Busy, Busy!

Well.. I've been away from the blog for a little over a month now, but I promise it is all for good reasons.  Completely nonwedding related, but good reasons. 

Reason #1: I have been participating in a very lengthy, stressful and frustrating job hunt over the last month or so.  I can't begin to tell you the frustration that goes into hunting for a job when you know you only have a 2 month window to find one or you are stuck without a job until you can hunt again the next spring/summer.  It caused me to go a tad bit crazy, if you want me to be honest.  I emailed no less than 100 principals, participated in several interviews, and had just about given up hope.  I went to a final interview at a school district just outside of town and literally fell in love with the people.  The school is small, but wonderful!  They have smartboards, up to date computers, and wonderfully big classrooms.  I left the interview with a lot of confidence and a secure feeling that this was the place I wanted to be.  July 4th I got a phone call from the principal offering me the kindergarten teaching position!  So, yay!  After all of the stress and crying, I got what is a wonderful position, teaching my dream grade at an awesome school!  Can't beat that.

Reason #2:  I have been a bit sick lately.  I have had sort of a chronic illness going on the last few months, and while I wont go into detail about what was wrong, it really had me on edge.  As a laid off teacher with not a lot of income, insurance just hasn't been something I can afford on my own.  Thankfully though, after some home remedies and a few conversations with my primary care physician, I am feeling much better and am pretty sure its over.  I will admit though, I am looking forward to the insurance that comes along with my new teaching position.  You can bet I plan to get a full check up the second it goes into effect. 

Reason #3:  WE MOVED!  Ok, not like out of state or anything, but we moved into a new apartment I am pretty much in love with.  The last few weeks have really focused on packing and getting everything ready to move over here.  Now that we are officially in our new and first home together, I am incredibly excited about unpacking, getting everything organized, and just making it a great place for us to spend the next 2 or so years of our lives.  This will be the first place we live together when we are married too, so I think this apartment will have a very special place in my heart.  Can't wait to make memories in it. 

Well, now that for the most part I am much more stressfree, I promise I will get back to blogging about the wedding and all of that jazz!  I'm so excited to share with you all everything we have gotten done, decisions we had made, and some special details about a very important shopping trip! 

Inspiration in the WWW

After choosing our wedding date, it was time to figure out what type of wedding we were both wanting.  I love summer weddings!  There is so much room to play with color and really create something that has a lot of energy. There are some beautiful summer color combinations, too.  

Red and Aqua

(Source)

Yellow and Gray

(Source)

Pink and Orange

(Source)

or my personal favorite (other than the look we have decided to go with), light pink mixed with some creams 

(Source)

All of these color combinations are so beautiful, but none of them were us.  None of them screamed our wedding like I wanted them too.  After researching colors and exploring many websites, I realized I had even researched my favorite color yet.  Why on earth had it not occured to me to make it our main color?  Couldn't I use a color I already loved as a base, and then add other secondary colors to that to make it richer and more colorful?  Of course I could.  So I then started collecting some pictures using my favorite color.....

Purple! I found so many beautiful pictures, and I loved them all! 

(Source)

Once purple became a clear choice for our main color, I started looking for other colors to pair with it.  I was drawn to creams, greens, light pink and maybe a pop of bright pink.  My iphoto became filled with pictures like these....

(source)

So there you have it.  The start of our decor inspiration.  It has evolved some, but this gives you an idea of what we are thinking about.  We are still so far out, I am sure it will change again, but I'm pretty sure purple is our color!  Now here's hoping I can turn this purple idea in my head into a beautiful and classy reality. 

Choosing a Date

Well, as everyone knows, in order to plan a wedding you must first choose the date you want to get married on. Sounds like a simple task right? Just pull out the calendar, look at the different dates, and pick one that sounds good to you both. Easy peasy... yeah not so much. There is so much more that goes into picking a date than I ever thought.

The first thing we had to consider was my occupation. As a teacher (or at least someone trying to be a teacher, as I currently am), it really limits the times of year you can get married. From August to May, school is a teacher's life. The only real times where you have a break are Fall Break (I'll explain later why this isn't an option), Winter Break and Spring Break. I'll be honest. Winter Break sounded really appealing to me. A part of me began to fantasize a bit about what it could possibly look like.

