February 18th // our wedding

I keep looking through our lovely wedding photos and they are making me so happy! We had the most wonderful, magical wedding day!

 I wasn't sure what to expect, we knew it was going to be wonderful and emotionally charged and so busy! The women in my life kept telling me that I should just relax and expect that anything that could go wrong was going to go wrong, and I just needed to roll with it. What I didn't expect was to have my venue flood two days before the wedding!! I freaked out a little bit, however by our wedding day the building was dry and fine! 

February 18th was mostly cloudy, and slightly chilly, but wasn't raining! My maid of honor, Hannah, and I arrived at the Grange very early for make-up and hair, and it was completely surreal to walk in and fully realize that I was getting married to my best friend in only 4 1/2 hours! The morning flew past, and I was so much more emotional than I anticipated. :)

My favorite wedding pictures are always the first look photographs. While wedding planning, and reading dozens of wedding blogs, every bride said that they were stressed and nervous until the first look, so I knew that I wanted to do it, especially because I wanted to do photos before the ceremony so we would still have a special moment. I was a complete mess of emotions and nerves right before I went upstairs to see Scott for the first time. But when I finally made it up there, it was amazing and I calmed down and the rest of the day was wonderful!

Scott looked absolutely amazing! He was a wonderful sport about a pink tie. ;) It still blows my mind that we're actually married!!

 I think the flower girl dresses were my favorite thing about the whole wedding! They were absolutely darling, and Lydia was so excited about hers! :) 

We had a slight issue with ordering the bridesmaid dresses, and it was almost disastrous, but three weeks before, we found dresses on Amazon that ended up being perfect and beautiful!

My sisters looked so grown up and beautiful!

Isn't she adorable and the sweetest thing ever??

I knew I had to request the photo of Scott's face when I walked down the aisle! It's so sweet!!

Hannah sang the most beautiful rendition of "How Deep the Father's Love for Us," with my oldest brother, Thomas, accompanying her with the guitar. It was stunning!

We decided to keep our ceremony and reception very simple, skipping most traditions. For our reception, we served cake, cookies, fruit and drinks, and to spend the afternoon just visiting with our guests. It was lovely! 

The night before the wedding a ton of the people from my church helped us set up, which was extremely awesome. It went so much fast than we anticipated! Everything turned out beautifully. I wanted to keep the tables simple, but still pretty, and they turned out so well!!

 We hadn't wanted to do the whole cake tradition, but got talked into it at the last minute. And it turned out pretty cute!! 

Hannah made the sweetest, cutest toast ever! 

 We snuck out of the reception half way through, because the sun came out for a few moments, and the photos turned out so cute! 

My parents pulled wigs out and sang a rendition of "I've Got You Babe" at the end of the reception... It was very amusing and very "them."

We left the reception, blissfully happy and incredibly excited.... Only to return an hour later... because I realized that I had the keys to the building in my purse. But it turned out fine, and then Scott and I left for our honeymoon, a wonderful cruise to Ensenada Mexico, which was quite the adventure. (Seasickness is a very real thing!!!)

We have now been married 55 amazing days!! I am exited to be married for the rest of forever! Its been even more wonderful than I even imagined. I love being able to spend so much time together, and our wonderful little house. Its adorable!

I started working several weeks ago, as a {almost full time} Nanny, and I am happy to be busy! 

Photo Credit and a huge THANK YOU to John Hainline who did the most amazing job with our photos!! They turned out stunning!

our story // Scott and Becca

     Scott and I met last 4th of July, through a mutual friends huge annual picnic. As it turns out, they were our only mutual connection at the time. :) 
     I struggle with being very shy, so the whole day I was hanging out with my mom and Aunt, or holding my baby sister, instead of socializing. I wasn't really excited to spend the whole day around a crowd of people, but looking back I am so incredibly glad my family decided to attend. 

     Apparently, Scott was watching me that day, but I never even noticed, and he was too shy to introduce himself at the time. So instead of coming to talk to me, he and a friend found me online... We have since talked about it, and if Scott had tried to talk to me that day, I honestly would have probably not encouraged him at all, because I am shy and not very comfortable talking to guys in general.

      So, we both ended up going home, and I had no idea he was about to rock my world! two days later, I got a text message through my Google account from Scott, introducing himself and explaining that he had really wanted to talk to me, but hadn't, and wondering if I would be interesting in talking. I immediately freaked out! My family has always had a strict "no private contact with the opposite gender "  policy, and a guy I didn't know at all had just randomly contacted me. I knew I had to talk to my dad before replying to him and I was honestly very nervous about how my dad would respond. So I took almost 24 hours to just pray about it before finally feeling a peace about talking to my dad. I emailed him at work, and awaited a response. (So he would have time to think about it and calm down before we talked. haha) 

     My parents were obviously concerned, wondering who this guy was, and we contacted our friends to ask about him. They reassured us that he was a real person, not a stalker, and they attended Church with him. But didn't have too many other details for us. After much consideration, my parents decided that I should reply, and then decided that we needed to meet as soon as possible.

