We're Moving to Georgia!

I have been sitting on this news for over a week and I was seriously about to EXPLODE not telling anyone. Now that the t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted, I can finally tell the world!

The Professor has accepted a position at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, GA and we could not be happier. Starting this fall, he’ll be teaching in the Economics department while continuing his research.

We knew back in January, when The Professor had his first interview in Boston, that GCSU would be a good fit for him. It’s a small, public liberal arts college in a medium sized town, close(ish) to a big city. In case you’re not close to a map, we’ll be 30 miles from Macon and about 90 miles south of Atlanta. The school colors are blue and green (both of which I look fantastic in!) and there are lots of opportunities for both of us to get involved on campus.

The Professor spent two days in Milledgeville back in January, but I’ve only seen the town through a Google search. We’re planning a trip down there in April and I cannot wait to check it out. I’m so excited that this move will most likely be our last and that we can finally start to plant some roots together in a town we can call home.

Source

In case you’re wondering what I’m going to do in Milledgeville, the answer is a big “I don’t know yet.” I have started looking online, and I’ve found a few exciting opportunities that I can explore, but there is not a plan of action in place yet. Since we don’t plan to move until after the wedding, I have plenty of time to find the perfect fit.

To celebrate the contract signing, we invited our parents and siblings to join us for a dinner party in Danville. Plus, I wanted to celebrate that I had finally finished unpacking just in time to start packing again haha.

We all got to watch The Professor put the final sticker on the map and it was a really special moment. I am SO PROUD of him and know he will be an amazing professor. He’s worked so hard and I’m glad I’m here to watch him fulfill his dream.

Now that the hard part is over, all he has to do is defend his dissertation and we will be headed south! Easy-Peasy, right??

We Booked Our Honeymoon!

We are only 4 months away from the big day! We made some BIG decisions in February – the most exciting decision was where to take our HONEYMOON.

We spent a long time deciding on whether or not to take a honeymoon. Newsflash: THEY ARE EXPENSIVE. I talked to a few of my close friends – some who had taken a honeymoon and some who had not. They all gave me really great advice and ultimately, we decided that we wanted the experience of a honeymoon and that it would be worth the money to take the trip now instead of looking back and wishing we had taken the trip.

A long time ago, we decided that if we were going to take a honeymoon that we wanted to book our trip at a Sandals resort. We wanted tropical, beach, activities, and relaxation all in one. We also knew that we didn’t want to worry about a single thing once we got on the plane. All inclusive was the way to go for us.

We spent FOREVER exploring all of the Sandals resorts online. The Professor has already been to Jamaica so it was easy for us to cross that location off the list. We knew that we wanted to do a few excursions and we wanted to experience them together (The Professor has already seen the sites in Jamaica).

Seriously – all of the resorts looked amazing. We ultimately ended up choosing St. Lucia. Our resort has a bunch of restaurants, bars (including swim up bars), and excursions and activities for us to do.

Check out these pictures I pulled from the resort website:

We haven’t picked our excursions and activities, but these are two that we are looking at:

Hiking the waterfall

Hiking an active volcano!

Another February Wedding Success: All bridesmaid and junior bridesmaid dresses have been ordered! Check out how beautiful my cousins and sister-in-law look in their dresses! The socks really make the outfits perfect. 

 My bridesmaids are wearing navy and my junior bridesmaids are wearing this pink.

By the next time I update you on the wedding, my wedding dress will be here and I hope to have the invitations ordered and centerpieces made. Stay tuned!

Tell me your favorite place to vacation.

What were your wedding colors?

Engaged Encounter Weekend

A few weeks back, Justin and I attended a Louisville Catholic Engaged Encounter weekend at Mt. Saint Francis. If you’re keeping up, we are both Catholic and we’re getting married in the Catholic Church. My dad’s cousin (Father Matthew) is a priest and he is going to marry us which makes our day extra special.

The Catholic Church has some requirements for couples getting married and both Father Matthew and the priest at my parent’s church recommended the Engaged Encounter Weekend to us. We had heard mixed reviews about the weekend and with our busy schedules we debated whether or not we wanted to attend. {Obviously} we decided to attend the retreat.

We had to arrive at the retreat center by 7:30am on a Saturday morning. We checked into our (separate) rooms and the retreat started at 8:00. I was expecting just a few other couples to be there so I was a tad overwhelmed when I learned there were 24 other couples on the retreat with us. Almost everyone was around our age and most of them had the same look of anticipation /intrigue/tiredness on their face that we did. The first thing we did is turn off our phones so unfortunately I don’t have lots of low quality iphone glamourous pictures to share with you.

There were two couples (married 17 years and 9 years) and a priest leading our retreat. I was worried that the retreat might get a little “churchy,” but it never really did (except for 1 discussion and mass to wrap up the weekend). We were given a booklet upon arrival that had an outline of subjects and some questions/thought starters for each topic.