(source)

 These fantasies led me to think about other considerations we need to make.  

 

We had to get down to brass tax... also known as money. We had to take into consideration how much money we will feasibly be able to save.  That also cut a lot of our options down.  Teachers in Oklahoma aren't exactly paid a fortune, so we had to be honest about what extra money we would have to spend.  We decided it was best to give ourselves at least a year to plan and to save.  We have figured that by summer/fall 2012, we will be able to save enough money to pay for the wedding we both want.  That pretty much cut out all winter and spring weddings because we wouldn't be able to have one until late 2012 to 2013 and to be honest, being engaged a year and a half to 2 years just didn't sound too appealing.  Too much time to plan and change my mind about every single element of the wedding.  Not a good idea!

A fall wedding was something we both entertained for a bit.  I always dreamed of a fall wedding.  Beautiful oranges, red, and golds, with candles on all of the tables, much like this

source

The weather is usually gorgeous here in Oklahoma in October, and its one of the only months in the year where you can potentially have an outdoor wedding without panicking about rain or some other type of awful weather.  We could get married around Fall Break, and take a couple of extras days off for our honeymoon.  Sounds absolutely perfect, right?  There's only 1 small problem with having a fall wedding...... our friends are huge football fans and so are we.  Sure we could schedule our wedding around an off weekend for our Alma Mater

but I'm pretty sure most of our friends are fans of that other team that shall remain nameless, and would not be happy campers if we were to schedule our wedding the same weekend as one of their big games.   With two teams to take into consideration, we decided it was safer to just choose a time of year when football was not played. 

After ruling out anything before next summer, and canceling out a fall wedding in favor of keeping our football loving friends happy, it was time to consider when in the summer we wanted to have our wedding.  We figured that June would be the most expensive and busiest month of the year to get married.  We didn't want to risk having to settle on vendors we were only lukewarm about because we were competing with so many other couples.  That left.... 

After looking over our calendars, we decided on July 14, 2012.  No conflicts between birthdays, other people's anniversary, or holidays.  Its just our own little day.  Its going to be hot, but luckily we are planing a wedding entirely indoors (more on venue later!), so we aren't too worried about the heat. 

With the first of many big decisions made, it was time to start contacting venues to figure out where this summer wedding of ours was going to take place and figuring out what we wanted it to look like! 

A Little Direction

From the time I started this blog on, it has been such a hodge podge of my thoughts and feelings. I never really took it in a specific direction because I never really had much to share with the world. No, I'm not saying my life was boring, but I really didn't have anything going on that was blog reading material. Like you all really wanted to read about my weekend trips to Bed Bath and Beyond, or my graduate classes.

Well, ladies and gentleman, I finally have something to talk about! I am getting married in a little less than 14 months, and I have decided I need an out lit for ideas, frustrations that go along with wedding planning, and just my pure and utter joy of getting to marry this insanely awesome man. I appreciate any advice or post ideas you all can give me to make the blog worth reading! So, I hope that you all can bare with me as I share with you my journey from being Miss Ecton to Mrs. Kuck. So exciting!

A Love Story

Once upon a time, there was a  boy....

and a girl...

The boy and girl grew up in the same city and went to the same high school...

but they didn't meet there.

They went to the same college too...

 But still, their paths never crossed.

The boy enjoyed having a good time with his friends.....

and so did the girl....

Then on the girl's 25th birthday, they met while out with friends here....

They thought the other was cute, but were pretty shy, so it would be a whole more month before they even saw each other again.  

Then, one Sunday Funday, 

the boy and girl exchanged phone numbers as friends that would call each other when a group of people went out.

A few days later, on Cinco De Mayo, the boy and girl made plans to meet up with a big group of friends to celebrate at....

While listening to this guy....

(and this is the actual night we were there, so we are right behind the camera guy!)

the boy sneakily grabbed the girls hand and for the rest of the night they talked and got to know each other better.

The next night, they went to a baseball game and realized they had a little more than just a crush on each other.  They hung out till entirely too late with friends....

