Wedding Highlight: Invites

Well in honor of the day celebrating our one year anniversary nearing, 

I thought I should crank out these last few wedding posts for my memory! Ha

I loved the way our wedding invites turned out. 
It's a great deal when your engagement photographers can also design it and print! 
Kimbry Studios took our photos and
their other company Anthology designed the invites.
You can view more of our engagement photos here.

We did our invites in colors that complimented the outfits we wore. We pulled in a shades of purples, blues, and reds. 

The Front

An engaged couple may find themselves in similar circumstances that we were in. We were flying 1,500 miles from Idaho to Texas to be married, flying to our honeymoon and then back to Idaho. We weren't quite sure how to handle gifts from friends and family. We couldn't bring it all on the plane with us and it would be silly to ship it all back to our home. 

We decided it would be appropriate to include some instructions on our invite saying

 "Due to travel limitations, letter-sized gifts are appreciated." 

It worked out great! When we moved into our new apartment we spend probably two weekends shopping. We were able to shop for everything we absolutely needed and personally pick it out. 

One gift we received from Eric's parents in Texas was our dyson vacuum cleaner. I went without it for 3.5 months until Eric's parents made a trip to Idaho for my college graduation and brought it. We desperately needed to stop borrowing our neighbors vacuums and needed it haha. I secretly love vacuuming and would do it everyday if I could....

The Back

We included two insertions in our wedding invites, 

one to our temple sealing and the second to a luncheon being held after the sealing. 

Starting April

Here we are, April 1st

If you would of asked me 6 months ago what this month would mean to me, it wouldn't of been so significant.
But so much has changed. I can't believe this month is finally here. Now it means so much to me!
This month... I begin eternity with my best friend.
I enter the House of the Lord, with my sweetheart.
We will start many adventures together.
And move into our first apartment together this month.
Sounds cheesy? Maybe :)
But I seriously could not be more excited!

9 more days of crazy classes and finals, 10 more days until we are in Texas with family and friends,
11 days until we are married!

Capturing Moments

Capturing Some Moments

Right after we called the LDS Temple to schedule a time to be sealed for eternity.

(We met up in-between classes on campus and found an empty study room to call together. haha)

Right after we put a contract in for an apartment together! 

The apartment we wanted and got! 

We got a little creative after we had an appointment with our engagement photographers.

We love our engagement photos. You can find some of them documented here.

Dress shopping for the first time!

4 different stores, probably 15-20 different dresses and I found one! 

Registering for wedding gifts... way too much fun! 

It has been such happy and exciting times! I am so blessed to be marrying this man. He has continually taught me so much, especially during our engagement. I learn more about myself and he helps me learn the kind of better person I want to be each day. I'm so excited to start our lives together and to continue to learn more about one another and capture all the moments in our lives! 

Engagement Pictures

Our pictures were taken by the talented Kimbry Studios located in Rexburg, Idaho

http://www.kimbryblog.com/

They are available for travel and do beautiful wedding photography. 

We love our engagement photos. These are the first professional/posing pictures we've ever taken together. It's good practice for the wedding day! When we set our date for April 12th, I realized our engagements would have to be taken in Idaho. Where there is lots of snow and it is very cold, especially from January-April. At first, I hated this idea. Since I was at least 12 years old, planning a "dream wedding", I had always pictured engagements taken in beautiful weather, with green grass and blooming flowers. I soon got over and moved past those ideas. This was my REAL wedding, happening NOW! So it was out into the bitter cold and snow of Idaho. I started to get really excited after looking on pinterest a ton and thought "hey snow pictures could be really fun"! And they turned out great!

By the end we were frozen. It took about 30 minutes to thaw out my feet and have feeling come back. That scared me a little haha. But we didn't realize how cold we were until we were done! Completely worth it and fun!

My Valentine

Isn't my fiancé handsome? :)

I love my forever Valentine!!

Happy Valentine's to you and your loved ones! 

SAVE THE DATE

4. 12. 14

COUNTDOWN: 65 days! 

Wedding Planning

Wedding Planning is 100% crazy. A little overwhelming too, but completely fun and worth it! It's so much fun seeing everything come together! And it's such a huge relief. I felt a little all over the place starting to plan in Idaho when all of my family was in Texas. But it has been great! The first thing that was actually set and planned was when we called the Temple to set the time and date. I hadn't even thought about any other thing. It felt official and real when our sealing was scheduled. It was one of the happiest moments so far with Eric. I hadn't really thought about only having three months to plan the rest.

