Happy 1st Anniversary

It has been exactly one year since I got to marry Nate.  It has been one crazy year!  Since then so many challenges and changes have come our way, but I have enjoyed every moment spending it with Nate.  While it isn't always easy, it is always rewarding.  Every day I realize more and more that we are meant to be together.

Because I am not always as eloquent at putting my feeling into words, here are some of my favorite quotes that remind me of my husband:

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." - Mignon McLaughlin

"It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life." - Rita Rudner

"We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." - Sam Keen

"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with our own, we join up with them in mutual weirdness and call it love." - Dr. Seuss

I am so lucky to have a marriage full of lots of laughs, mutual respect, and of course love!  It is always a fun adventure.

One year down, and so many more to come!

Wedding Recaps: Setup, Relaxing, and Rehearsing

I started the first of my wedding recaps yesterday.  In case you missed it:

We started off our adventure a little rocky...

That evening after we got into Columbus I was completely drained, from the stress, traveling, and the crying.  Plus add to that stress trying to pick up a friend from the airport and her boyfriend that I didn't even want to come to the wedding.  We planned to go back down to campus to check out the new student union and eat at one of my favorite Greek restaurants in Columbus.

(Ohio State Alumni)

(Google Images)

Unfortunately the union closed 5 minutes after we got there and we were kicked out, and my favorite Greek restaurant was no longer there.  The night concluded with my friend telling me, although she promised we could share a room that night and her boyfriend would just deal on the couch,  I couldn't stay there because he wasn't okay with it.  It was truly one of the worst days ever and I was so ready to just fall asleep.

On the second day, I was well-rested after splurging and getting a hotel room all to myself.  All the drama of the day before was over and we were ready for a fresh start.

After some much need Tim Horton's Breakfast (ohhh how I miss Tim Horton's out here in Missouri!) we got started on setting up the hall.  I had fun bossing everyone around and telling them what needed to be done.  Although worried I might sound like a Bridezilla, I was finally starting to feel like a bride about to be married.  Some company joined me to pick up our flowers, and the florist surprised me that she was able to get my calla lilies (side note: The week before the wedding she told me that she was going to have to raise the final price of my flowers to get everything I asked for, and I reluctantly had to chose to cut calla lilies out of my bouquet).

While I got everyone making centerpieces and decorating the hall, my bridesmaids took me out for some pampering.  I never get manicures so it was really fun.  We drank wine, gossiped, and just relaxed.  My french manicure turned out beautiful!

The girls got back in just enough time to run to the rehearsal.  Honestly it lasted like 5 minutes and I don't even remember practicing much of anything.

I think I was too excited to get to our rehearsal dinner at Dave and Buster's.  My in-laws did an amazing job with the rehearsal dinner.  Food was delicious, decor was cute, and everyone had a good time playing games and chatting!  We only interrupted the fun briefly to hand out gifts to our parents and wedding party, and then promptly resumed the fun.

Our parents even worked together to make a collage of pictures of us.  It was too cute and funny to see our childhood pictures!  Over the years we have rocked some pretty cool hair styles and fashion.

Afterwards, we went back to the on-site hotel pub to have some drinks and play some games.  Nate and I said good night to each other before the girls and boys split up.  Although I can't say for sure what the boys did, the girls had a relaxing night chatting and maybe opening up a few bachelorette gifts!

I went to sleep excited and ready for my exciting day to come!

Hope you all have a great weekend and Fourth of July!  We will for sure be celebrating!

Wedding Recaps: Road to the wedding

Everyone always warns you that your wedding will not be perfect.  Something will go wrong and you just need to accept it.  The hubby and I discussed that in depth before the wedding, not wanting something small and trivial stuff ruin the day for us.  We spent so much time and effort planning this wedding, and being a perfectionist I wanted things to go right.  I thought I had come to terms with the whole something-will-go-wrong idea and moved on.  However, we had one big problem that really tested my patience.

But to the beginning of the story....

The Thursday before the wedding, we loaded all of our wedding and honeymoon stuff into the car.  We had all kinds of dresses, suitcases, wedding party gifts, programs, decor, you name it we had it.  The car was practically bursting at the seems with stuff!  Although we weren't in a hurry to get out of Columbia, we were anxiously waiting for the tux rental place to tell us our stuff was in to pick up.  Pretty much we just showed up and stalked the store until the stuff was in!  After that we headed along our way to meet up at my in-laws house in Illinois.

While there we got even more stuff ready we had left at their house - centerpieces, aisle runner, etc.  Since Nate's sister was still out of town at a mission trip (she was meeting us in Columbus), he decided to stay in her room for the night so he didn't have to sleep on an air mattress.

