Thoughts from a week out - March 13, 2009

A week from today, I will be in south Alabama for my wedding rehearsal. That's pretty weird.

Yesterday was my first real, big freak out day. I guess everything added up and felt like it was collapsing on me. I was majorly stressed to the point where my boss told me to take today off. I ended up going to lunch with Bobby, and he did a great job of making me laugh and forget about all my worries and the things that needed to be done. Definitely affirmed a lot of the reasons I want to marry the guy. He's pretty great.

And after that, everything just didn't seem so bad. I'm not really even sure why I got so stressed out, except maybe nerves and just feeling a little overwhelmed. Having today off helps, too, because we're cleaning my apartment in preparation for the bachelorette party tomorrow night and going to the courthouse to get our marriage license.

I can't remember if I posted this before, but we also bid on a house and will find out Monday if we are actually going to get it or not. Not knowing the outcome of that has sort of added some stress, too, and if we get it, we have to fill out a bunch of paperwork next week. And if we don't, well, we're going to be pretty disappointed. But, as Bobby pointed out, something better for us will come along if we don't get this one.

I'm looking forward to my bachelorette party, too. Ashley's hosting it at my apartment, and we're just going to have a PJ party with ice cream and movies and pizza. I like all of these things. And I'm excited about some time with the girls. I feel like I haven't gotten enough of that lately. Lauren's coming into town early to hang out, so that'll be fun. Bobby's going to cook lunch for us.

Then on Monday my office is holding a small get-together for us, too. We're going out for drinks at the Cypress Inn. Should be nice.

The rest of next week will be dedicated to getting together all the little, last-minute stuff, packing for the wedding, packing for France. I've done a little shopping for France to get a few new clothing items and hope to do some more!

OK, now I really need to stop putting off cleaning. I'm so excited that the wedding is (finally) almost here!

Quick house update - Feb. 28, 2009

So the house we wanted sold a couple of days before we were planning to start paperwork on it.

This was a disappointment, but we're looking on the bright side. It means there has to be something better out there for us that may not even be on the market yet. We looked at some houses Thursday with Tricia. I liked a couple of them pretty well, but Bobby said he wasn't overly impressed. Afterward, we decided that we're putting the house hunt on hold until after the wedding. I think this is a very wise decision for us, because we're stressed enough without adding that to the mix!

So the hunt will continue, just not this month! But Tricia says a lot of houses usually come onto the market in spring, so I feel pretty optimistic!

No house - Feb. 19

The house we had decided on sold earlier this week. Bugger. Well, back to square one.

The countdown total has moved to weeks!

So we're at less than five weeks to the wedding at this point, and I think we're both sort of at the point where we're excited but also ready for it to be over with!

I've gotten almost all of our invitations out, which was a huge victory for me, since I made all of them with some help from my matron of honor. I've still got a few to mail and some to hand deliver at work. I actually need to make about three or four more, which I'll hopefully get done this week.

The big stress of the past week or two has been that we didn't have a pastor! We started our premarital counseling sessions with the pastor at our church here in Tuscaloosa, and I guess we both sort of thought he would also do the wedding. Except that when we finally asked him, it turned out he couldn't because he'll be in Jamaica! So the second person we asked also couldn't do it, then plans to ask the pastor at the church where we're getting married weren't working out great either. But today was the breakthrough ... an old friend of mine who's a pastor at a church outside of Dothan said he can do it! He may not be able to make it to the rehearsal, but I figure getting a stand-in won't be a problem. We're driving down to meet with him Saturday to discuss the ceremony.

The most fun news of late, I suppose, is that my family threw us a shower a couple of weekends ago. My oldest sister, Amy, put it together and did a fantastic job. She hosted it at the Shorter Mansion in Eufaula, had the food catered in. It was all very, very nice, even though we were a little out of our element. We got a lot of really awesome wedding gifts!

Our other exciting news is that I think we may have decided on a house! We're hoping to meet with our Realtor Thursday to discuss the details and timing. We're planning to try to close near the beginning of May, which would give us almost two full months to move in. The house is in a good neighborhood, and it's really cute. It has a workshop out back that Bobby's planning to turn into an office and a really big master bedroom. Really hoping it works out, because I think we probably like it best out of everything we've seen, with the possible exception of one house someone else bought. And with the new federal economic stimulus package, we will be able to get an $8,000 tax credit next year for purchasing a house this calendar year.

All right, that's all I've got for now, I think. I've seriously got to go to bed!

Honeymoon plans

So, those plans to go to Savannah and Charleston flew out the window.

Because we're going to Paris!

We're extremely excited! We booked the trip earlier this week, so it's absolutely official. We never would have been able to afford it if the insurance settlement from Bobby's accident, which happened more than a year ago, hadn't come through.

We will be leaving the day after the wedding (on March 22) and coming back March 29. Expect to see lots of fabulous photos!

Welcome!

Well, we'll see how this works out, but this hopefully will be a blog dedicated to Bobby's and my married life.

A little background:

Bobby and I met in summer 2002 when I interned at the paper where he was a reported in his hometown, Enterprise, Ala. We hung out a little bit that summer, played tennis, maybe watched a movie, then I moved back to college and he stayed where he was. We kept in touch, and at some point, he asked me to date him. And I said no.

Not too long after that, Bobby moved to Wyoming for a new job, and I stayed right where I was, working on my communication degree at the University of Alabama. We were out of touch for a while during this time, with him way out west and me sort of growing up and learning more about myself.

He moved to Georgia and, at some point, made contact with me again. I sort of tried to keep my distance, because I didn't want to give him the impression that I was interested in dating. We ended up meeting up in December 2005 in Dothan, which is near both our hometowns, to watch a movie (The Producers). There had always been a rapport (a chemistry, if you prefer) between us, and seeing each other after not being face to face for about three years definitely sparked something, I think. But still, I was in Tuscaloosa and wrapped up in college life, and he was in Georgia, working at a paper and winning some crazy amount of awards.

We continued to talk via AIM and occasionally on the phone, but I guess we didn't see each other again until sometime around May 2007. Bobby had just moved back to the area after a tornado devastated Enterprise a few weeks before. I was on my way to work a retreat in Andalusia, and he asked if I wanted to grab dinner on my way back.

Well, needless to say, the chemistry was still there. I remember hugging him and making some comment about how it felt good or just seemed to fit. And that's what doomed us. ;)

The next few weeks we were pretty much on the phone every night, until finally we decided we were being idiots and might as well just date. We call the day we met in Andalusia our official dating anniversary -- May 12 -- and we went on our first "real" date a few weeks after that.

I moved back down to the Wiregrass in August 2007 to be closer to him, and we even ended up working at the same newspaper for a while. He moved to Demopolis, I think in March 2008, and that made life much more difficult, but we made it work.

Then in May 2008, almost exactly a year after we started dating, he proposed. Our parents met for the first time, and he asked me in front of them.

In July, I moved back to Tuscaloosa for numerous reasons: I missed my friends and church family, it was closer to him, and I got a wonderful new job. And finally, near the beginning of September, Bobby was able to move to Tuscaloosa, too. It's the first time we've actually lived in the same town, and it is WONDERFUL!

We are getting married March 21, 2009, in my grandmother's church in Clio, Ala., and I can hardly wait. I am learning that I hate wedding planning, but registering for gifts is fun!

So that's us. Hopefully we'll be doing a lot more blogging here in the future!