LOTS o' updates

okay, so it's late and i have so much to say and i haven't written in forever, but lemme quickly hit the high points:

1. we have a wedding photographer... the amazingly talented Jessica Horton who was already booked for our engagement session -- which by the way is in TWO WEEKS!!! -- is now able to be at our wedding as well!!!

2. we met with the pastor who will be officiating the ceremony, Kevin James.  love love LOVE him!!!  premarital counseling was a nerve-wracking thought -- as hard as it may be to believe, i am far from perfect -- but he made us feel completely at ease :)

3. we went over to the farm today to look around again and also to see inside the house (where i haven't been since i was sixteen) and now that the family is (mostly) on board with all of this going down at the "Collins estate" as my mom calls it, i really feel much better about being able to pull this all off... however, the best thing about this weekend...

4. I FOUND MY DRESS!!!!  after MULTIPLE weekends and shops and boutiques and HOURS of trying dresses on, my sisters, myself and my mom went for a 10 AM appointment Saturday morning and we found it!!!  there's no backing out now :)

i hopefully will be back later this week with more details about all the things we've accomplished, but for now, this'll have to do.  good night!!

bridal boot camp

So after a wonderful holiday with my family, and announcing my engagement to the world, it is time to get serious.  And what better motivation is there to lose weight and look amazing than your very own wedding!!  I am not going to post my actual weight on here -- everyone knows you don't ask a lady that!! -- but I am willing to state that I am clinically obese (thanks handy dandy BMI charts!!).  So I guess I should set a couple of weight loss goals.  So my first goal is to lose ten pounds this month... totally doable, right?  I think so.  I also talked to the amazingly talented Jessica Horton today about shooting our engagement photos, possibly in February, so as of right now, that's the first REAL deadline, I suppose.  After all, the camera does add ten pounds, right?  Well, not for this girl!!

Jack and I hiking in Shenandoah National Park -- and a fairly accurate depiction of my current appearance

research...

please don't judge my unmanicured hands... this was the first pic minutes after :)

So, I keep saying that I want to enjoy my engagement.  I mean, after all, that's part of the engagement story :)  And it's also become a running joke between Rory and my brother-in-law, Daniel... "But I thought you were enjoying your engagement?"  Hardee har har...  But I DO want to enjoy my engagement for a little while and not stress about wedding planning.  That being said, I have also already bought a few bridal magazines... but to be honest, they have been stressing me out more than making me excited.  I read in one that the average wedding today costs $35,000!!!  Folks, this is more than my annual salary.  So please explain to me how a hard-working lower-to-average middle class couple is supposed to pay for this "average" wedding? I can confidently state that our wedding will not cost this; we simply can't afford for it to.  I can also confidently state that this is likely one of the many contributors to why our country is in the economic crisis it is in.  Do I want to have a nice wedding?  Yes.  But is it worth going further (because yes, I am in debt -- thanks student loans!!) into debt for?  Absolutely not.  If people would care less about what other people thought about them and about more what is reasonable, we would all be happier and better off.  So that being said, don't expect to take home a digital camera from my wedding... be glad if we give you a bag of Hershey bars and marshmallows :)

Eight years in the making...

after hiding it all summer, our first public outing in 2004

Who would've thought that when Rory and I first met @ camp in 2003 that a year later we'd be dating... and eight years later I'd have a ring?  Apparently, everyone but us... and now away we go!!!