These have been some of the most efficient days of my LIFE! 

So far: 

Engagement pictures done!
Wedding Announcements being designed
Temple is booked

Venue is booked

Wedding Photographer is booked
All bridesmaids have plane tickets to fly in (yipeeeee!)
Lots of little things coming together, like decorations

Bought THE wedding dress!
And I've taken two test this past week + did a 12 hour clinical  

We ALSO got an apartment!

Next thing we did was put in a contract for an apartment. Those go fast. The complex was within our budget and we went to tour it. I was pretty sure there was this huge waiting list and we were wasting our time. So I wasn't getting my hopes up. The place was such a cute, little apartment! We then found out there was only about 10 people on the waiting list. They said it would be middle of February when we would find out for sure if we got a place. But soon after, we already found out we're in! Now I can't stop picturing in my head how to decorate:)

This is what wedding planning does to us. 

Thanks Janessa for the snapchat.

Anxiously engaged....

Eric had the ring for almost 5 days and I must say, he did pretty good at distracting me/lying! When Friday was coming around he mentioned he wanted to drive about 30 minutes to the next bigger city, Idaho Falls, to grab some lunch after classes. We headed out there and had lunch at Olive Garden. 

[[Funny side story: I told Eric I only wanted to have my nails painted when he proposed! The day before I had been at the hospital for clinical, where we can't have our nails painted. Friday morning I woke up a little earlier before classes just to paint my nails, I had a feeling! At lunch Eric commented, "oh you painted your nails again!" He knew I was little suspicious ;)]]

After lunch we drove a couple more miles and parked. We crossed a bridge to a walking trail across the water from the Idaho Falls Temple. As we walked along side the frozen water we talked and chased the ducks. After walking a while we came to the actual water falls their self. There was a dock that went out over the water. The waterfall actually wasn't frozen! It was so pretty! 

Eric pulled out a tiny photo album he had in his pocket. [[I had really tried to keep an eye on him to see if he had anything in his pocket, I had no idea!]] He had put pictures in it from us dating over the years. We laughed and talking about them, but my heart was pounding. The very last thing was a note from Eric. He had written it to me before his mission 

Of course, he wanted me to read it out loud. I could could barely make it through. The very last sentence read "I want to spend eternity with you." Next thing I know he is on one knee, asking me to marry him! While I was still crying and trying to hug him :)

The past week has been so surreal and perfect. I can't wait to marry my

 B E S T  F R I E N D !

My engagement ring

If you are like me, I knew exactly what I wanted my engagement ring to look like. I had this vision in my head that was no where on pinterest.  I had described it to Eric hoping he would listen carefully and take that into consideration. We ended up looking together [[first time we looked story at the end]] a few times so I could point out what I liked and didn't. I mostly just walked around making comments. All the stores, but one, told us they didn't have what we were looking for. But oh, of course, they could custom make it for us. Which cost more and takes more time. If you have both of those on your side then great! But Eric and I were on a budget and were planning for a quick engagement. The one store we walked into I was describing what I wanted and another consultant heard me. He motioned for us and said he had the perfect idea. He then handed me a gemstone ring. That's right, a beautiful sapphire was in the middle of this ring. But everything else about the ring was exactly what I wanted. I gave Eric a look of "hey check this one out" and we were on our way. I was so thrilled to see the ring again, but with a diamond in the middle, when he proposed! It was such an awesome surprise!

[[cute side story: Eric was so sneaky and cute the very first time we looked at rings. That evening we had dinner at Olive Garden with my family and some friends. Eric and I decided to see a late movie showing of Frozen and had about 2 hours of time to kill before it started. After dinner I asked if he had any idea of what we could do around that town. He started mentioning there was something he had been wanting to check out. I had no clue. As we started driving I was little confused and asked where we were going. He told me he didn't know exactly where it was located but there were a few around...still confused. Eric then pulls into a parking lot and leads me into a store to look at engagement rings! He told me after thinking some about it, he wanted an idea of what I liked and didn't. I was stunned it was actually happening, only after ever talking about it! So exciting and fun! I'll always remember that memory!]]

He Popped the Question!

 Eric proposed on Friday, January 17, 2014!
The day I've been dreaming with him for too long.
I said YES!
I can't wait to marry my best friend!
Now let the wedding planning begin!

Details to come :)