one year anniversary!

yay!!! we made it to our one year anniversary!! what a crazy, awesome, refining, blessed first year of marriage we have had! of course, as in every marriage - there are the wonderful times and then there are the times of struggle. but we made it! :) we are SO grateful and soo excited to see what the Lord has in store for us for year number two!

if you're just joining us - welcome! i'm so happy you're here!

if you're interested in reading all about our love story - you can read [part one], [part two], [part three], [part four], [part five], [part six] and [part seven] to catch up on it all and reminise over our relationship and how we got to where we are today! :)

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so you might think i'm crazy for planning my entire wedding under budget and doing everything myself with the wonderful wonderful help of my family and friends.

it was definitely a lot of work - i wish i would have documented more of it.. i have some stuff and maybe i'll do some more in depth posts on that another time :)

our engagement was just shy of 6 months. 5 months and 21 days to be exact.

there was one month in there that i didn't have anything going on.. i had just graduated college.. and hadn't started my job yet. my momma encouraged me to get started and i thought.. nahh i've got plenty of time.

well, let me tell you.. 

she was right.

so right.

i wish i wouldn't have taken almost a month off from everything. [i seriously was probably the laziest person you've ever met and filled my time with naps, relaxing with friends, flipping through magazine pages and not a whole lot more.]

the rest of those months got so busy.

i was training and traveling for my job.

taking licensing exams. [that i ended up having to re-take both of them again because i failed them both the first time. talk about pride squasher].

planning and crafting our [my] dream wedding. you will be able to see a lot more hand crafted stuff in these photos :)

and trying to get our new yet temporary home painted, moved into and situated so we had a home to live in once we got back from our honeymoon.

what a ride it was!

but, we're here and we made it!

i wanted to share with you some [a lot.. get ready] of our wedding photos as well as some highlights from our first year of marriage :)

this was my dress before [on the left] and we took of the rhinestones and gave me some pearls instead [on the left!] :)

highlights and favorites from our first year.

- our wedding day

- our wedding night ;)

- flash mob [yes, it's true! we had a flash mob at our wedding. if you're lucky i'll hunt down the youtube video and share with you :)]

- our first holidays together and new traditions we're making

- movie nights

- figuring out how to live together :)

- growing in selflessness

- falling asleep and waking up next to each other [bad breath and all!]

- honeymoon in the bahamas

- sex [blunt, but oh so true!]

- cooking for mr. b

- outdoor adventures

- making our house our home and doing fun projects together

- watch so many different friend couples of our get engaged!

- road trips

- dance parties in our living room. alone. sometimes with no music. :)

- watching some of our friends get married!!

- pillow talk

- hosting friends and guests in our own home

- laughing together and making each other laugh 

- christmas vacation in mexico

- doing ministry with each other hand in hand 

this list could go on and on.. but i'll spare you cause there are still lots more photos to be seen!

especially this next one... ;) 

yes.. this is part of the flash mob. and yes, our flower girls and ring bear were definitely part of it!!!

reflecting on our wedding day gives me the butterflies.

it was such an amazing day.

it's been an amazing first year!

i can't thank and praise God enough for what he's done and what he's doing in us, our marriage and our futures!

thanks for reading along! you all are so sweet! :)

day seven. part seven.

happy sunday!! our one year anniversary is on monday - so i'm sharing all about our love! read each part up to this point to catch yourself up! [part one], [part two], [part three], [part four], [part five] and [part six]!

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today i wanted to share with you some of our official engagement photos and lots of photos of preparation for our wedding day. be prepared for some fun and craziness!

we loved, loved, loved our engagement photos! it was so fun and so natural to take them.

the preparation for the wedding was full of so many emotions! stress, happiness, fun, nervous, excitement, ups, downs - pretty much every emotion possible!

to release the stress, we went and got manis and pedis :) and then headed out to get ready for rehearsal.

but we ended the night before our wedding with bang - we flash mobbed another wedding! it was so fun!! the bride was not very happy at first.. and then she went along with it.. and then we got kicked out. definitely a memory we look back on often!

