I am getting married in 47 days, which still feel likes a lifetime away... althought at one point it was over 365 days away.....

 

 

 

I'm getting married in 100 days!

So, instead of studying, like I should be. I'm on the internet.. of course.. I graduate on Saturday, CRAZY! Unforunately, I have 3 finals on Thursday... which I am not looking forward to any of them. I also have to go to class tomorrow night from 6-9pm... I am SO ready for Thursday to get here!

 

Oh and check out our awesome new blog

 

http://www.grayandbecca.com/blog 

So classes end in 3 days and then I graduate in less than two weeks.

 

AHHHHH

 

Oh and Gray and I have a new blog:

 

http://www.grayandbecca.com/blog

 

Check it out! 

So I have 4 more days of class... forever...

 

It feels so strange to think that in a week I'll be done with class. Craziness. My schedule for the next two and a half weeks is kind of crazy.

 

Monday - presentation

Tuesday - 3 papers due.. yes 3; and Makeup class final and portfolio due

Wed - last day of class

 

Then I have a take home final due the Monday of finals and 3 finals on Thursday 

 

 

crazy 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

I spent today with my family and tomorrow with my future-in-laws. 

Seriously... I thought living in the apartment would be nice, but the people below us play loud music ALL THE TIME. Is it really neccessary? No it is NOT. ugh. I'm tired of calling the cops on them.
On another note, I'm getting married in exactly 6 months!

So today Gray and I ordered his wedding ring, which I got for a steal of a price. Yay!
We're almost down to 6 months and we have our first pre-marital counseling session in a week. It's kind of early, but I think Britt is spreading the sessions out some since we have a while. wee!!
I have also finalized the bridesmaid dress and location of dress.. now to get those ordered and get a list of pictures for my photographer. It's starting to finally get busy!

I am getting married in 7 months!

This may seem like a long time for some of you, but I've been engaged since January... 9 months to be exact, so 7 months to go is GREAT!
By the time I graduate I will be down to 5 months... AHHH!!!

So it turns out that my friend Devin, who took those engagement pictures, is going to take pictures from my wedding! I am SOOO excited about this.
Talk about finally hearing some good news about the wedding... now if only the rest of this stuff would go smoothly!

A lot of the time I will look at theknot.com or weddingbee.com to get inspirational ideas for my wedding. Right now, I'm not doing major planning because school and work on my life, but I like to get a few things accomplished.

 

This month I've been working on figuring out what hotels in our area are going to cost for our guests. I've managed to find a few good deals and later this month I'm going to call and set aside some rooms for our guests and wedding party people.

 

Another item I've been looking at is bridesmaid dresses. In my head, I know exactly what I want and so I'm just trying to find it in a reasonable price range and with sizes to fit all my girls. 

 

The thing that I find most annoying is that David's Bridal, where I got my dress, will not have their spring collection out until January... less than 5 months before my wedding. I would rather start making a decision before the holidays so my girl can be ordering their dresses before January. I've looked at a few places and the ones I've really liked are all from aftersix.com. 

 

I'm either going with clover or moss, I need to see the color in person.  

 

I'm excited to go and see the dresses with my girls and I'm excited to buy wedding invitations soon! Gray and I have decided what we want and now all we need to do is buy them and diy! 

We had a friend of ours take some more engagement pictures. And here they are:

 

photo from becsaboo



photo from becsaboo



photo from becsaboo



photo from becsaboo



photo from becsaboo



photo from becsaboo



photo from becsaboo



photo from becsaboo



photo from becsaboo



photo from becsaboo

We're very happy with them. :)

 

I still can't believe I am getting married in under 8 months, it seems so surreal. 

 

So, my life has been crazy the past two weeks. Taking 21 hours definitely is a challening thing and I hope I can manage it all semester long. Thankfully, my job is easy and I can do my homework there. I get paid to do my homework.
It's now about 8 months away from the wedding and I'm starting to feel better about certain things. Friday afternoon Gray and I met up with a friend of ours to shoot some engagement pictures. We did some in the spring but I wanted to wear this great new dress I got and we definitely wanted some fun ones to add to the others. So, we asked a friend of ours and he agreed. I think that from what I saw, they are going to turn out amazing. He also was able to use us for models in some photos for his photography class roll. It was a lot of fun. I'm definitely going to start saving up money if I can and putting it towards photography for the wedding because that's something that's very important to me. I know who I want and I know that right now its out of the question because of my family's financial situation. However, I also know that I have 8 months to go and that's a lot of time to come up with money. So, we'll see what happens. Some changes occured over the summer. For example, I asked a good friend to be a bridesmaid, one of my bridesmaids pulled out (very good excuse, missions trip for a year in another country) and I asked a good friend to be a honorary bridesmaid. So I have 4 bridesmaids, a junior bridesmaid, and 3 honorary ones...
As far as planning goes, I haven't been doing much. My timeline says to look at dresses, talk to hotels for the guests out of town, and I think to look at cakes and flowers. My florist said come back closer to the wedding, the cake might be made by my aunt, I looked up hotels but need to call to set aside rooms and I know what the bridesmaid dress will look like, but must wait until January to start buying them with the girls.
So, that's it for planning. We sent out save the dates two weeks ago and will be sending out more soon to my family.  I'm in the midst of working on the favors and next up will be the invitations... craziness. 
Well, time for some sleep, I must get a lot done tomorrow.