The theme of the retreat is, “A wedding is a day…a marriage is a lifetime” and everything revolved around how to build a deep, meaningful marriage. The flow was pretty much the same for the entire weekend. A talk given by one of the couples, we had a bit of alone time to write in our notebooks, and couple time to discuss our answers.

We covered 17 different topics over the course of the weekend. 16 of those topics were incredibly relevant and I was so impressed at how the retreat leaders opened up and shared their stories with us. We got SO. MUCH. out of the weekend and I’m so glad we both went in with open minds. A piece of advice we got was, you’ll get out of the weekend what you put in. We talked a lot about prayer and spirituality and how to incorporate those in our marriage which is not something we talk about on the regular. There were topics on romance and kids, finances and in-laws, and everything in-between. We were both completely open and usually ran out of time to finish our conversations! I’m not gonna lie – we both cried at one point. It was really cool to be able to write down all of our answers and share them with each other. I’m really glad we had to write stuff down so that we can go back and read it later.

So to wrap it up (before I get too mushy and weepy), if you’re engaged, ATTEND THE ENGAGED ENCOUNTER WEEKEND. It is a jam packed, emotional, exciting 31 hours and I would happily go back next weekend if they would let me. Even if you think you’ve already “talked about everything,” I promise that you will leave the retreat feeling even closer to your significant other than you ever thought possible.

I could write another 600 words and STILL not be finished talking about our weekend and how fantastic it was. If you want additional info/details, send me a note and I’d be happy to share.

Engaged/Married people: What type of pre-martial prep did you participate in?

What is your advice for a long & happy marriage?

For more info and to find a retreat near you, CLICK HERE.

The Gift of Time

I have a big announcement and I am so excited to tell you! 

On Saturday, I am moving to lil ole Danville. After surviving over 3 years long distance with The Professor (is his new name catching on yet?), we will FINALLY live in the same state & the same city & the same house!

I AM SO EXCITED!

The last two weeks have been a tad stressful. I had to tell my landlord I was moving out and pack up my entire apartment. I’d like to think I set a world record for the amount of stuff accumulated in a two year period. I’m not sure how this all actually fit in my one bedroom apartment, but it did. I made friends with the guy at my local U-Haul and stocked up on some packing supplies. It took me three full days, but I was able to get almost everything packed up.

                    

 

What about work, you ask? My company was pretty understanding, well…somewhat understanding… when I told them I wanted to move to Danville. They’ve agreed to let me work from home for a while so we can figure out the long-term plan. I was super pumped for three reasons:

A. Income, duh.

2.  TIME. I’ve complained once, twice, three thousand times about my current commute. You cannot even begin to imagine how excited I am about not having that hour commute twice a day!

I love my job so I’m pumped that I get to keep working. I’m also pumped that I get two hours back in my day, every single day. I’m going to do things like blog, read, run, and eat dinner at a reasonable hour each night.

III. Setting up a home office. I have been Pinteresting like crazy looking for ideas on how to setup and decorate a little workspace in our front room.

Check out these ideas that will probably never become a reality.

    

Now that the packing is done and the plans are made, I can sit back for a couple of days and relax before the big move. Stay tuned because next Monday, I’ll be blogging from Kentucky!

How many times have you moved?

- This will be move #5 for me (#3 if you don’t count to and from college).

What ideas/recommendations do you have for a home office?

Honeymoon or No Honeymoon?

My countdown app alerted me that there are only 152 days until our wedding! We’ve checked a few more things off of our wedding list, but we still have a lot to do…

Bridesmaids Dresses:

After some online searching and making my maid of honor try on a few (just a few!) dresses, we found the perfect one. Have I told you that our colors are navy and pink? Well, they are. I’m a big fan of lace and I’m trying to incorporate it into the wedding as many ways as possible. Our guys are wearing navy pants and a white shirt. We’re going to incorporate the pink in the flowers and bowties.

Hotel:

We have a lot of guests coming in from out of town for the wedding so we wanted to get a block of rooms downtown near our hotel venue. As I started calling around, I learned that our wedding is the same weekend as Comic Con in Louisville (why me??). Luckily, I was able to get a block of rooms at the hotel right next door to our venue. We are pumped because it will be very easy for our guests to walk to the hotel after the reception and not have to worry about cabs/driving/etc. Justin & I decided to stay at the hotel that night too. Fun fact: My parents stayed at the same hotel the night of their wedding.

 Save-the-Dates:

It took me forever to put together our Save-the-dates. Mostly because I didn’t have time, but kind of because I couldn’t figure out what site to order them from. I landed on minted.com and I could not be happier with how they turned out. The customer service was fantastic and the designer was able to customize our piece exactly how I wanted it. I highly recommend minted.com if you’re looking to order invites or anything else.

