Williams & Sonoma must be a fabulous store.

Because that's where our first real engagement present came from to land happily at our doorstep this week (via the UPS man of course, because as cool as Williams & Sonoma may be, I don't think they can make gifts fly).

Pete's awesome Godfather and cousins sent us the happy gift. Thanks so much you guys!

Of course we had to take photos to document our excitement at an engagement present arriving at our door because, well, I've said it before, we don't get out much. :)

I have never been to Williams & Sonoma, because the closest one to where we are is somewhere off in ritzy Scottsdale land, but they sure have pretty giftwrapping.

R Bug had to get in on the action. No 3-year-old can pass up opening a present.

What fabulous crystal champagne flutes!!! They are SO beautiful. Love them. :)

(And of course, Pete had to play with them, because every man needs to play with fine crystal...)

We are blessed with a wonderful family. Thanks again G. Fam for thinking of us!

Why Vegas? The last of it.

4. We want a celebration!!

I wrote a little about this in a previous post, but here it is again, because it really is that important to us. Pete and I started discussing our someday-wedding about 10 months ago. We had a lot of ideas, but one thing was for certain: we did NOT want a "cookie-cutter" wedding. While we both value tradition, we didn't want the stereotypical one-day event where 200 guests come to eat some food, maybe do some dancing, and then leave after we have talked to them for maybe 3 minutes.

We want our wedding to truly celebrate this wonderful event in our lives...and the more we talked about it, we knew that a wedding weekend in Vegas would do just that. We want the whole thing to be more of a vacation or family reunion - an excuse for everyone to get together and have a lot of fun, with our marriage being the center of it all. We want to spend real time with our family and friends - we love the idea of sharing several meals, hanging out by the pool, enjoying some drinks, sightseeing cool places, maybe seeing an awesome show or two or chilling out in a lounge made of ice (seriously, it exists in Vegas) with the people who come to celebrate with us. And every other option we looked into that may have been a little cheaper or closer to home just didn't provide those kind of options.

(See, I don't lie.)

But we looked anyway. We toured a couple places here in Phoenix, we emailed some other venues, and we tried to see the advantages of not getting married in Vegas. See, here I am scouting out a very pretty venue downtown...

Then one night, we finally just threw it all down and really asked ourselves what kind of wedding we want. We knew that with a limited budget we would have to decide what our priorities were and make sacrifices in other areas. And we realized that our top priority was to have the experience and celebration of a small, fun-filled destination wedding in our favorite city with the people who mean the most to us. So we made some sacrifices in the overall plan (and are still making constant sacrifices) to make it happen. And we couldn't be happier about it.

And that's that.

So Viva Las Vegas, Baby.

In case you missed it:
Why Vegas? Part One
Why Vegas? Part Two and Three

Why Vegas? Part Two & Three

Two more important reasons behind our decision...

2. We already got married in Vegas!

Okay, not really. But that is a picture of us at the Wedding Chapel in Paris Las Vegas. When we were on that fabulous first trip, we decided it would be really funny to pull a practical joke on two of our friends back home by convincing them that we got married in Vegas. One of said friends had tried to pull the same joke on us earlier that year, but no one bought it. We knew we could do better! So we bought some fake wedding rings, took some pictures of us wearing them, sent some fake drunken picture texts, and voila! They totally bought it. As fun as the whole joke was, the real significance of it in the end was that it brought about the first conversation we had ever really had about getting married, and planted quite a bit of a seed in us. We wore our rings for two days and talked about what it would be like to actually get married in Vegas someday. Although we were not at all serious about it at the time, it was yet another special tie we made to Las Vegas. (And just FYI, Pete and I will be wearing our *fake* rings on our right hands when we really DO get married in Vegas!)

3. We cannot afford a wedding in IL or AZ.

Well this is a pretty simple reason. We realized that if we were to get married in either Pete's hometown, my hometown, or the city we live, we would inevitably have a much bigger guest list than we either want or could afford. Bigger guest list = bigger price tag. We LOVED the idea of a destination wedding because we knew it would mean only those who really wanted to be there would be there. And, we really did research and compare costs of both AZ and IL...Vegas won over the numbers almost every time.

Coming up next: Part Four of Why Vegas.

Why Vegas? Part One

Okay I know I said I would write this many weeks ago...but the end of the semester got in the way. And since finals ended, I have simply been soaking up way too much joy in doing nothing but cleaning, watching "The Shield" with my honey and making wedding plans (including buying my gown! - more on that in a future post) to put much thought into blogging. But here I am to do as I promised and explain why we have chosen fabulous Las Vegas as the perfect place for our wedding. **I originally wrote this all in one huge post, but now I've decided to break it apart into four separate posts for easier reading.**

Reason #1: Las Vegas has special meaning for us.

Pete and I went to Vegas to celebrate our first year anniversary as a couple last year. While it was an anniversary trip, it was also meant to be an unspoken farewell trip for us, as we knew we only had 6 weeks left together before Pete moved back to IL for a job with Harley Davidson. The three days we spent in Vegas were...well, magical. So much of our relationship suddenly transitioned during that little getaway. We had an insane amount of fun and we got lost in the romance of Paris and Venice, and all the while we were faced with the reality that our relationship was going to end, or at least completely change, in just a few weeks. Somehow, the complex combination of all that led to both of us completely falling in love with each other all over again. We joked that even if we were never able to find a way to make "us" work, we would always have Vegas as our special place to meet, year after year, forever.