From that point on, the boy and girl were inseparable....

They hung out with friends....

They cheered on their Alma Mater at all of the football games...

and celebrated their first Christmas together in style...

 She realized how handsome he was in a suit....

They went and cheered on OSU at the Alamo Bowl...

and spent their first New Year's Eve with the girl's best friend in San Antonio.  

The boy was there for the girl while she spent a lot of time with family here....

 

and hugged her whenever she felt like she was going to cry, or scream or both.

She felt so happy to have him come celebrate holidays with her family and to be invited to celebrate with his family and get to play with his nephews...

The girl had already realized she was very much so in love with the boy.

Finally, it was their one year anniversary.  The boy and girl went to dinner at a very romantic restaurant...

and after dinner, at the girl's nagging, they went for a walk....

 They stopped and read anniversary cards they had bought for each other.  While the girl read the card the boy had gotten for her, he pulled the ring sneakily out of his pocket.

The boy was so nervous, he forgot to get down on one knee.  The girl was shocked as he asked her to marry him.....

The girl yelled "Are you serious?!?!  Oh my gosh! Seriously?!"  Before finally getting out a huge YES!  

After much crying...

the boy and girl went to tell their families.  Finally after many hours, they met up with some dear friends to celebrate and take it all in....

The boy and girl decided to enjoy their engagement and can't wait to see where their love story goes from here!

Moving On

 So I have had a really difficult week and sometimes it just helps to type.  I think the stress of the last month has just really started to hit me, and I didn't really know how to handle it.  I found myself crying at the most ridiculous things (songs on the radio should not make someone cry!), getting my feelings hurt over things I will never be able to change, and getting angry over things that I don't even understand why I let it affect me.  I realize that there are things I have to let go that I have been holding on to, and that it is time to focus on the things that matter now, not the things that once did.  I have so much good in my life right now.  I have a quirky and wonderful family that always keeps me on my toes and supports me, a dad that is getting better everyday (even if we do have set backs that are scary), a boyfriend that despite all my flaws and undeniable weirdness loves me, and friends that I know will always be there, rain or shine.  I just have entirely too much good to focus on the bad.  So I'm waking up tomorrow with a new outlook.  I'm going to be the best person, daughter, sister, girlfriend, friend, etc. that I can possibly be, and know that even when things are hard or something hurts or I feel like I am going to pull my hair out from the stress that is overtaking me, I did everything I could to stay true to myself and those I love.  That's all a person really can do I guess. 

On a lighter note, I cried for good reason last night.  Anyone that loves The Office as much as I do and witnessed last night's amazing event, you will know why.  I'm including a video for those that missed or want to relive it.  Even if you aren't an Office fan, this was beautiful. I can't even imagine how the show will go on without Michael Scott.  Enjoy!

Road Tripping!

I can barely contain my excitement right now!  Mike and I have been talking about taking a real vacation for months!  We have talked about going on a cruise, going someplace warm in general,  blowing the budget and going to New York (ok really it was just me talking about going there, but a girl can dream right?).  Well, we FINALLY made a decision!  The boyfriend and I will be road tripping to this beautiful city........

Oh yes!  You are right!  That is CHICAGO!  I have always wanted to visit and now I get to spend Memorial Day weekend 2011 there!  The plan is to leave Wednesday evening the 25th (after work and all of that good stuff) and make it part way there before stopping.  Then we will finish the drive on the 26th and check in to our fancy hotel.....

before running around the city!  We will spend Thursday through Monday exploring and taking in the sights and then come back home to Oklahoma on Tuesday.  The hotel was really inexpensive and still not scuzzy, and driving was just a cheaper option for us.  Even with the amount we will pay to park and on gas, we'll still be coming in almost 300 less than if we had booked a flight.  No worries, though.  I get email updates from Southwest now, so if a killer flight deal comes up, I will take advantage. 

So there you go.  My exciting vacation plans!  I am definitely up for any Chicago advice anyone can give me (Kendra I know you have to have some!  You love this place).  So please, if you know of good restaurants we should eat at, sights we should see, or other random knowledge you can bestow on me, please do!  I am all ears!  Anyone else have any fun vacation plans coming up?