The Holiday Story

The Holiday Story

Our house was full of decorations, the Christmas smelling candles were aglow, the warm fuzzy blankets and socks were brought out from storage, the Harry Connick Jr. Pandora station was on blast..it’s like a magical, cozy, wonderful world from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Everyone seems a little bit more cheerful. Typically, the day after Christmas (much like the day after my birthday..) I’m bummed. I have to wait a whole year for this fun month filled with holiday parties and seeing friends and family.

As a bride to be, here is what I am currently feeling 3 days after Christmas:

Round one of holidays is complete! Christmas is over! Wahhooo! Don’t take that statement the wrong way. I absolutely love Christmas, but it can certainly be exhausting. This Christmas was absolutely special in its own right: the first (and only) Christmas that I will be someone’s fiancé, the Christmas that it snowed, the Christmas I got my first Michael Kors watch and purses….but I am grateful that things can get back to normal.  Granted, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day are coming up, which has created a little bit of preparation stress, but since we are spending it at the cabin at the lake this year for a nice 4 day holiday, I am hoping to get some much needed R&R done. The weather is supposed to be extremely cold (possibly could see some snow, which might be nice if I can stay indoors), so I’m thinking a fireplace, my mom’s amazing homemade hot chocolate, and a nice book would make for a fantastic mini – vacation.

Here are a few differences I noticed this holiday season between my fiancé and I that required compromising:

Decorating. When it comes to decorating, the fiancé likes tons of decorations all over the place. I, on the other hand, think that this looks like Christmas threw up all over the house. I hate clutter. I don’t think there has to be something in every corner, in fact, I would prefer it didn’t. We ended up compromising. We had a ton of holiday items, but I got to pick where most of them were placed. I was more than ready to take them down this year, in fact, most of them were taken down the day after Christmas and the house already feels more comfortable and my anxiety level is down.

Formality. When I think of the holidays and the parties, events, etc. that you go to, I think of it all being formal. Nice dresses or sweaters, cocktail parties, classical holiday music playing in the background. The fiancé thinks more “tacky Christmas sweater party” with Elvis Christmas music blaring from Pandora. I’m realizing now, there is plenty of room for both of our Christmas traditions.

I have also been starting to think about how things will change in the upcoming year. Next holiday season, I will be a married woman! Shortly after that, we will be growing a family together. I have been on the lookout for some new holiday traditions that we can start once we are married. I am loving the tradition that people do with a new pair of pajamas, new Christmas mugs, hot chocolate mix, and a Christmas movie to watch on Christmas Eve, but since we typically celebrate Christmas with Charles’ family on Christmas Eve, I might have to switch this tradition to Christmas Eve’s Eve.

This may sound terrible, but I am always looking for people I haven’t shown my ring to yet. Yes, I’m guilty. So is every bride to be out there (don’t say you’re not or I will call you on your lie). This New Years Eve, we are going to party at a close friend and “lake neighbor’s” house and I cannot wait to show off the ring and share the proposal story! For bride to be’s like me, I think this is allowed (as long as your ring is clean and shiny!)

I’m sure I will have interesting stories and escapades after this weekend, and especially after dress shopping in a week!  Until then…

Xoxo

Michele

The Engagement Photo Story

I have two friends who have recently gotten married (and by recently, I’m talking they have gotten married within the past month). Coincidentally, both of these blushing brides have had photographer catastrophes.  Double coincidentally, they both got married on the same day..

To protect these brides identities, let’s just call them Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

Exhibit A’s disaster: The photographer of Exhibit A had a young and an inexperienced photographer that was also this young bride’s friend. Everything was going perfectly. The engagement photos were gorgeous, the save the dates looked amazing, and so who would have thought disaster would strike during the most important segment for the photographer: the actual wedding. The new photographer double booked herself for the night before the wedding (she was supposed to go to the church to figure out lighting and go to the rehearsal dinner and make sure she had the lighting figured out at the reception hall). She never showed up, which made the bride very angry. She called the photographer, who then said that she had “double booked” and since they were friends she knew that they would understand. The bride didn’t understand. Not one bit. Who would expect her to? She finally let it go, thinking “as long as everything turns out ok tomorrow, we are in the clear.” Well the wedding comes around the next day, the lighting was so completely off you couldn’t even see the couple’s faces in half of the pictures from the reception OR the wedding, and the photographer was trying so hard to play with the lighting during the reception that she missed half of the important events.

