Weddings comprised most of the excitement of 2011.  My own eleven-month engagement took prime focus for most of the year, in addition to serving as a bridesmaid (or rather, matron?) for dear friend Bridget in November and enjoying Adam & Kate's wedding on 12/30/2011.  2012 will bring high school friend Lauren's wedding in March, Monica's Hawaiian elopement in May and Jake's wedding in June (with Greg serving as Best Man), as well as plans for my sister Sarah's wedding to take place on 4/13/2013.

Is this the time of life during which a lot of folks wed, naturally?  Mid-twenties seems to be all the rage for matrimony, nowadays.  However, our parents' generation may have exchanged their vows from age 19 to 30.  Do young people nowadays just consider 24-27 to be the best time to settle down with someone? 



I'm getting married in three weeks!

Wedding!

Soooo... I got a wedding dress!  I will probably post a photo of it soon, as I'm sure Greg will never read this blog.  :o)  To my surprise, I'm finding that Mom adheres to all sorts of wedding traditions and superstitions.  "There will be no face-smashing of cake.  Each couple whom we saw do that at their wedding has been divorced."  Oh my!  She has also expressed the necessity of the "something old, new, borrowed, blue" tradition.  I read in a wedding magazine that the poem ends, "And a tupence in her shoe."  How am I to come across a tupence?  Will an American penny get the job done?  Furthermore, I had been looking up stock photos of wedding gowns online, which I showed Greg to ask his opinion.  Boy, did I get a chastisement for that!  Even the samples!!  However, I will obey the, as we call her, Incident Commander.

Engagement

Greg and I are finally engaged, after having been a'courtin' for the past three years.  Yay!

Family celebrations ensued at the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, with many toasts and much story-telling and support from everyone.  I think the wedding will be a great, fun party with all these excited family members, plus good friends from home, summer camp, church and college.  We are very excited!

Even more exciting is the fact that we have a place booked.  Yes!  In the most difficult month to find an available venue, my parents succeeded in nabbing a catering place with a beautiful hall, great yard with many pine trees and a kind and detail-oriented catering lady.  We're stopping by her open house today to sample cakes.  This will probably be the most fun part of the wedding-preparation process.  Yum.

Besides that, we've got my parents' church reserved for the early afternoon on our special day, which I think will prove just perfect for the size crowd we'll have there.  Next up:  starting pre-marital counseling with our pastor, planning the ceremony with him and our Camp Hill pastor and a church wedding planner, picking out attire and flowers and making invitations and whatnot.  Oh boy!  I'm actually sort of excited to finish our Save-the-Date postcards, and later, make up our lovely printed invites; it's been a long time since I've dedicated myself to a design project of any sort.

What a  busy time!!  I'm glad we still have eight whole months to finish working on all this stuff.

And now, off to brunch and taste cakes!

25x

001. i must eat m&ms in the correct order: blue, green, orange, red, yellow, brown.
002. i thrive on summer activities like hiking, climbing, kayaking; exploring nature.
003. if i had excess money i would buy a taylor guitar.
004. i once punched a raccoon in the face.
005. for years, i settled for a combustible-black marshmallow on my s'more.
006. one time i witnessed a girl nearly fall into the abyss at hershey's chocolate world.
007. the concher is my *favorite* part of the chocolate factory tour ride.
008. donald miller is one of my top 3 favorite authors.
009. green is the color to which i'm most drawn.
010. i have seen the sun set over cadillac mountain on the down east coast of maine.
011. i have not seen a puffin.
012. this summer i saw two bears, two porcupines, and several doe. and the raccoon.
013. i have only heard, never seen, a pack of coyotes (sneaky buggers).
014. wallace and i aspire to drive route 50 from ocean city to sacramento.
015. this spring i discovered how inexperienced arkansasians are at snow driving.
016. my favorite thing about florida is the abundance of anoles *everywhere*.
017. the only time i flew was to visit 2 friends in chicago in 2005.
018. i worshipped God with homeless folks in a church next door to a crack house.
019. my roommate and i once cleansed the waters of the atlantic in wildwood, nj.
020. i have been to 10 weddings, and was the maid of honor in one of them.
021. i am a founding member of the ice cream challenge.
022. i once licked a cave formation that has been filmed for television.
023. one of the best things about camping can be trying to hang up your bear bag.
024. i enjoy driving a 15 passenger van
025. i hope to travel extensively in the somewhat-near future.

lately

So here's what I've been up to:

• balanced working and school and got a 4.0 my last semester
• graduated from Kutztown University with my BFA
• wrote these things on my resume
  
• had a long summer at Krislund [still fighting bitterness about that]
• went to Maine with my man and had an incredibly relaxing/fun/wonderful vacation that made up for the hardships of the summer
• now living at home, searching for a job so i can be a real person
• looking forward to being the maid of honor at [one of] my best friend's wedding in 9 days
  

At least now I have plenty of time to read. I haven't had that since high school. And I'm trying to be patient about the next 2 years of my life.