Showing posts with label engagement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label engagement. Show all posts

Monday, November 11, 2013

Dateiversary! And EIGHT years in Pictures

First off- Happy Veterans Day to all those who have served and
fought for this beautiful country. We truly are the Land of the Free because of the brave. 

Secondly- Happy EIGHT Year Dateiversary to main man, soon-to-be-husby,
cooker of amazing steaks, fur-baby-daddy to Jake, love of my life, 
best friend in the whole entire universe... Bry :)
I am feeling rather nostalgic today so I have a little treat for you all-
EIGHT (I don't know why I continue to spell out and capitalize this word)
years in Corin and Bryan...
Can I get a "YAAYYY??!"

2005
Out to eat- when we were the obnoxious 10%
tipping 16 year olds.
Thank you, karma, later on in my serving years.

2006
Halloween 2006.. dirty pirate hooker and Bryan's rather fitting keg costume

2007
Family snuggles at the river and our new puppyyyy!

2008
The start of a new business! And hair bleach! Weeeee!

2009
Celebrating 5 years at the Orlando magic game

2010
Cruising to Mexico and our FIRST vacation with both of our families.
Interesting to say the least..
COUGHmomatSenorFrogsCOUGH

2011
Valentine's Day in NYC
A very spontaneous weekend get away and one of my most FAVORITE trips. 
Heart is happy :)

2012
Pumpkin beers in Boston!
I will go ahead and say that discovering, not only pumpkin beer in general, but
that it is so deliciously accented with a cinnamon sugar rim was in our top 5 
favorite moments as a couple. It should have been a Shipyard commercial for crying out loud. 

2013
Engaged in Punta Cana

I would be completely lying to you if I said that looking back at those
photos didn't just melt my heart and bring even the teeniest tear to my eye. 
Cheesy as it may sound, it REALLY doesn't feel like 8 years ago that Bryan
asked me, on a FREEZING cold drunken camping trip night, to be his girlfriend. 
We have been through our fair share of ups and downs.
We have run all of Bryan's businesses TOGETHER and working together is not an easy task.
We are a team. We're partners. We're best friends. 
But mostly, we are in love.
I love you Bry!
Ok- no more sappy lovey blog posts for a while now! I promise.
Until Wedding Wednesday..
Juuuuust kidding.
BUT on another note... I am slightly irritated that once we are married 
we're technically no longer allowed to celebrate our dating anniversary.
EIGHT (there it goes again, people) YEARS that are just unaccounted for?
No... I'm sorry, but no. 
So cheers to 8 years and this new, fun word that popped up on Urban Dictionary..
DATEIVERSARY!







Monday, September 2, 2013

DIY Wine Labels: Will you be my Bridesmaid?

You know how much I love a good DIY, right? 
When our parents threw our engagement party last month,
I figured it would be the perfect time to ask my girls. 
Ok, MOST of them knew darn well they were bridesmaids since they had been waiting
almost 8 years for this day to come.. 
I knew I wanted to do something cute but I have EIGHT bridesmaids.
Yes, eight. So sending a singing telegram wasn't an option. 
The solution? 
DIY Personalized Wine Bottle Labels! 
You will need: 
Bottles of wine- preferably one for yourself
A JPEG image
A printing team at Staples that simply adores you
Twine

I found a couple photos on Etsy for inspiration and got to work:
First I found a chevron background that I could easily
copy and paste and open in my Paint program.
I recommend Photoshop but any program will work.
Then I grabbed pictures of myself with my girls via the ol' Facebook
and popped em right in the chevron image.

Bryan is a "regular," I guess you could say, at our local Staples,
so when I walked in wanting some sticker labels printed they were suuuper helpful.
I emailed them the images and they played around with them for a bit
until they were the right size for the labels that they had there in the store. 

Once they were printed, the rest was easy peasy. 
I ripped the original labels off the wine bottles and used rubbing alcohol
to remove the remnants and stuck the photo label right on there.
Wrapped some twine around the top and VOILA!
Customized wine labels!

The "Will you be my Bridesmaid?" cards from Flair Design 
were a cute extra touch too. 

End result? Happy girls! 
6 of my 8 girls- missing the 2 Texans! :) 





Monday, July 29, 2013

Engagement Partayyy!

Linkin up with Miss Sami for the weekend update!
And OH! what a weekend update I have for you!
This past weekend was our engagement party hosted by both of our parents and,
let's be serious, my best friend, who did NOT disappoint on any of the
decor and the dessert table. 
1. Beers with my soon-to-be Mr!
2. Mom, future mom and aunt in law
3. Classy and classier
4. Corn hole- because it's not a Southern backyard
party without it!
5. Candiiiiid
6. Orlando friendss! :) 
1. Helloooo cupcakes! Red velvet, chocolate peanut butter & York peppermint
2. Kels & I
3. Some of my most favorite gals (enter smoochy emoji face!)
4. Boots, boots, boots!
5. annddddd the fabulous cake from my sweet best friend
6. The most GORGEOUS bouquet of flowers
from one of my bridesmaids who couldn't make it

With the exception of waking up Sunday morning to
my parents' backyard looking like a frat house, all went well! 
Good food, GREAT company, a beautiful evening and one amazing man
that I cannot wait to marry... 
ok, and one ambersand sign that I almost had to fight someone
for in HobLob because it was the last one. 
Oops!
#aggressivebride

On another note, my parents are super old school and insist
that engagement parties don't exist- right up there
with couples showers and gender reveal parties apparently.
IN FACT when I mentioned something about engagement
pictures my Dad said, "Engagement pictures?! Can't we just
put it in the paper?"
What? Dad, no.
So my maid of honor/best friend/dessert table hijacker, Alyson,
shows up with a snapshot of her mom's announcement in the paper
from the 70s. Not helping.