(Google Images)

Friday morning we woke up nice and early, packed all the stuff up into the car, and headed on our way to Ohio.  From the in-laws house, Columbus was about 6 hours but we had to go a little north of Columbus to the Delaware County Courthouse to get our marriage certificate.  The wedding was on Sunday and we had to get there before the office closed.  For me it was cutting it close, but we didn't really want to go up an extra day early.  (Do you sense the foreshadowing in this story?)

The drive was nothing exciting, and something we had done many times before.  I was nervous (for many reasons) but relatively calm.  Around lunch time (I am not sure what time it was because this is the point where my memory gets a little fuzzy but we were about half way there), we stopped at Wendy's somewhere in Indiana for a quick lunch.  Nothing like the best cheeseburgers on planet to curb your nervous soon-to-be bride hunger!

We got out of the car, stretched our legs, and I ran inside to use the lady's room.  When I came out I noticed Nate hadn't yet come inside.  Still excited and giddy, I skipped outside to meet him at the car which he kept circling around. I playfully asked him "What are you doing."  The look of pure terror he gave was alarming, and suddenly I knew something was not right.  He mumbled under his breath, "I can't find my wallet."

At that point I am not sure what happened exactly, but I was about to lose it.  I am not sure if I said anything to him, but I do remember walking away towards the street.  I positioned myself on a curb behind a bunch of trees trying to keep my composure, but all that was going through my head was that we weren't going to be officially married this weekend.  His driver's license and social security card were in his wallet, both of which were needed to get our marriage license.  Plus he had hundreds of dollars for our honeymoon, his AAA card for the car rental, and we were flying so he needed his drivers licence for that as well.

(Google Images)

Stressed might be an understatement.  I tried very hard not to ball my eyes out, but eventually gave in.  When he came over to console me I told him to leave me alone and go fix it.  He called his aunt who was driving behind us to see if maybe he left it at one of the rest stops, and I am pretty sure someone called highway patrol at that rest stop.  I came back to the car to talk to the Courthouse to see what we could do.

Nate ended up getting a hold of best friend who hadn't left yet for Ohio.  He got keys to his parents' house from a friend who was watching the cat.  The wallet was sitting on table next to his sister's bed (He blames the fact that he slept in an unfamiliar setting and was rushed in the morning to leave).  His friend then rushed to their church where he was able to fax over a copy of the drivers license and social security card to the courthouse.  Having those copies of his identification, plus his birth certificate that I insisted on bringing just in case, we were able to get the marriage license.

The next 3 hours in the car were torture.  I still couldn't keep from crying and I didn't want to be consoled at all.  I was a mess but was trying to keep in all in because my in-laws were in the car.  Instead of lashing out and saying a bunch of stuff I would regret, I just stayed silent.  I barely even ate my Wendy's lunch, which must tell you I was pretty upset.  Poor Nate probably felt worse than I did.  He kept trying to hold my hand and I keep shoving him away.

In the end it all worked out okay.  The people at the courthouse were extremely helpful.  We managed to get there in time and got our marriage license.  At our wedding ceremony we signed that document and were officially married!

After that whole wallet fiasco, nothing bothered me.  Sure other things went wrong, but I was just so happy that I got to marry Nate that I didn't care anymore.

Almost a Year!

I can't believe that a year has flown by since I got to marry the love of my life!  This time last year we were running around going crazy trying to get last minute projects finished, getting everything packed up, and coordinating travel.  It truly was a crazy, amazing week.  I don't think I have every had such a happy day in my life!

Over the next week or so, I will probably share some fun stories and recaps of what went on behind the wedding.

This year will definitely be a little more laid back.  We plan on visiting some family and having a low key day in St. Louis.  With the move we have a lot of extra expenses coming up, so we decided to not go crazy spending money (plus I was kinda hoping to maybe be able to save the money and go to the beach to celebrate once we get down to NC!).  That didn't stop us for getting each other presents!

Since we aren't very good at keeping secrets, we ended up exchanging presents early.  In honor of the 1 year traditional paper anniversary, I got the hubby tickets to the Cardinals v Reds Game on the day of our anniversary.

The benefit of having a holiday anniversary is we will always be off work, so I thought we could enjoy at least one more Cardinals game before we leave the area.

The hubby, being the awesome man he is, surprised me with some wonderful canvas painting from our professional wedding pictures!

I was so very happy and blown away at the amazing job he did.  He must have known I was dying to have a canvas painting and that there was a serious lack of any wedding pictures in our place.  More than that though, the time and effort that went into finding a place to print them and then working with customer service to get the best picture possible.  I am so lucky to have this man!