Week one: I've determined that I will make it this year. I am taking 21 hours of classes and I have a job... 14 hours each week working at the desk in a dorm. It's a crazy busy schedule, but I think I'll be just fine. I get paid to do my homework and then some. 
As far as life, it's intersting right now. I'm loving living off campus with my roomies. I have the best roomies ever. I'm loving the time I get to spend with Gray, although it's brief. I am just loving life right now.
It's hard to believe that I graduate in 3 1/2 months and get married in 8... crazy!

So Gray and I finally mailed off about half of our save-the-date postcards today. We actually mailed 40, all his side. Now I just have to figure out who my mom hasn't given one to on our side. 
The past week has been great and exciting, as well as tiring. I moved into my new apartment on Sunday and I've been adjusting to it. I absolutely love it here. SOOOO much nicer than living on campus. I love haivng a kitchen to make my own food in. It's much cheaper and actually fun to look for things to make it more homey. We've done some re-arranging and organizing to fit us in a bit better. We need more storage space. 
Since I've been here our air conditioning went out. That was not exactly fun... two days of a sauna. I am unpacked though and ready to start classes. I even already have an assignment.
Yesterday I went to desk assistant training and I start work Sunday at the Corlew desk. I'm working 14 hours a week which means I'm basically getting $340 or so a month. More than I made as a RA last year. Pretty sweet deal considering my schedule is crazy! My hours are all morning hours MWF except on Sunday afternoons. I'm pretty happy with that. 
I'm just enjoying the last few days of summer vacation. I have to finish the rest of the postcards, do my frequent flyer miles, and work some on the favors so I will have it all done before school starts back. 

Well, I am moved in to my apartment in Murfreesboro. Now I just need to unpack and get settled. 

So, I arrived back at my house last night. Today has been spent playing The Sims 2 a lot and making a few phone calls.

 

I received a phone call from the Goodlark Education Foundation in Dickson. They are offering me a $1,000 scholarship for this fall to help me finish my degree. I am estatic! God has provided back all the lottery money I am not receiving and more! It's been amazing to see what has come in. 

 

I also received a phone call from my good friend Shannon today. It turns out that because of financial reasons, she's not going to be able to be in my wedding in May. She has a good reason though. Shannon is going to Slovakia for one year to be a missionary with Campus Crusade for Christ. She can not afford to come back in May... it's completely understandable and I'm perfectly ok with it. I'm just sad she won't be there to see my big day and be a part of it.

 

Aside from that, I'm pleased to say that Gray and I have finalized (minus a few details) our guest list! It was a lot of work but we've managed to do it. Next week we'll begin the exhausting fun of mailing out save-the-dates. I'm excited because now I can start looking for invitations and deciding how I'm going to do my invitations. I know, I have 8 months to go, but I'm determined to be stress free about the wedding and the best way I know to do that is to get things done early.

 

Speaking of wedding... Gray and I got an email from Carnival the other day. The cruise we were going to take to the Bahamas was cancelled because the ship needed to be repaired. So we've re-booked another Bahamian cruise that's a day shorter with them. We'll be staying our first night at the Brentwood Hilton Suites Hotel before flying to Florida and boarding the cruise ship Sensation at Port Canaveral. At this point we're trying to decide if we'd like to stay in Orlando at the Walt Disney World resort a night or two. I'm really up for that because I love Disney and would love to go back, I miss it. Right now we're not too sure what are options are. Gray has family in Orlando that can get us into the parks for free and possibly a reduced hotel room rate. We're going to ask them if they would be willing to help us out with that before we plan the rest of the honeymoon. I'm so thankful that the cruise is almost paid for and that our first night is taken care of. So much stress off my shoulders!

