20 Days Away from Blogging
I'm back! And in some ways, I haven't missed writing. It has been a long yet lightening speed twenty days away from the blog. Actually, it has been an incredibly fast, stressful, and wonderful four months with a lot of changes in my life. Because of that, there have been times that writing hasn't felt fun nor inspired, but more or less just forced to keep up and keep moving along until I could get past this busy season. And here I am...on the other side.
Let's sum up my 2018 thus far...
The hubby and I got engaged on Christmas Eve, hosted Christmas at the house, and then traveled over New Years, during which we decided on our wedding date and our general ideas for the wedding knowing we didn't want a long engagement.
January
Within the first two weeks of January I gave a very long, extended notice to my boss that I planned to leave in April. Then, we planned our wedding. We confirmed our pastor, confirmed the church we wanted to use, confirmed the venue we wanted to use, ordered the cake, confirmed our photographer and florist, and began ordering invitations. Personally, I love wedding planning and have helped plan six weddings in the past so the process is not only fun but also a breeze for me. Factor in that the hubs and I are quick to make a decision and keep moving forward and we wrapped it up pretty quick!
I also got the flu (version one, because I managed to get sick with fever two more times between January and April), went dress shopping and picked out my dress and all accessories in an hour or so, ordered my shoes and "something blue" clutch, and began to move some of my remaining stuff from the apartment.
February
In February, I officially moved out of the apartment (bye, bye gorgeous sunsets!) and into separate quarters in my hub's (now our) home. I didn't want to live together before marriage however with our nuptials being two months away I opted not to extend the apartment lease and compromised by moving into a separate room upstairs to maintain our Christian standards. Thus commenced my long commute and longer hours for work. Long days plus very little sleep and keeping up with life in general made for some stressful and exhausted times. We had plenty of events and galas to attend. We completed our pre-marital counseling with our pastor. We confirmed a videographer, met with the church and reception venue, ordered and received our invitations, confirmed my hair & make up artist, ordered some personalized items from Etsy.com, and ordered flower girl dresses and other odds and ends for the wedding. Did I mention my days were excruciatingly long and busy at work too?
March
In March everything seemed to pick up pace even more at work. I was swamped yet focused, tired yet determined. I was interviewing candidates for my replacement, too. The hubs and I reviewed our invite list over and over and over which is very difficult because our desired invite list was significantly over our reception venue's headcount capacity. (It is very difficult to choose who you are not able to invite. If you've gone through this process you understand. If you haven't yet, just wait. It stinks. We wanted so many more loved ones to be there.) We got the invites in the mail! We met with our reception venue and picked our food & drink menus as well. Reconfirmed everything with the florists photographer, bakery, etc. I ordered programs and a "guest book", and picked out photos and frames to display. Things were wrapping up smoothly for the wedding soon to come and response cards were flowing in. Then, on Good Friday I got knocked down by high fever literally in the middle of Good Friday service at church. I got home that evening to almost 102 *F fever and stayed in bed fighting it throughout the entire weekend. I missed out on Easter service and our family gathering at our house. ={
Looking back I am not even quite sure how I maintained a half decent attitude being so stretched thin and tired, but with the good Lord's grace and a lot of encouragement from my friends & family as a reminder that this season of life would be short lived I remained focused on the abundant blessings all around me - future husband being so kind and patient, my amazing boss, job, and colleagues/friends, my future ahead of me, and the opportunity to wake up each day are the very least of what God provided me.
April
In April work was legitimately, overwhelmingly busy coupled with personal life stresses. I transitioned out of my beloved job after eight wonderful years and let me tell you - that was a stressful and SAD experience. I cried. A lot. I LOVED my job, my boss and his gracious wife, and LOVED the people I worked with both in my company and in outside companies. I built relationships with so many of these people throughout the eight years. The separation was tough on my heart. But, given the long commute and hours I had to remain focused and dedicated to put my upcoming marriage first so that I can cultivate a STRONG foundation in our marriage. If you know anything about me, you know how much I value the covenant of a Christian marriage.
The week of the wedding was chaos! Family came into town, scheduled appointments and non scheduled appointments, lists upon lists upon lists, and preparing the hands on things I needed to assemble. Then, on April 14th we got MARRIED! Hooray! The FH (future husband) is now officially my husband, to which you will likely see referenced to as the hubs in future blog posts. We ended up with about 270 people at our reception which was about 70 over capacity (oops!) but our reception was supposed to be a free flowing cocktail evening so I think it worked out OK. We were up late that evening visiting with everyone and then hopped up Sunday morning to host a post-wedding family brunch at our home for about 65 people. By late Sunday evening we were exhausted, drank some wine with take out food, and opened gifts before turning in. Monday was a tiring rush of errands and packing before we departed that evening for our honeymoon.
To say we were exhausted is an understatement, but what a blessing it all was. Our honeymoon to Italy was nothing short of incredible and I'll share more about that later. If you followed along with me on Instagram (@rlbrittain) you hopefully saw my IG stories as we went along as well as some photos I shared. After two weeks away with nothing but Italian food, we were happy to come home to Tex-Mex (viva guacamole!). We just can't quite shake it. ;)
So - thank you all for your patience as I've posted less during the past months as well as been completely off the grid for a bit. I plan to pick up the pace now that I'm back and adjusting to married life.
Posts I will share soon in the coming weeks: wedding planning, details on our wedding & vendors, our honeymoon recap, recipes I have lined up to cook this week and next, and other fun stuff I have in mind on a list I've been jotting down for a while now.
I hope you all have had a wonderful April and are ready for summer as we enter into May!!! Can you believe that summer is almost here? I don't even know what to think about it except I am sooo close to the Christmas mid-year countdown in June I can almost taste the peppermint bark. ;)
I'll be back soon and will post on my regular schedule next week. As for today, I'll be headed out across town to pick up this (wedding gift) little guy!
Ciao!
XOXO