we did almost my entire wedding handmade.

i made the [invitations] and the programs. 

my mom, friends and i crafted all of the center pieces together.

my mom and i made all of the 'thank you for coming' gifts.

we decorated all of the cupcakes for our dessert table.

i made every one's seating mugs.

the entire back drop for our ceremony was built and we used lots of live plants and flowers.

we bought all the flowers from the farmer's market [remember how i love shopping local ;)?] and we put them all together for the aisles, up front, bridesmaids bouquets and my bouquet.

it was so much fun to make our wedding hand crafted and special, just for us.

definitely wish i would have had more time if i had to do it all over - but i would definitely do it all myself just like we did!

and... i didn't even have pinterest at that time!

if you have any questions about our wedding, how much it cost to do it all, or are interested in doing a self crafted wedding and wondering more details - email me and i would LOVE to help you out! 

busy.

I have no idea where the month of May went! I thought I was going to be able to get so much wedding planning done and get super organized before starting me new job. Well, I didn't get near as much done as I would have liked to.. but that seems to be the way things go doesn't it?

I started my new job June 1 - and let me tell you, it feels GREAT to have an income again! So far, I have loved the training and meeting new people. I start more 'intense' training next week and then I have my first exam on next Thursday! And then I have another intense week after and July 5th is my second exam, if I pass both of those I will officially be licensed and ready to go! It's so exciting to see all of this coming together!!

Other than my job, I have been doing LOTS of planning for the wedding and LOTS of garage saleing! I love garage sales and getting good deals! I will post pictures soon on my good finds. B (my finace) doesn't always like the things I pick out.. he doesn't always see past the 'old and worn' pieces. But he does trust my interior design background to know I'll fix it up and make it look nice in our home.

Speaking of home.. I have been doing a lot of yard work out at our house that we will be living in once we are married! It's so fun to have our own place to decorate and make 'ours'! I have to be honest though... here is a story that will be prone to make someone laugh. One day I was out there for ohh, about 3 hours planting flowers and weeding. After I was done putting all the flowers in I called my mom and asked her if pansies were perennials or annuals and she informed me they were annuals. You won't believe what I did... I planted about 30 DEAD pansies! Bless my moms heart, she encouraged me that they might come back now that they were in the ground. I waited a little too long to get them in the ground. I went over there last week to check on them and about 5 of them are coming back to life. So now I guess I'll be back out there to plant some new flowers instead. Whoops :)

One other thing I wanted to share - B and I got our engagement photos back a couple weeks ago! We LOVE them! They turned out so good and we had a blast doing them! I'll share a few of them with you

Don't you just LOVE this barn?

I love him! 88 days until we say "I do" and unite together as one!! I can't wait!

PS.. that bike is my garage sale find for $1!!! :) We got some new parts and a basket, so now I have about $15 into it! I still need to get a few more things for it, but I love cruising around town on it!

blessings.

I have been blessed beyond compare! Things have been going great. I've been very busy lately though. Today is my last official day of classes, next week I have my finals and then next Friday I GRADUATE!! I am so excited to close the book of school (finally) and open a new book because I received a job offer last weekend and accepted it! It's so good to see God working through all of this and it's been amazing to grow in my relationship with him by trusting him through all of this.

This is not the only amazing news I have either.. This weekend I went wedding dress shopping and I found myself a gorgeous gown! I obviously can not post pictures of it on here - I don't want Brandon to stumble upon it :). But I am very excited to show you pictures from the wedding so you can see it!

I can't wait for school to be over so I can really dive into wedding planning and even start utilizing this blog more to share the progress!

On another note, most of you know.. this week and weekend is a very special, especially to me. It's Holy Week (or Passion Week) and this weekend we remember Christ's death, burial and resurrection. You can find a timeline of everything here

Today is Jesus' last meal - the Passover supper

Tomorrow is Good Friday - the day we remember the suffering (crucifixion) and death of Jesus

Sunday is Easter - the day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus

I want to leave you with this from Luke 22:14-16

"And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, 'I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.'"