 

Well, I am off to enjoy the rest of my night. Tomorrow Gray and I are going to Murfreesboro. We need to put some stuff in our storage unit and I need to go and fill out payroll for my job.

So, my parents and I had decided that I would take a small student loan out for this last semester. We accepted the loan via pipeline over a week ago. Today we took action into our own hands.

Apparently I was supposed to fill out an application and then I'd get my prom. note to sign. Thanks MTSU for letting me know this.

 

I've now taken care of this and signed the prom. note online. I'm only going in debt about $3,000 but since my mom is not working, it was neccessary. Between the loan, scholarship money and our last bit of college savings, I have enough money for tuition, books, food for this semester and my apartment's rent for the entire 12-month lease. This is great becaus e we'll be able to pay for the year up front and get almost a month's worth of rent for free. Great savings and it's one less thing to worry about later.

 

Aside from all of that, today I decided was going to be the day I made a list of everyone I'm inviting to my wedding. This way I know how many invitations I'll need... etc. We're not completely done, but we have around 150 written down with Gray's family still needing to contribute some more.

 

blah to planning 

This entry is long over due because I started working on it over a week ago.

 

While we were in Sweden, Gray and I came across these rubber ducks. I had a rubber ducky bathroom theme in high school and so I started collecting rubber ducks. Well, Gray saw this when we first started dating and told me I'd have a collection by the time we got married. I now probably have 15-20 and we couldn't resist adding these two to the collection. These will probably be used on the wedding cake as toppers. Notice my rubber ducky bathrobe in the background. ;) 

 

photo from becsaboo When I set out to do favors for the wedding, I knew immediately I wanted something that would save money and be practical. We chose from the beginning to use the bubbles as favors.
photo from becsabooSo I watched and found a great sale and managed to buy all the bubbles for our wedding for under $25. Then I took ribbon that is in our colors (pink and green) and wrapped it around. The finishing touch were favor tags that I printed off myself. 


photo from becsaboo
It's nothing too original but it's a start to helping the wedding be cost effective. Since our budget got a lot tighter over the past few months, I'm trying a lot of diy ideas out. I would like to even make my veil myself if possible. So, we'll see what happens. 

 

So I woke up today to the sound of my mother stating I had mail. It was a letter from the lady who gives me a private scholarship. We had called her office to ask if I could get the scholarhsip one more semester. She agreed so the letter was the usual letter sent to me about the money.

 

It seems like my time at home has gone by very slowly but also very fast. I leave Friday to go to Memphis for a week and when I get back I have a few short days at home and then it's off to Murfreesboro for the year! I'm definitely excited for the new changes.

 

I'm going to be living at University Gables with three of my best friends until I get married.

 

The time at home has been good but I've been going crazy with boredom. 

 

It feels like there is no time to get anything accomplished, although I know there is.

 

My room is pretty much packed up. That feels strange. I've been trying to leave some things because I feel I won't need them, like my stereo system. We'll see I guess.

 

This past weekend was wonderful because I got to get out of the house and see some good friends. Friday night, Gray and I went to see Bourne: Ultimatium. It was a good, but dizzying movie. Saturday we drove to Hickory Hollow Mall to hang with Kelsey, picked up Shannon and visited Jenny and Alice at home before catching dinner with Shannon. It's hard to believe that Jenny and Shannon are going to be gone for a year and Kelsey will be away in another state. Crazy.  I'm learning that it's not goodbye forever though, just for now.

 

Well, I am off to enjoy the relaxation time I have.  

Today my Aunt Vonnie is 80 years old... the oldest of my mom's siblings is 84 years old. My mom is 60. 
Remember that post where I thought 22 was old? Yeah, I take that back. hehe
Vonnie is very special to me. She introduced me to coffee when I was 4 years old. I stayed with her while my parents went to Hawaii. She has always called me her little princess. I think she's still waiting on my broadway debut.
Anyway, here is to one of my favorite aunts... Delsi Ima Evon Mayberry.

