Whatchu thinkin?

Whatchu thinkin?

Baby, I got your money

we took the money plunge!

Smile like you mean it

I did it! I finally up and got myself blogging with a new site, new name, and a new little image that can stay at the time for the meantime.

Come join me at my new locale, smile in motion Hope to see you there!

Peace,
Jenna

Always searching

I totally pulled a number on myself.

So I was reading this article on Eat Pray Love which was a major critique about the book. About how she was just a privileged white lady searching for enlightenment with lots of cash and time at her leisure. Now, I definitely agree with this critique...even though I don't want to because I loved that book. Because I love the idea of taking a year to travel and go to magic places and 'find myself' and blah blah. And reading that critique made me feel SO TYPICAL. And who wants to be typical, huh? Sure, we are all trying to fit in and be normal...but typical? yuk.

anyway... so after that critique I was all "but how to I find enlightenment without well to do women telling me of their amazing exploits? and then following in their footsteps and buying my way to a higher level of being?" and then I decided that to be the MOST enlightened, I would actively NOT seek enlightenment.

genius! Enlightenment is right here waiting for me on my couch!

Now, as stupid as that does sound, I believe a part of it. Because I am always, always searching for something better. I'm always searching for more and striving for the best. But if you are always striving for the best, chances are you may pass up good along the way.


The best path probably lies in the in between world of moderation. Enlightenment/happy/content does take work.....but maybe not to the level being pushed by what may evolve into an Enlightenment Industrial Complex. We may not need retreats and trips...just giving ourselves some more attention. The never ending quest for that better place has got to stop and I have to just take a look around and enjoy where I'm at.

Hello?

Why hello there! Yes, I do still exist. And no, I haven't totally abandoned the blog! (even though it totally looked like it for a while)

I just needed to take a break. A BIG break. From thinking about the wedding. And the wedding was too emotionally fraught for me to really talk about it or do too many recaps about deep things. In all honesty, I'm not ready to share all I think about the wedding. Partially because I'm still working on what I think but mostly because I know some of what I think and I'm still dealing with it.

Because the wedding was great and I'm glad we did it. But it was not the best day of my life. And that is hard to come to terms with.

I do get giant fuzzies in my tummy though when I think about standing up there during the ceremony with my darlin. And sometimes, when we are just hanging out, Brett will get this big, silly grin on his face and he'll say, "You looked so beautiful that day."

And honestly - that makes it all worth it. To hear those words here and there, scattered through my future will make it all worth it.


Oh, and I kinda do plan on letting this blog slowly fade. But I wanna start a new, non wedding focused blog. Wanna know the only thing holding that up? I can't come up with a freakin NAME! I know right. Silly! So I'm waiting for inspiration to come to me on that but also enjoying a break from blog land. There were some things I neglected while immersed in blog land... :)

But its been about a month and I thought I'd throw a line out there and let you know I haven't (totally) abandoned blog land...hopefully you haven't abandoned me!

xoxo,
Jen

We are all really the same person

One of the major things that I've learned while wedding planning and mainly while wedding blogging...is that we are all pretty much the same person. The similarities between wedding journeys is uncanny. We see the same posts written over and over from different perspectives. Yeah, sometimes its redundant. But sometimes it needs to be redundant.

We all worry about how our weddings are going to look (is it too WIC!? is it too Indie!?) We all try to have a wedding that is 'creative' and 'unique' (or as the Knot puts it so bluntly, 'wowing our guests') We all fret over our dress, shoes, accessories, hair, and makeup. We all consider whitening our teeth. We all put ourselves down about our weight and worry that we won't look good enough. We all worry about people having a good time at the wedding and enjoying themselves. We all cry and freak out at some point (more likely many points).

All this to say that our wedding journeys are uncannily alike and follow that very familiar arch of "I'm gonna do this thing! YEAH!" to "um...maybe tomorrow.." to "WTF, MY LIST IS EATING ME ALIVE!" We check out the WIC world, get freaked out, rebel, find blog land, give a big sigh of relief, and then settle in to the work of making the wedding happen.