At this point, we have most of the big things checked off the list. I think the last big decision is whether or not to take a honeymoon. We’ve spent a lot of time looking, but haven’t made the commitment yet.

Did you go on a honeymoon?

Where did you go?

Did you use a travel agent/company or plan your own trip?

Let Them Eat Cake

First, I would like to point out that during my google search for an image I procrastinated took the time to learn where that phase came from and my mind was blown a little bit. Thank you Wikipedia. 

Now – to get back to the point of this post – let’s focus on two key words, CAKE and EAT.

CAKE: If there is one thing Justin has been passionate about during this whole “wedding planning thing” it’s that we WILL have awesome cake and he WILL get to eat some of it. People keep telling them he will be so busy during the reception that he won’t get a piece...he’s willing to skip the first dance if it means he can eat some cake.

We went to THREE bakeries in search of the perfect cake. We developed a proprietary cake tasting rating system that we used for all three when comparing flavors, moistness, icing melt in your mouthness – you know – the important things!

Sweet Stuff was by far the winner for the most AMAZING cakes in Southern Indiana and it took us about 2.5 seconds to decide we wanted to work with them for our wedding cake. We have plenty of time to decide on what type of design we want and what flavors we want. Design – we already have an idea. Flavor – we argue debate discuss quite frequently :)

from my instagram

EAT: Our venue gave us a list of recommended caterers so we had a really good starting point for this task. I spent way too many hours surfing their websites and trying to narrow down the list. I reached out to four caterers and was easily to narrow it down to two when the quotes came back. I know that “food and beverage” is usually the largest part of any wedding budget, but I was shocked at how high some of the quotes were! Both of the caterers provided tastings for us and we got to try tons of different menu options.

We were able to pick up our food from one of the caterers and enjoy our tasting at home. My only requirement was that Mac n Cheese is one of our side dishes and I was not disappointed! We broke out the proprietary rating system one more and had a blast pretending to be food connoisseurs for the afternoon.

Our second caterer option had us come into their facility and they gave us a full experience with multiple courses and fine china. We knew were weren’t going with the fine china option, but it was a lot of fun.

Ultimately, we decided to work with Ladyfingers Catering for the big day. Their food was more our style and we couldn't find a single thing wrong with any of the food options they let us try during our tasting. We haven’t selected our exact menu yet, but our guests will definitely be enjoying some fantastic BLT mac n cheese on June 20^th! If you’re looking for a caterer and your event isn't on June 20^th, you should definitely check them out.

Whew! I can’t believe we are only 7 months away! I know we still have a lot of time, but June 20^th is going to come around faster than we think.   

Dress, Church, Music, Cake

What do those four things have in common? WEDDING!

I know what you’re thinking – TWO POSTS IN ONE WEEK! Who is this girl??

I feel like the last couple weeks have been all wedding all the time. We got so many things checked off our wedding to-do list in September. I have to be honest; I’ve been a tad stressed lately. We had lots of plans to get some wedding stuff accomplished in August, but all plans when out the window when we had to get Justin moved to Danville. I started feeling like I had nothing accomplished and was WAY behind schedule. As usual…I was over-reacting  :) BUT there really was a lot to be done so we put our wedding hats on in September and GOT. STUFF. DONE:

WEDDING DRESS!: This is my favorite item checked off the list so far. I started searching for dresses back in July, but didn’t seriously go dress shopping until Labor Day weekend. I’m pretty sure I tried on one million dresses, but I finally found the absolute most perfect dress. It is exactly what I had envisioned and only slightly (ok – a lot) over budget. Justin will probably have to attend in his underwear since I spent our entire apparel budget on my dress, but I think it is totally worth it! I can not wait to share pictures next June :)

Church: We had a major disaster (ok – a slight inconvenience) when we found out that we had to make a venue change for our wedding ceremony. We originally wanted both our ceremony and reception at the Muhammad Ali Center, but we are now having our ceremony at a church nearby. It’s old, historic, and gorgeous and I love it!

Music: Justin has been pushing for strings at our ceremony ever since we went to my friend’s wedding last summer and he heard a string quartet play. It just so happens that my aunt and uncle are friends with a lady who is part of a string trio. We listened to their CD – they are great – and we cannot wait to have them play at our ceremony.  Funny story about the DJ we wanted for our reception…. We wanted the same DJ who was at my sister’s wedding since he did such a fantastic job. We called and talked to him, but hadn’t made a deposit yet when we found out that my mom had recommended him for another event not knowing it was the same day as our wedding and they wanted him too! We got our check in right away. Moral of the story – if you need a DJ, let me know…he comes highly recommended from the Huber family!

Cake: I’m fairly certain this has been Justin’s favorite wedding activity so far! We went to three different bakeries to taste potential cakes for the wedding. Stay tuned for a full recap in the next wedding update :)

What is your favorite flavor of cake?

Married/Engaged people: What was your favorite part of wedding planning?