So, wedding planning has been interesting today. The past few days I've been trying to make some decisions so I'm not as stressed out in the coming months. In a month I'll be in my last semester with 21 hours. I have a feeling wedding planning will be stressing me out during this time.  After I graduate, I must find a job. I will probably still be stressing out. Luckily, I now have my honeymoon to look forward to. In 9 months I will be in the Bahamas!  As far as wedding planning, I've been dealing with my registries and looking into floral options. Today mom and I went to the Carrolton House to look at fine china and then to the florist shop in town. We were making great deals until she realized my wedding is during mother's day weekend. Oh good Lord.  So, what we'll probably end up doing is having my aunt, who used to be a florist, help us find silk flowers for the majority of the wedding. Then, my boquet will be fresh flowers from the florist shop in town and we'll do the rentals from there as well. So far my mom is ok with this, which is GOOD. Flowers are turning out to be more expensive than we thought.   I really want to do an arch like this one:

photo from becsaboo 
These are the matching candelabras.

photo from becsaboo  We will also have a unity candle setup as shown above. Just the rentals are going to be about $100.  So, that's been my adventure in wedding planning. I realize I have 9 months to go, but no one seems to realize that starting September until the end of the year, I'm going to be swamped with school... and then a real world job. I need to get as much done while I still have a brain! Thankfully, several big items are taken care of. My mom's best friend Kathleen has been placed in charge of the reception. She's going to be helping us decorate the fellowship hall of my home church.  I'm very excited about everything. Most importantly, I can't wait to marry the man I love and spend my life with him. 

These are old wedding blog entries:

 

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So I've been busy grabbing up as much as I can when big sales come along. Here is what I managed to grab on my list Wal-mart run:

photo from becsaboo

The flower girl basket, a guestbook (with pen), and the something blue, garter. All of these was about $15! I had planned on making my own guestbook, but I couldn't turn away a $5 guestbook. 

 

Wal-mart wedding stuff doesn't look that bad and some of it is great. For example, I bought my planner from Wal-mart a few months back:

photo from becsaboo

It is AMAZING. It was the right size so I can add pages to it and it comes with great budget sheets and tons of folders to put in business cards and vendor information. I love it.

 

This wedding planning business  is getting quite fun. The other day I went with my mom to look at the Carrollton House, where most brides in my county go to register for fine china. I saw some things I liked and I'll be going back when it gets closer to the wedidng date.

photo from becsaboo

I took home several brochures to show Gray.

 

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A few small updates

Posted on Friday July 13, 2007 

So I was looking at the budget yesterday, which is tight because my mom is currently jobless, and realized how fortunate we are right now. It seems like every major item, other than my dress, that was going to cost a lot, is not because a friend or family member has volunteered services. A lady that goes to my church does photography for weddings for donations only. She is the mother of a girl around my age who got married last summer so she definitely knows how hectic they can be. In fact, she usually uses the backyard of my mom's good friend Kathleen Lee. Mrs. Lee's yard is absolutely beautiful and I definitely want to use it for some after wedding shots. I'd love to do some bridal portrait pictures there as well. The Lee's have worked very hard to landscape their yard and it looks professional. We haven't made any official decisions yet regarding photography. We will probably wait a few more months before we do. But because of the tight budget, anything we can get for free or cheap is great.
Another item that fell into my lap was the cake. Now, I was prepared to spend the bucks on the cake, because it's just hard not to. My aunt and cousins have done cakes before and my mother asked them if they'd consider doing a wedding cake. It looks as though they may. This makes me extremely happy because if this goes through, I will have my cake for free. Of course, there is the groom's cake, but that shouldn't be an issue. Gray wants chocolate with strawberries.

Well, more updates later. Since we've started registering, I'm trying to keep track of what we registerred for and where. It's quite a huge job because neither of us have much to start off with. In fact, I'm moving into an apartment in the fall (as is Gray) where my roommates and I have a few hundred to go in and get joint stuff for the apartment, which will stay when I move out. We were able to get the money because of referals to the apartment comlex. Literally, Trina ended up referred her three new roommates, Gray and one of his... 5 referrals. So approximately $250 to Trina.

One last note, Bed Bath and Beyond is expensive but their customer service is SO nice. The first time we went, the machines were down for the registry system, but we were able to fill up two shopping carts full of stuff and they entered it for us today. The second time we went I was worrying about how guests would buy our china, since it's not in the story, you have to order it at the store or online and they ship it... well the lady who helped us was SO nice and reassured me not to worry about anything, that I had enough to worry about besides registrying.

And that's all for now.

Hey dough! (Swedish for goodbye)--------------------------------------------- 

Personalized Napkins and Save the Date Cards

Posted on Monday July 9, 2007 - 
photo from becsaboo

So, Gray and I just got back from Sweden and South Korea. While I was going my mom had the napkin problem fixed and we received our save-the-date cards in the mail.
photo from becsaboo

Gray and I are starting to register for gifts since relatives have started to ask what we want. We will be registering very soon and adding lists to the website.

Tomorrow marks the 10 month countdown. We're starting to get excited and I am realizing how much needs to be done. I'm just so thankful with how much we've been blessed the past two months. We may have a local photographer and my aunt might be making the wedding cake. Everything is falling into place.

