We're Back!!!!

So after 1 day of travel 4 days in London, 2 hour train ride to Paris, 5 days in Paris, 10 1/2 hours of flying back to the U.S., a 6 hour layover in Houston and a 1 1/2 hour flight to Lubbock we are finally back home. I'm exhausted but very happy to be back and settling into my new life and Mrs. Hughes. We had the best time at the wedding and in Europe. My head is still spinning. I'm still going through pics from the wedding and honeymoon so more to come later, but for now I thought I would share some of my bridal portraits (by the talented Captivated Images). Hope you enjoy:)

Final Thoughts Before the Big Day

So everything is planned, paid for, assembled and ready to go. I've been trying to relax these last few days as much as possible and just enjoy everything and everyone around me. I'm still working this week til Friday so I'm trying to do as much as I can at night and on my lunch break. It's been a long road to get here. 8 1/2 months ago Brandon asked me to be his wife and now it's finally here. At times I thought it would never come. I thought people were crazy who said, "It'll be here before you know it." There always seemed something I needed to do before the wedding was here so I really didn't have time to think about how close we really were. But in 3 days from today I will be walking down that aisle to the best guy I know a saying my vows to him. I have planned and planned and now I get to sit back and let the magic unfold. The next time I blog I will be Mrs. Brandon Hughes!!!

Thank you Lord for this time in my life. Thank you for providing me a sweet and compassionate yet funny and energetic man to call my husband. Thank you for loving on us through this process and holding us in the palm of Your hand. Thank you for Your faithfulness and providing us patience and serenity.

Life is a Party!!!

So Lately I've had one event after the other. It all started with my "Holmes" Bridal shower on February 22nd, hosted by friends of my parents and my brother's wife and her family at her parents home. It was lovely!!!



All my loot, hey Leah!!!!


The next event was my "Hughes" shower, on February 28th, hosted by friends of Brandon's mom's and mothers of Brandon's groomsmen. Brandon came to this one and it was a lot of fun.

The next event was my work shower on March 6th at my office hosted by the people I work with. It was so nice of them to do this. We ate lunch and lots of dessert and I was really impressed by their decorating skills. I even got to wear a festive green feather boa. Too cute! Thanks Susie, Krista, Zach, Eric and Matt :)


This past Saturday, March 7th, I had my Lingerie Shower and Bachelorette Party. It was such a fun night. The shower was hosted at my dear friend and bridesmaid Shanda's house. We all wore black and white with teal and lime accent jewelry. We had good food including a chocolate fountain. We even had a pantie decorating contest. It was too cute. Later we all went out to the piano bar for a girls night out. I don't think it got too crazy, but it was a lot of fun.

We had three sets of sisters at the party and two sets of sister-in-laws. How sweet is that?




My lovely outfit (Don't judge, they made me wear it)

Overall I have had an exciting past few weeks. AWWW!!!! The wedding is in 11 days :)

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.