     We met at the river for a picnic six days later, and it was the most nerve-wracking situation. We chose not to tell any of my siblings what was going on, so they were blissfully unaware of the tension going on. I was shaking so bad from nerves when they arrived, and held Lydia almost the entire time to try to mask that. He claims that he was as nervous as I was, but he is way better at faking calm than I am! We didn't talk a lot, (Even after my mother insisted I leave her alone and go sit by him! :) but it was reassuring to know that he was a normal, sane person. I was also somewhat reassured by the fact that the first personal question he asked me was for my testimony. 

     And so, that started a slow, cautious  correspondence between us. It started with chatting online a couple hours a week, and spending time with my family every couple weeks. That changed into phone calls and more involved conversations. 

 

     And eventually, I realized that he was the person I looked forward to talking to the most. That he was always in my thoughts, and it didn't matter what I was doing or who I was with, somehow I was always thinking about him. My parents asked me to keep out friendship between just our families for the first eight months, because we weren't officially in a relationship, just cautiously getting to know each other with that possibility in the back of our minds. It was so hard not to talk about him, when I was thinking about him so much! :) I had to constantly stop sentences short in normal conversations with girlfriends because he was such a huge part of my life!

     Then, on March 25th, we met with my parents to talk about where we were in our friendship, and it was a whirl-wind of a conversation, but by the end of it, Scott and I officially had permission to court!! We were so excited and happy to begin this new part of our relationship. And it meant that I was finally allowed to talk about him, and that we would also be able to spend more time together! 

      So we continued spending time together, with my family, I began occasionally attending his Church, and starting to get to know some of the people on his end. (He lives about an hour drive away from me.). 

 

     In the five months we courted, we fell completely in love with each other. I can honestly say that he is my best friend, and my favorite person in the world! There is nobody I would rather be with! 

     On September 16, 2016, Scott took me out for a "date." We were going to dinner, the beach on the river and then a movie. But once we finally left my house, he started stressing about not having time to get dinner and then see the sunset at the river, so we decided to just go to the river first. (Although both of us were very hungry!) We ended up wading out into the river and just making small talk. (I think he was really excited and nervous. But he knew I was was going to say yes... :) Finally he started to tell me how much he loved me and a lot of other beautiful things I can't remember at all! (I was too excited to pay super close attention.) And then suddenly he was holding out the most beautiful ring and asked me to marry him. I said "OF COURSE!" ;)

And now we are planning a wedding, our home, and to spend absolutely forever together!

l i f e // november

    

I kind of feel like this season of life should be officially renamed from "engaged" to "Wedding Planning!"I'm always working on it, and  have to consciously make an effort to not talk about it constantly. Its honestly astonishing how many thousands of details and decisions there are to be made. I have lists everywhere which is helping,  but we have to decide everything from shiny tulle or matte tulle, to his wedding band, to what kind of dessert we'll be serving.There are so many things we don't have figured out yet, like honeymoon plans, and what time we're having the wedding... (On a side note, I did my passport application today... even though we don't know where we're going yet. And I was happy the photograph didn't turn out as awful as I've heard most do. ;) 

    I am so excited to get to marry my best friend, (92 days!) and I cannot wait until our wedding day. But lately I've been thinking so much about after the wedding and honeymoon are over. The weeks and months after we say "I do" and real life begins. People keep asking me if I'm nervous to get married. And I'm not nervous at all about marrying Scott. I am completely at peace with the decision to get married, and I'm beyond excited to be his wife and spend forever with him. 
     The only part that makes me nervous at this point is learning to run a household by myself, (obviously with him, but I mean without my mom overseeing things.) and everything that entails. Having to decide what to do for meals every.single.day! Finding a balance between working, and keeping the house together. But I keep hearing that it'll be fine, we'll figure out how to make everything work, and things will settle down into a routine. My sister-in-law and a couple friends have been a huge help with it comes to questions about all that. :)

     Its so strange to think about the fact that in three months I won't be living with my family. I won't be doing any of my normal routine, nannying for my cute kiddos, running siblings around, or the endless laundry. The people I nanny for are starting to look for a new Nanny.  Last month I visited my best friend, Hannah, for a long weekend, and it felt so odd, because its one of the last times we'll hang out just being girly like that. 

anyhow, what has been happening in your life lately? 

xx