanted my invitations to be a reflection of my own personal style and taste. It's been challenging finding paper that will work with my color scheme and design, but finally I found the perfect stock. TextStyle Designs is the cheapest company that I found you could buy Envelopments from and PaperSource is where I found the most beautiful and rich chartreuse green card stock I've ever seen. Everything was going so well. I found my paper, I finished my design, I then ordered my paper, but when it came in there was a problem. My original design of was a 5x7 folded gate card, but I ordered those from TextStyle Designs and the beautiful chartreuse A7 envelopes from PaperSource and the cards didn't fit inside the envelopes. Oh No!!!! Just one more mistake in this bumpy ride I'm on called "Wedding Planning". Well I couldn't panic, I wanted to but I really couldn't. Unfortunately I wasn't going to be able to return the paper stock and I wasn't going to order more because I have already spent too much as it is on these things. So I had to come up with a new design that I could use everything I already had and use it to come up with a fabulous result. This all really reminded me of problems I faced in design school. After a long night of thinking I came up with a new design that I liked even more that my original design. However, it was going to take some work. So it began. Yesterday my mom and I sat down to start our invitation "pocket making" adventure. We worked about 6 hours and got 100 pockets made. That's pockets only, not invitations. That means only 150 pockets to go. Then we have to assemble the invitation part and then put them all together, address them, apply postage, and then mail them off. I think there is about 20 steps to this project so for those of you who receive one next month, just know I put a lot of blood sweat and tears into the making them. I will post the final product when they are completely assembled.

London Bridge is Falling Down on the Eiffel Tower

Strange title, I know, but it got your attention right? As my wedding is nearing (Only 2 months and 5 days to go) I think reality is finally sinking in that this whole amazing event is actually going to happen. I'm so excited about the wedding. I've been taking charge of planning everything, and while Brandon is quite the involved groom, his main contribution has always been the honeymoon. I realized that I haven't talked about our honeymoon plans. So here goes.

Well at first we thought we would take a cruise. It's safe. We know what we would be in for, and we could afford it. Then we thought well maybe we would take a trip to New York. I've always wanted to go there, but we just didn't know if that was something we really wanted to do. We kinda put off thinking about the honeymoon when out of the blue we get a very exciting email from Brandon's uncle Dewayne that changed everything. You see, Dewayne's wife Sharla, works for Continental Airlines, and since they love us so much, they decided as a wedding present they would fly us wherever we wanted to go to in the world. Isn't that amazing? I mean what do you do with that kind of information? Well first we were in shock. We then jumped up and down in delight. We then sat down and not calmly but rationally started to write down places we might want to go. We thought about Ireland, Australia, Greece, Hawaii, Italy, and even Japan, but when I really thought about the one city I've always wanted to go it was Paris. Paris, France can you even imagine? I'm just a simple girl from Lubbock, TX who is obsessed with culture and art and I'm going to the center of the renaissance world for my honeymoon. It's too good to be true. After doing some more research, however, the trip got even more exciting when we decided to make it a double city venture and take on London as well. So it was set and now it's really happening.

We got our itinerary this week from Sharla. We will leave the Thursday after we get married and fly to London. We will be in London for til that Tuesday and take the train to Paris. We will be in Paris from Tuesday to Sunday. What a whirlwind!!! I'm so excited. In London we plan on doing all the main site seeing stuff as well as seeing a play and taking a tour out to Stonehenge, Windsor Castle and Bath. In Paris, we of course will be going to the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Versailles, river ride on the Siene, and the Orsay Museum and so much more hopefully. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with Brandon and what a wonderful way to start our life together. Thanks Dewayne and Sharla!!!

Brittany & Jonathan's Wedding

The day finally arrived. My baby brother got married this past Saturday in Austin. It was amazing. I loved every minute of it. I cannot believe how perfect the day was and how wonderful everyone looked. Of course he cried. What a sap! But can you really blame him, his bride was so beautiful. Now I have a sister :) Here are some pictures from the gorgeous event.

Rehearsal Dinner Stubb's Bar-B-Q January 2, 2009







The Wedding Day January 3, 2009

Where Have I Been? I've been Cruising :)

Well the last couple of weeks have been pretty eventful. I was really busy at work and then Thanksgiving was here and then we left for our cruise Nov 30th. We had a blast. I decided to just relax this vacation and I was really able to do just that. We went to Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel on board the Carnival Conquest. We went to Margaritaville in Jamaica. The beach there was a lot of fun. We ported in Montego Bay but went of a journey to Negril. It was really interesting. The people were so nice and funny. We then ported in Grand Cayman. It was raining that morning so we didn't get to swim with the stingrays like we had planned. We did however get to go to the Turtle Farm which was amazing, we visited the town of Hell and the Seven Mile Beach which was so beautiful. Our final day at port was in Cozumel which was a different location than the place we ported last year. It was really clean and not like Mexico at all but it was such nice weather and we had a lot of fun. Our friends Shane and Lori got engaged that night. He took her up on stage and asked her to marry her in front of a lot of people right before the show that night. It was so sweet. Good job Shane!!! I had a chest cold the entire time we were on vacation and am still fighting it off. We got back yesterday afternoon and I was ready to get back to work. Here are some photos from our week in the Caribbean.