Our Wedding

So I know one of my New Year Resolutions was to blog more and I haven’t been keeping it, but I have a pretty valid excuse...  I got married on January 14, 2012!!  The wedding was just perfect!!  I have been stressing and working very hard about planning this wedding for about a year now and it was so wonderful to see it all come together exactly how I wanted it!!

Here are some pictures I wanted to share with you all:

This is our first reveal.

This is our wedding party. 

Here are some of the details of our décor.

I went antiquing to collect all of the mason jars and other vases and candle holders on all of the tables.  On Style Me Pretty, I saw another wedding had tied their napkins into bow ties and I had to do that for my own wedding.  And for the table numbers, I wanted to do, “When Chris was 1, he did….”  But it was going to require some research to figure out stuff we liked when we were younger, so I did places that are meaningful to us instead as the table names.  However, none of this would have come together without the help of our lovely wedding coordinator Mary at Bringing It Together!  She is amazing and beyond helpful!!

Here is the head table.

And here is my favorite detail of all, the cake toppers!

As you can see from the head table and the cake toppers, it was really important to us to incorporate the puppies into the wedding since both venues did not allow fur babies.  I am so in love with those cake toppers!!  They turned out to look exactly like us and the puppies!  You can get one here. 

You can see more pictures on our lovely photographer’s blog here.  And in case you were wondering, our photographer was D Coleman Photography!  David and Sarah are just wonderful to work with and take beautiful photographs! 

What do you all think?  Did you or will you make a lot of the décor elements involved in your wedding?  Or did you rent all the décor?

New Year, New Resolutions

So after a long hiatus, I am back.  And I have some major goals for this year!  You always hear that writing your goals down makes you more likely to achieve them, so here we go:

Personal Goals:

Walk the dogs at least once a day… even when it’s cold out.  Like blogging, when life gets busy, I run out of time to take the pups for a walk, especially since it gets dark so early and its cold out.  They don’t seem to mind, but I would feel better if they got to go for more walks. 

Make my bed every day.  I had this goal a few years ago and I did it for about a year, but then got out of the habit of it.  Something about walking into a room with a made bed and going to sleep in a bed that is made just makes your life so much more peaceful.  I want this peacefulness back. 

Be a better blogger.  I am going to post 2-3 times a week.  I enjoy reading other people’s blogs; in fact, some people, I look forward to their posts:  Young House Love , Bower Power , and Serendipity’s Guide to Savings .  Hopefully, once I become a better blogger, other people will like reading my blog as well. 

Workout at least 3-4 hours a week.  I used to work out for an hour a day and I used to train for a marathon.  I do not expect to get back to running 50 miles a week, I am way too busy for that, but I would like to feel better about myself and feel healthier, so I think 3-4 hours a week is a good starting point for that.

Read at least 6 books.  I love reading, but due to wedding planning, graduate school, and two puppies, my leisure reading has vanished.  I want to start reading again.  I have a to read list that is miles long and would love to tackle this.  Six books won’t even make a dent in my to read list, but it is realistic and will hopefully get the ball rolling for more leisure reading. 

Financial Goals:

Keep saving for my car.  Last year, I found out that my parents will not let me trade in the car they bought for me in high school; they are going to be keeping it.  Needless to say, that really hurt my plans of purchasing a new car.  I was banking on that $6,000 trade in value to put towards my new car.  So now I am putting away $200 a month to be able to put down a significant down payment.

Save an extra $1,000 in 6 months.  I think I will try to accomplish this by being more frugal and selling a bunch of stuff I no longer need.  In 2011, I spent a lot of towards our wedding and on unnecessary things because I had my first job that actually paid a decent amount.  This year, I would like to focus more on savings for our new house and our future.