And I love that this community is here to help us work it out. But the other major thing that blog land has done for me is to make me realize how similar we all are and how I'm not alone. And that is invaluable.

Its been major for me to stop judging myself, because come on, thats kinda what it all is. We are worried about other people judging us but if we weren't first judging ourselves it wouldn't matter what other people thought.

And we all want to fit in and feel 'normal' and blog land has made me see that (crazy as it is) freaking out about a wedding, no matter how 'practical' you try to be...is in fact normal.

So ease up, gal.

What do I do with this thing now?

At first I thought I hated my dress and would want to send it far, far away after the wedding (preferably for a price so that I could hate myself less for buying something so horrible). Then I altered it and fell in love with it and thought I'd want to hang on to it forever. Now that the deed is done...I feel like I'd be ok letting go of my Darling dress. (Especially if it went to the Sisterhood!) But I'm not quite sure.

Sell it?
Give it away?
Tuck it in the cedar chest with my mama's dress?
Use it to be a zombie bride on the Zombie Pub crawl?

What are you doing with your dress after the wedding?

The Dress!

Dear Blog Land,
It seems a bunch of us newlyweds are kinda disappearing around these parts, huh? I feel really bad to do it, but I think it might just be the way it is. I plan to continue writing and will let you know where. As for Me, Myself & Bride... well, I feel that she must fade out and let the next batch come through.

But first, I owe you all some recaps!

And a recap and MAJOR story that I totally forgot about...the dress! Oh, boy, the dress! Remember that epic sh*t storm of suck? Yeah, no good. No good at all.

I bought a dress. Then I regretted it. Then I was pep talkin to myself and all "I don't need no stinkin 'dream dress'! No dress can complete me! I complete me! GO ME!" and tried to make myself feel better. This pep talk worked for about...a minute. Then it sunk in that I really, in all honesty and truly did not like my dress. But I tried to remain calm and be brave and repeat "one day, one dress". This calm lasted a little bit longer, but alas was not meant to be.

At some point, roughly in the last week of July, a mere weeks before my wedding, I knew I needed to so SOMETHING. I broke down. I was dreading wearing my dress. I didn't want to talk about the dress or think about it. And the idea of wearing it on an important day such as my wedding just made me sick.

Not what you want to feel about your dress, ya?

So I reached out in a random last ditch effort. There had been a dressmaker who I had contacted previously about making a custom dress. At that time, she quoted me at $1,600+ for a custom dress - ouchy! But I wrote to her, telling her my sob story, feeling like a brat bride, and asked if she thought alterations on my dress might be possible. She did and she quoted me a very reasonable alterations price. *insert glimmer of hope here*

I scheduled an appointment ASAP and ran over there with my dress to find out that this lady was a heaven sent! She had a very simple plan and exuded complete confidence in being able to make it work! So I said ok, left her with my dress, and crossed my fingers.

Leaving her shop, I felt like a weight had been lifted! I felt free! I didn't even know if this was going to turn out, but I felt so much better already!

Well, to cut to the chase... it turned out. Splendidly! The dress was shortened to just below my knees and looked super cute! She even took the extra fabric and made the flower that I had been failing at making to put on the hip! Total win!

So you want to see it? You want to see what happened to the dress?

Ok, come back tomorrow for some pictures!!!


haha, jk. I'll give them to you now! I'll even throw in a few gratuitous photos of us looking all spiffy and cute! So, without further ado... Meet Darling! (as my dress has now been named.) (and here to refresh your memory is Darling back when I may have called her less kindly things...)





And because you've all been so lovely and patient, here are a few extras that are my favorites! We'd like to get one printed to frame and hang, but I have no idea how we are going to pick! (Note: many thanks to Chelsea Marie Photography - they did such a great job and were a pleasure to work with!)