Big Changes and Happy First Day of School!!

I've been gone for a month and I just haven't been able to compile a post yet. As I told you before, my dad beat cancer, although is still without a job been a year now. After very careful and prayerful consideration, I have decided not to accept any money from my parents for the wedding.

We have also had to reconsider our venue as Aruba is an expensive trip for my parents who just don't have the money right now. So, we have decided that we are going to have the wedding somewhere in the states either in DC or Florida. DC is going to be COLD in the Winter for our date, which we aren't really wanting to change since we have told everyone. (12/30/12). Plus, I do not want to get married in 2013 - I guess I am superstitious.

For the past month, I have been getting deposits back and trying to inform the family that we aren't going to Aruba anymore for our wedding. It's been really hard - I sound spoiled, I know, I really wanted to beach wedding and it so fit into our budget. Now I really have to penny pinch because other developments have come about:

- I had to get a new car mine died! I tried to not spend too much of my savings but I had to so my monthly payments would be reasonable.

- We have been traveling to NY a lot due to Mr. C's grandmother being ill, as you know tolls and gas are expensive so we have been splitting it.

- With giving the money back which I feel so happy about being able to do for my parents, we know have an extremely small budget so I am trying to figure out how we can make this work and still be a wonderful memory for us. Our goal was never to bend the bank anyways.

- My mission for September is to go venue searching. Pick a venue and pick up from where we left off. With having the wedding at home, we have to plan on way more attending than just 30. So this is going to be an adventure for us.

- We are going to continue doing our premarital counseling which has been such a blessing throughout this whole time. I had always thought we have talked about everything we needed to talk about, especially since we both have different religious upbringings. We are reaching each other on that deeper level that I didn't realize we hadn't really gotten in our own personal conversations.

- Plus, Mr. C - which if you know him, he has been a commitmentaphobe and wanting to wait on everything, is wanting to get down to the baby making as soon as we get married, so we decided to finish the basement of our newly purchased house and add on a top level to the attic area so we have some additional space to our three bedroom home as right now we have the Master bedroom, he has an office as he works from home a couple of days a week, I have had an office as well as we all know teachers never stop working, plus I do some additional jobs during the school year and summer which require me to need space to work. Now we could always give up a space for a baby, but we want more than one so we both decided he would move his office to the attic area, which is a great area, I will move my office area to the Kitchen area (we are adding a built in desk) so that we have two rooms available for babies and a basement play area. This project will probably take as long as the wedding planning but as Mr. C has said - this allows him to do his type of planning and me to do mine. Perfect compromise. As I have told you before, Mr. C is not really into the wedding planning - he just wants to have it and enjoy a surprise party for our love as he likes to call it.

The first day of school yesterday was fabulous. My students reminded me that it is all going to be okay and I should harp about things I can not control. Weddings are a happy time and the best time of your life -- I need to get back to that, stop worrying and enjoy the moments.

Until next time....AmazingFabulousWedding@gmail.com