Weddings, Halloween, LuLaRoe, and Everything in Between

Matt got a fryer for his birthday from my parents, and it’s been used several times just in the past week. Sunday morning, we didn’t have power for a while, so Matt used it to heat up water to make coffee & then made french toast! Yum! Last week, he surprised me one night and made fried Oreos..double yum!! I didn’t get them at the fair like I usually do, because I just couldn’t bring myself to spend $5-$6 on 5 Oreos, haha.

My cousin, Brooke, got married this weekend and despite the rain, everything turned out great!!! We made the most of it and had a great time! We certainly have some fun memories to look back on :)

I am loving this fall weather! It finally feels like it’s October and Halloween is on the way! Speaking of Halloween, we’re going to have more outside decorations this year. So far, it’s looking awesome! Matt does such a good job making the outside of our house and yard look so festive for whichever holiday is coming up! And see, Matt’s been getting Marshall in the Halloween spirit, too ;)

I just took a HUGE step into my next endeavor--I’m officially a LuLaRoe consultant! I am so excited about this opportunity, and can’t wait to share some awesome clothes with everyone :) Be sure to join my LuLaRoe Facebook group so you won't miss out on the fun!

Fall TV is back!! I've already been watching Dancing with the Stars, but I'm SO excited for The Middle and Fresh off the Boat tonight. Love both of those shows! Gives me something to watch and pass the time while working on a Halloween project for Matt--I'll show the finished product once everything's finished!

A Trip to Charlottesville's Wineries & Vineyards

I love this time of our lives when so many of our friends and family are getting married, and we get to be a part of it! We've attend 2 weddings so far this year, both for Longwood friends we're so excited for! Next up is my cousin Brooke's wedding, and I'm so excited that she asked me to be a bridesmaid and participate in all the fun wedding festivities with her!!

Last weekend, we surprised Brooke with her last Sail Before the Veil! Her maid of honor, Brittany, did an amazing job coordinating everything: we rented a house through Airbnb in Charlottesville, had a limo pick us up at noon to take us to several wineries, and went out to a great dinner!!

Abby and Brittany went down before everyone to decorate.

First stop: Jefferson vineyards

Abby and Brittany also packed us a delicious picnic lunch, which we ate outside at Jefferson vineyards. Either we were really hungry, or the sandwiches were just THAT yummy :-P

Aaaaand we were at a Pokestop! :)

Heading out! Thank goodness for Abby's selfie stick! haha

Stop #2: Barboursville Vineyards

This lady was awesome to talk to as she gave us our tastings! Turns out, her best friend lives in Reedville, and Brooke and Sara knew who she was! How crazy?!

I signed the guestbook before we left:

I have no idea what I was laughing at (we laughed at everything all day, though), but I love this picture of us cousins!

3rd stop: Horton Vineyards

 Choosing the 10 we wanted to taste:

Me and Brooke Ann! My very first best friend! Cousins are the best!

Waiting for our tastings..

These shirts Brittany had made were so awesome!

Sister and me.

Our last stop: Keswick Vineyards. There were SOOO many cute dogs there!!

And of course we had to get a picture with the limo driver who put up with all our laughing all day long!

We went to dinner at The Local in Downtown Charlottesville. It was this really neat place, and we ate out on the balcony. The weather was perfect!

Can't wait until we're all together again on October 8th!!

June 7th

A year ago today, we finally saw the floor of the bonus room (upstairs den) in the house I grew up in. Why? Because for about a year, it housed boxes of vases and anything and everything wedding related! Mom and I scanned the room for any more boxes, and saw that we had labeled everything, and I mean really labeled everything, and carried everything down and out already.

A year ago today, our parents were generously all meeting at the Science Museum unloading boxes and boxes of decorations to store in the back room overnight.

A year ago today, Matt and I were upstairs in our newly purchased house, gifts for our wedding attendants surrounding us, finalizing things, and making sure everyone's cards were signed and in the proper bag.

Matt and I drove to meet everyone at the Science Museum for our rehearsal, me stressing out, of course, because we were coming from The Berkeley and didn't take into account the VCU graduation traffic that would be around us! When we got there and I saw everyone standing inside (waiting out the rain) and waiting to get started, I couldn't believe it was finally our wedding weekend!

We finally had to head downstairs and outside to our ceremony site rehearse, obviously, only to find out that because of the rain that week, we had to change a lot about the set up. (Tropical Storm Andrea came through the week before our wedding, so you can imagine why everyone thought we were nuts when we decided NOT to set up a tent outside.) The grass area where the aisle and chairs would be set up was holding SO much water. To everyone who didn't get to see us walk down a center aisle: Sorry, but we wouldn't probably all sunk into a mud hole.

A year ago today, I wore these shoes for the first time. I loved them because they're shimmery and comfortable to walk in--perfect.

However, due to the fact that we did our rehearsal IN THE RAIN, my shoes started falling apart.....literally.  Part of the back of one shoe came unglued, and it remains unglued to this day. I thought about fixing it so I could wear the shoes some time, but I kinda like leaving the shoes all messed up, for sentimental reasons, haha.  Also, when these shoes got wet, they started rubbing my feet...a lot, which made them not as comfortable to walk in anymore, but I did for the rest of the night! (Until after the rehearsal dinner and I changed into flipflops.)

