To A New Beginning

Exactly 6 months from today, I will be in San Diego, celebrating love. My love for Rudy.

Rudy and I have spent 5 of our 25 years of life together. It's hard to imagine what life was like without him. 5 years is a long time and we've become incredibly comfortable in our lives together. I love that. And it's true, living together has made it so we're already, practically married.

But getting married means more to me than our commitment to one another. It means a day where we get to really celebrate how much we love one another. To concentrate on us. It's our new beginning.

Our first beginning, 5 years ago.

I think we've aged well. :)

(Photo by Kamee June Photography, unedited)

Engagement Photos

I think engagement photos are so fun! It's a chance to get to know your photographer, kiss and cuddle with your fiance and feel like a rockstar for a couple hours! This is the second professional photoshoot Rudy and I have had and this time, I really wanted to go all out. I'd never had my hair or makeup done professionally before and I've noticed in engagement photos (because I stalk many professional wedding photographer blogs and look at A LOT of sessions) that your hair and makeup can make a huge difference! So, Kamee (amazing photographer who took all of these photos) suggested contacting Katrina (seriously talented hair and makeup artist), which I did, and I'm SO happy I did! Katrina is super sweet and oh my goodness, can she do hair and makeup or what?

Kamee, Katrina...thank you so much! I had so much fun feeling like a rockstar. I'm lucky to have you two on board for the wedding!

Rudy, thanks for being such a good sport. I know the Giants were playing during the shoot and we missed any sort of Halloween fun, but you didn't complain once. I love you!

3. Dress

1. Photographer
2. Venue
3. Dress

These were the 3 most important things to me when it came to planning our wedding. I'm sure Rudy doesn't quite agree with me here. His list is probably more 1. Music 2. Alcohol 3. Honeymoon. ;)

After booking our fabulous coordinator (which has proven to be my best decision yet!), I booked our amazing photographer and then I booked our awesome venue (which I'll post about soon). But when it came to the dress, man...I was crazy nervous to go shopping. I was terrified that I wouldn't like how anything looked on me. I'm not the most confident person in the world, especially when it comes to my body and on your wedding day, you're supposed to feel great about yourself. So, I was scared.

Luckily, I took an amazing support group with me when I went shopping in July. When the size 2 sample didn't fit...it was okay! I still had two sweet sisters, my wonderful mama and my wookie (best friend Autumn) to help me see what I would look like with the dress in my size...and to remind me that pretty isn't only a size 2.

First, forgive my hair. Trying on a ton of wedding dresses kind of gave me a workout and I wasn't concerned with how my hair looked in these photos. :) Second, this isn't my dress. But, it was a VERY close second! If my budget allowed both my dress and this dress, I would have purchased it in a heartbeat. This second place dress was definitely me and absolutely fit our venue and theme.

However, this dress just didn't quite make me feel as pretty as the dress I did choose. There is something about my dress that just felt...perfect. :) I think it's a dress that Rudy will love and understand as well.

So, overall, my dress shopping experience was a great success and I couldn't be more happy about my top 3 wedding choices!

36 Wedding Photographers

Yes, I'm obsessed with photography. I've loved taking photos since I was really young and some day (hopefully soon), I'll have the means to put that obsession to work.

This obsession drives me to read a ridiculous amount of photography blogs, mostly wedding photographers, every day. I have a "photography" folder under my bookmarks that contains, oh, 36 blogs right now....and this is a NEW computer. I know I don't even have 10% of all the crazy talent that's out there though.

With all that talent, I thought it would be incredibly difficult to choose a wedding photographer. And I'm positive that if I chose any of those 36 photographers, I would get amazing photos on my wedding day. However, it was actually really easy to choose a photographer because this particular photographer just so happens to be one of the nicest people I think I've ever met. Add talent and making me feel great about myself (yes, that is totally a requirement), and we've got a winner!

Meet Kamee from Kamee June Photography!



Photo credit: Kamee's blog

Last year I decided I really wanted photos of me, Rudy and our puppies. After doing some research and falling in love with Kamee's work, I set up a shoot and a couple months after we drove about 8 hours (round trip) for a day to get photographed. It was totally worth it! Kamee was so sweet and made us feel totally comfortable.

One of the photos from our shoot last year.



I'm so excited about our wedding and knowing Kamee is our photographer just makes it that much better! Check out her website and blog for some eye candy! You won't be disappointed!

Kamee, hopefully we will be more chatty (Rudy is especially shy) this time! ;)

2011 = The Year of Weddings

So (Oh yeah, I start A LOT of posts this way), I'm getting married in June and my mama is getting married in February. Not only am I planning (well, I have help) my own wedding, but I'm super excited about helping plan my mama's as well!

Because weddings are fun and beautiful and exciting, I thought it would be fun to share details of mine and my mama's weddings throughout the planning process. Now, I'm not going to include every detail here. I do want sooome things to be a surprise. :)

First, let me introduce you to my wedding coordinator, Courtney Tibbets!


Photo credit: http://dapperimages.com/

As a frequent wedding blog reader, I've known for awhile that I wanted/needed to hire a wedding coordinator. Weddings are A LOT of work and seriously, I don't handle stress well. So I did some research and found Courtney. If responding to my first email in like, 2 hours (or less) wasn't enough to convince me, she was professional, bubbly and seemed like a great fit for us.

Rudy and I have been engaged since January and I wanted to start planning RIGHT AWAY. Courtney has been such a great help already and hasn't once told me that I'm ridiculous for planning so far in advance or asking dumb questions.

The hardest part so far...waiting! I want to order invitations and taste some food and buy centerpieces and shop for bridesmaid dresses. Come on 2011!