I, personally, think engagement parties are fabulous
and I don't think Bry or I will be making a trip to the liquor store for a few months..
I rest my case.






Sunday, June 30, 2013

The Proposal and The Bling

In between being a work-obsessed business owner, 
a relentless sales girl, a bridesmaid in a girlfriend's wedding 
and, ahem, a newly-engaged bride-to-be myself.. 
a blogger is one thing I have not been lately! 
Oops! 
Bare with me gals. 

So before I share our Punta Cana trip with yall I wanted 
to share the story of how Bryan proposed AND of course the pretty
little thing that he slipped on my finger, which in itself should be it's own
post buuuuuut let's not get carried away! 

Day One
Let's start with THIS POST
which in case you missed it, basically explains 
how EXCITED I was for a particular purchase... my Canon
and WHY I purchased it.... for our Punta Cana trip

So I buy this fabulous little camera to snap all of our vacation shots
and naturally in Corin-bad-luck-fashion, it broke as soon as we checked into our room.
No joke, people. 
We checked in.
They handed us "welcome cocktails." 
I thought, cuuuuute! Photo Opp!
Handed it to the guy behind the counter to take a pic and boom.
Not working. 
[This fun little piece of information comes into play again in the story] 

We didn't land until 8:30 so after spending most 
of the first night traveling and trying to play Geek Squad with my camera, 
jet-lagged not to mention, I gave up and we went to bed.

Day Two
Hoping the camera was back to functioning again? 
That was my thought process too. Not so much. 
We DID however spend the entire second day on the beach and 
in the pool, ok, at the swim up bar. 
We met a ton of other young couples and just had a suuuuper
relaxing day. We headed back to our room around 5:00 and at this point
Bryan is starting to rush me.
How long is it going to take you to get ready?
Can you hurry up?
There's people down on the beach- I want to go take sunset pictures!

Sunset pictures? Seriously?
Who is this guy, right? 

Had it not been for the special little pink cocktail,
compliments of my favorite pool bartender, 
I probably would have thought something was up right there.
But no. 

So we practically RUN down to the beach as the sun is setting-
in new wedges that had yet to be broken in, mind you, 
to find that there is no one around us to take pictures. 
This is where the Canon was suppose to come into play.
Bryan had been playing with my settings the week prior and
must have found out how to take a ton of snapshots on the self-timer.
His plan was to set up the camera and then have it take several pictures of us
but thaaattt plan kind of went out the window now didn't it?

So Plan B was apparently flagging down this poor family- 
Mom, Dad and horrified little boy- 
who were totally unknowing of what Bryan was about to do. 

They were SO sweet! 
I was even offering to take pictures of them after because
the Mom was being such a good sport. 

So she first snaps this picture and decides that she wants
to take more because the setting was so perfect:
Now she doesn't like the tree in the background and wants us to move:
Now she says that she wants more of the water in the background:
(I'm telling you- Bryan chose likely the pickiest person at the resort that
just so happened to be walking by)
So we move, at which point Bryan says, "Hang on
I actually have something for you."
NOW I'm freaking out. 
Seriously, what else could it have been?
If he pulled out any other piece of jewelry I would
have felt like an absolute idiot, let's be real.

And thennnnn- BAM.
Down on one knee.
The family is freaking out.
I'm freaking out. 
It probably felt like he was down there for centuries.
I'm not even positive I said "Yes!"
Bryan later confirmed that I did but I honestly was
so emotional that I couldn't even tell you what I said.
1. I couldn't believe that he just proposed.
We had been dating for 7 1/2 years yall.
I had pretty much given up on ever getting married
and just started to refer to us as life partners. That probably did the trick.
2. I couldn't believe he had someone there to capture everything!
Some people might say that its not as personal with someone there taking
pictures but I would have to disagree.
Bryan said the husband and wife both started yelling, "Is this real??
Is this real??!" and I don't remember hearing any of that.
It was so surreal to see him down on one knee after 7 1/2
years that I had pretty much blocked everything out.
I couldn't explain the feeling if I tried BUT I do have about
20 pictures that were snapped by a sweet Miami family to reenact the
moment for the rest of my life and I absolute LOVE that!
Half of the emotional shock that you clearly see
all over my face was due to what he pulled out of his pocket.
We had looked at rings a few times and I thought I found the most
perfect ring but it was so totally out of our price range.
We left the jewelry store with an understanding of what
I would like but I never in a million years expected to receive that ring.

After processing the fact that Bryan was down on
one knee, proposing, I glanced at the ring and pretty much lost it.
It was the exact ring that I had been obsessing over and dreaming that
I MIGHT someday have.
Please also note my stellar photog skills. 

I would have to say that I have one of the world's ugliest left hands
but I don't really mind it so much anymore!
The boy did pretty good.

Anyway that's enough sappy, love talk-
the full Punta Cana recap coming soon!










Friday, June 21, 2013

LIFE UPDATE: We're Engaged!

Nothing is wrong with your computer folks.
You read that correctly.
WE ARE ENGAGED! 
Thaaat's right- I am typing this post with
a ring on my left hand and SWEET BABY JESUS I still can't believe it.
Bryan dropped down to one knee and proposed
on June 14th in Punta Cana and after seven years of careful consideration
I said yes.

More pictures and the full engagement story to come! 

Love Love Love!