Huge thanks to Matt's mom for all of the pictures from our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, including the picture above :) 

Our Wedding: Candy Bar

If you asked every guest to our wedding if they received their favor, my guess would be that at least 75% of our guests DID NOT. The only reason I'm making this assumption is because of the huge amount of candy we're STILL eating from the wedding!!

We had a candy bar set up, displayed with a variety of candies --yes, all within our color scheme, with the exception of the yellow Starbursts..haha-- for our guests to fill up a treat bag to take home.  However, I'm guessing not many people walked over to that area of the room, or didn't stop by to take a look, because like I said, we have so much candy leftover!!

Mom and I searched for various size jars and glasses to display the candy on the table.  We also bought plastic bags and silver twist ties for guests to fill and take with them at the end of the night.  And, because we like deals so much, we found tons of sheets of letter stickers at Dollar Tree, marked down to 25 cents a sheet, so we bought ALL of the Ns, because we figured we'd probably find a use for them for wedding

Our Summer/Wedding Wreath

When it has come to making our house more of our "home," we had really been focusing on the inside the most.  But, about halfway through the summer, we started working on the outside, too, and have lots planned for future projects :)

We really needed some color on the front of our house, and I knew I wanted to make a wreath.  We had already bought a new colorful rug to put at the front door {which happens to be in our wedding colors....total coincidence, I promise}, so I started brainstorming what I could do for the wreath.

I knew I didn't want anything too overwhelming right now, but I wanted it to be colorful and definitely "us."

I ended up using all leftover decorations from the wedding & our gifts, and all I had to buy was the wreath, which of course I got on sale at

Our Wedding: The Day After

When I woke up on June 9th, it was so hard to believe that everything we had been planning and organizing for almost two years was over.  Just like that, after that one day and night, it was all done and over with.  While that's a bittersweet thought, it was still surreal to me that we were now married! FINALLY! :)

We didn't waste any time getting something to eat, because we were still starving, so we had breakfast downstairs at The Berkeley Hotel.  I could've sworn one of us had taken a picture of our food, but neither of us can find it :(  You know that makes me sad, because I totally would've posted it! haha. 

After breakfast, our families had come back to The Berkeley to help clean up the parlor, because, needless to say, it was a gigantic mess.  You couldn't even tell the day before how messy it was, because there

Our Wedding: Wrap Up

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but today ends this six and a half week marathon of daily blogs about wedding details & wedding pictures.  However, that doesn't mean there won't be any more posts about the wedding in the future!

I certainly do have more wedding related things to blog about, but, I also have completely filled in the calendar through September and part of October with other fun things I want to blog about and share.  For instance, no one has even seen any of our pictures from Jamaica yet, other than the few on my phone!  Those will DEFINITELY be coming soon :)

So, today's post is just to wrap up all of the wedding posts and thank everyone again!

Here is a list of all of our big vendors:

Our Wedding: Picture Slideshow

If you haven't already picked up on it, I love that most of our wedding details were so personalized and really "us."  They were really only things that could've been at our wedding, like pictures of us at all the different locations, etc.

Something else that I loved that really made our reception more "us" was a pictures slideshow we had playing throughout dinner.  Inside the Science Museum, they have groups of TV screens together that are hooked up to a computer.  There were two sets of TVs on one side of the room, and one more set on the opposite side of the room. All I had to do was make the slideshow with all the pictures we wanted to use, and they hooked it right up!

I was most excited about the fact that all of the TVs didn't have to be in sync!  So, while all of the TVs played the same exact slideshow, they

Our Wedding: Wedding Central

I mentioned on Friday that while we were planning for the wedding and as we started getting more and more things, the bonus room became "wedding central."  Not even joking.  If you've planned a wedding before, you know how much stuff accumulates that is needed for the wedding!

I had packages coming to the house so often with gifts, our cake topper, our cake knife and server, toasting glasses....the list just goes on!  And, we needed somewhere to keep all of it!  Thankfully, we had a huge upstairs den we could use, where we stored everything, and could also work on everything all in the same room.

While the bonus room stayed messy, it was nice having everything all in one room.  And while it may have seemed like everything was just thrown in there, I would probably call it "organized chaos," because even if there were random boxes of stuff in the floor, I could locate something because I knew exactly which shoe box it was in, and what it was under, haha.

Not only was the bonus room wedding central, but I also always joke with Matt about how he always looked like he was in a "wedding office."  He'd set his computer up somewhere and then handle all the fun details that I couldn't wrap my head around without making a mess, haha.

I remember the day before the wedding, when we were making sure we had everything:  Mom and I were figuring out the best way to box everything up, I was

Our Wedding: Reception Tables Layout

Now that you know all the details about our centerpieces and table names, I wanted to share how we finalized the set-up for the reception and organized everything at home. 

I'm not even gonna lie..we started putting tables together before we even received RSVPs.  Heck, probably before we even sent out the invitations.  If we needed something wedding related to work on, we started planning out tables.  We knew that they would most likely get rearranged later on once people started to RSVP, but we would figure that out later on.  And, to be honest, working on this so far in advance really did help!

We started with family and figured out the best way to group all of them together.  We grouped families together, family friends together, church friends, college friends, etc., etc.