WOW. Awful. Nightmare.

Exhibit B: Exhibit B had a photographer that was not exactly a friend, but was an acquaintance.  This acquaintance double booked her wedding day and didn’t tell her. She showed up to the wedding and stayed for 45 minutes and then left.

Shorter story, but WORSE!

I’m sure there are a million small things that can go wrong on your wedding day, in fact I know several things can, but to have a photographer mess up the way these did is outrageous.

I’m so glad I have the best photographers around doing my pictures (you can view their website here:  http://www.beatyphotography.com/blog/ ). My biggest issues for planning my engagement pictures were things such as “Honey, should I wear my hair straight or with a few curls??” or “sweets, you can NOT wear that for our pictures.”  Locations weren’t too hard for me. I’m not sure about all of you, but we don’t have too many options for good picture places around where I live, so we chose places that reminded us of good times. We thought about our interests as a couple and chose a few locations and ideas that matched us and were somewhat significant to our relationship.

First location: A local Country Club with the best golf course around. Charles is a golfer so naturally taking pictures at this beautiful golf course was a must.  This is where is did our “dressy pictures.” I am not a dressy person, so we kept it more low key, but still nice. We had a lot of fun here taking pictures at this location.

Second location: A local park which conveniently had Christmas lights up due to the time of year. (We wanted to do a horse drawn carriage ride but go figure, the only night they weren’t running the horse drawn carriages before Christmas was the day of our engagement pictures…). Our photographers hadn’t photographed at this park when the lights were going off before, so we all got to have a blast. Plus, we got to bring our puppies to this location and sneak in a family portrait. Those dogs are like children to us. If you can’t relate, then you probably have no soul.

My recommendation? Pick a place that is meaningful, and pick a place that’s fun! How many people go to the park and play with the Christmas lights for their engagement photos? Not many, I’m sure. As previously mentioned, I’m not the typical bride, we aren’t the typical couple, and I’m sure we don’t do things even close to the way you’re supposed to. Also, be yourself! If you goof off during the pictures and have fun with each other, the pictures will look great! Posed pictures look stiff, look like you love each other and let the pictures reflect your relationship.

Here is just one of the gorgeous pictures taken by my wonerful photographers. More to follow when we receive them, we just took them yesterday so bear with me!

xoxo

Michele

The First Story

Here it is, ladies and gentleman. The months we have all been waiting for. We’re getting married! It’s every little girls dream to marry her prince and live happily ever after. Every little girl tried on her mother’s wedding dress and made herself a scrapbook of her fantasy wedding down to every miniscule detail.

Not me.

I wanted to swim in the pool, play in the yard, or watch a movie. Never plan my wedding. Not having any sort of ideas on what I wanted for our wedding or any sort of vision makes things more difficult from the get go.  

After the daze wore off of Charles (the fiancé) and me from the proposal (you can view the proposal on our wedding website, www.charlesandmichele.com), the inescapable wave of panic set in. What is to come in the next several months of our lives before the wedding?

·         “We have to pick a color scheme?”

·         “What do you mean we can’t elope in Vegas, mom?”

·         “Why do we have to take a sex ed class?”

·         “So our dogs can’t be the flower girls?”

·         “What the heck is a sand ceremony?”

Listen, girls and guys. I have no wedding planning experience whatsoever. I hardly know what I want in a wedding, I just want it to “look nice” and I want people to have a good time. I know this is not the status quo for typical women, but if you know me, I’m not like typical women, and if you don’t know me, you’ll find out that I’m not like typical women.

If you’re like me, are new to the wedding planning scene, are in for some laughs (because I’m sure I’ll create many with my tales of confusion and wedding havoc) then stay tuned. My plan is to log all of my wild wedding experiences with you all, and see how it all pans out in the end. Here’s to wedding season and to the brides that don’t have a clue!

 xoxo

Michele