Prayer requests: Please pray for my family. Right now we're under extreme financial crisis and there are some other issues popping up.

Thanks,
Becca--------------------------------------------- 

Personalized Napkin Problem

Posted on Wednesday May 9, 2007  So it wasn't going to be too long before I ran into a problem.
photo from becsaboo

Yesterday I received my personalized napkins in the mail. I was really excited until I read them. Not, they are fine except for one small error. We ordered them with a monogram initial, S. for Sanborn. Instead of a S, we have a G. As in Gray. I had Gray call them and they basically said we'd have to send them back, but WE'D have ot pay s/h. I informed my mother and now my dear sister will be making the phone call to them.

Stay tuned for more drama in wedding planning.--------------------------------------------- 

Almost a year to go!

Posted on Tuesday May 1, 2007  So school is winding down and I'm about to be able to actually plan some stuff. It's all exciting. So far I've made two wedding purchases. I purchased personalized napkins, with our names and wedding date...
 They are pink with black lettering. Then yesterday when we were at Wal-mart, Gray and I realized that they had the bubbles we wanted, for only $3... so we bought six boxes (24 in each box). So that's my two purchases so far. I'm really only making purchases when I find deals at the moment. Since we're trying to keep it simple, the bubbles will double as favors. I'm planning on adding ribbon to detail them. That will come later though.

I attended a lingerie shower on Sunday for Miss Ginger Harvey. She's getting married on May 12th! And Mandy is getting married July 21st. So that's at least two weddings to go to this summer. I'm pretty excited.--------------------------------------------- 
Posted on Wednesday April 11, 2007  It is now officially 13 months until the wedding and Gray and I are excited! --------------------------------------------- 

Engagement Pictures

Posted on Friday April 6, 2007  Today Gray and I met up with Andrew Nelson to take our engagement pictures. He is extremely talented. Here is a preview of what he did. It was a lot of fun and we were actually the first engagement couple he has ever shot before.

There will not be much more wedding planning done until July when I'm back from Sweden.

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Wedding Planning Update!

Posted on Saturday March 24, 2007
photo from becsaboo

So it's been a month, I know! Life has been crazy! There are a few things I've been looking at in that month:

• colors (rose pink and olive green - see picture)
• photography (engagement shots by Andrew Nelson, still deciding on my actual photographer, but I've got a few good options)
• wedding coordinator - Leah! She's going to help me plan and she lives near where I'm getting married so she should be a big help. That and she will help the big day go off without a hitch!
• Bridesmaid Dress shopping - We went today and I've got a good idea of what I want and what they want. Now it's just a matter of seeing what comes out over the next few months. The picture is an idea of what we'll be getting... tea length and strapless, but not as frilly....
  

So yeah, it's been a slow but sort of hectic month. I've been busy with school and still am. I wanted to go with my girls at least once before school got out because of summer and everything. One of my girls will be overseas next year and so I wanted to get an idea of what looked best on her before she left. I can't wait for school to get out so I can go to Sweden! And then let the wedding planning ensue!

 

 

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Wedding Dress

Posted on Saturday February 17, 2007 The wedding dress has been purchased! This weekend I went up to David's Bridal in Antioch with my mom, sister, and her fiancee. I tried on two dresses and the third was nice, but it didn't have a train. The 4th dress was THE dress. hehe I ended up trying on another dress and hated it, I knew that the dress was the dress immediately. It is absolutely beautiful and it has the longest train in the entire store! Plus we got it on a sale day so that was good. I'm going to be taking my bridesmaids back in March to try on their dresses and I will probably have Paul and Tracey bring Kristy up to gets hers as well. So, yay for that! Oh and trust me, you KNOW when it's the dress, you just do. Although it is rather a funny story to tell about how it got picked out.

 

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Officiant

Posted on Tuesday February 13, 2007
We now have our officiant (Beau Berman, Gray's home church college pastor) and we will be having engagements pictures taken soon by the fabulous Andrew Nelson!

Oh and please keep us in your prayers as both of us are raising support money for Sweden this summer.

 

Tomorrow is my 22nd birthday.
Man am I getting old!

So, I had a great entry and it got eaten.
Yesterday was Mandy and Kevin's wedding. It was beautiful. 
photo from becsaboo 
I also got the Harry Potter book 7 yesterday, it's beautiful too.
Gray is in Memphis until Thursday.
On Thursday I turn 22!
I'm busy trying to get things sorted out and pack up my room.
I move into my new apartment August 19th... YAY!
And then my last semester of school... in which I feel ridiciously old.