Fast forward one year to Pete and I celebrating our 2nd Anniversary in Vegas. This time we were celebrating the fact that we had made it through our temporary seperation the year before, we had made much bigger commitments to each other since then, and we knew we were going to be together forever. Then came March 16, which as you should know, is the day Pete asked me to marry him. After the proposal, we spent the rest of our fantastic trip daydreaming about how awesome it would be to come back one year later and get married in "our" city. After the cherished memories we had already made in Vegas, it just made sense to make some more on our wedding day. :)

Stay tuned for Part Two of Why Vegas? to find out more about our fabulous location. And in the meantime, here's our favorite picture from our first trip to Vegas, with the romantic Eiffel Tower in the background. Someday we'll get a picture with the real one in France, but for now, this will do just fine.

"...But I had the best days with you..."

Happy Mother's Day to any hardworking mommas who may be reading this. :) I found this card I made for my mom when I was in kindergarten. That's a fantastic unicorn if I do say so myself. :) My blogging has been pretty nonexistent the past couple weeks as I am up to my eyeballs in finals, but I wanted to take a quick moment to remember the greatest woman I have ever known - my mother.

Most Mother's Days for the past nine years have gone by with little to no celebration or mention in my household, for obvious reasons. But today I decided to embrace the day and publicly say that I could never be the mother I am today without the mother I was blessed with as a child. I love her and I miss her every moment of every day.

I was also blessed with an amazing grandmother, who was also taken from our lives nine years ago. I want to say that I love her, I admire her, I miss her and I think about her more than anyone knows.

I often wonder what my life might be like if I still had both of these women with me...(I know there would be a hell of a lot of laughter, that's for sure). I am thankful for everything they taught me, and I know I am very blessed because I have not one, but two guardian angels watching over me and my family at all times, and we know both of them by name. :)
We miss you always.

Lastly, I want to say thank you to all the women who have been stand-in mommas for me when I have needed you. Mary Jo S, Jennifer B, Delany C, Sue F and Jayne V, you have all loved me, taken me into your homes, and treated me as your own daughter...I love you and I wish you all a Happy Mothers Day.

"I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life." ~Abraham Lincoln

"You know I don't do contracts, but my word is stronger than oak."

...Well, Matt Cushman in Jerry Maguire may not do contracts, but we most certainly do - and we did, this weekend! We signed our very first wedding contracts...well actually, the first contracts of any kind that have both of our names on it. We were quite excited about our Wynn contracts, so much so that we even took pictures to share our excitement with all of you. We don't get out much, okay? Yes, this was the highlight of our weekend - signing contracts at 11pm on a Saturday night. Don't judge.

You can't tell, but I am signing with a Hilton Garden Inn pen (where we first met). Yes it was intentional. :)



Pete may - or may not - have worn this shirt exclusively for this photo...



This was my favorite part - seeing "M***** and Mc**** Wedding" (edited for internet privacy of course) and our names listed as Bride and Groom. It gave me all these happy fuzzy feelings that I shouldn't admit in public.



Someday we'll have house contracts and insurance contracts and plenty of other things that will have both our names on it, and we probably won't care at all, so I'm glad we took this moment to be happy about our legally binding documents just once.

13 Months.

Yes, our wedding is 13 months away. I agree, this is a long time and I wish it were not so far away, but it is what it is for many reasons.

As I mentioned in my previos post, there are certain people in my family who are questioning why we have to wait so long, and when I give them the most obvious answer, which is that we need time to save money and plan the whole thing, they then question why we have to have an expensive wedding at all. "Why don't you just elope in Vegas?" "Why don't you just go to the courthouse?" My response to this now is, "why can't we celebrate one of the happiest and momentous occasions of our life with the people who are most important to us??" I don't believe there is anything wrong with that...and the only downside of it is the reality that, in our society, celebrating with family and friends = money. BUT, for the record, we are having a very small, intimate wedding which will cost about 1/4 the cost of the average American wedding.

So yes, our wedding is going to cost some money and it will take a collaboration of ourselves, our families and friends to make it happen...but this is just how the world works. Weddings cost money, food costs money, everything costs money. Yes, we could chuck all the plans out the window and run down to the courthouse without spending more than $60 for the marriage liscence. And for some people that is an excellent choice and fits them and their relationship very well. But not us. And this is why:

We see marriage as a very sacred, very important step in our lives. As everyone knows, Pete and I already live together. We already have a life and family together. Getting married will not change any of this. We are choosing to get married because we both value the importance and sacredness of making vows to each other that solidify our love and our family for the rest of our lives. And we both feel that those vows deserve to be witnessed by the people who love us. We have already made plans for our future together, we have already promised to love each other through thick and thin no matter what. But we feel that our promises of marriage deserve to be shouted to the world and celebrated. That is what weddings are all about.

I won't lie...I have questioned Pete several times in the midst of "wedding stress" if we should just elope. We have discussed it and considered it greatly. But every time, we come back to the same sentiments that I just wrote above. We don't want an overpriced meal, pointless flowers and an enoumous guest list that will forget about our cookie-cutter wedding a year later. We want a true celebration of our marriage, and that is worth every penny in our eyes (more to come about the celebration in the "Why Vegas?" post).

So why 13 months?
Well, why not?? I know many of my family members are uncomfortable or ashamed of teh fact that Pete and I live together without being married. But it's been reality for a long time, so what does it matter if it stays reality for one more year compared to the entire lifetime we have ahead of us as husband and wife? But aside for the "why not?" reasoning, let me give you some of the real reasons why we chose next May:
1. We have to have time to save money and plan the whole thing (yeah I already said that.)
2. We cannot get married before I file next year's FAFSA (in february), or else I will risk losing a huge chunk of my financial aid for my senior year of school due to the change in marital status and combined income.
3. I only have two breaks from school every year - spring break and summer break. Those are my ONLY options for getting married, and obviously this summer is not going to happen, and if we do it over spring break I would have no time for a honeymoon and would most likely be doing nothing but homework the day after our wedding. So that leaves May of 2011.


The last thing I would like to say, for certain people who are hopefully reading, is to pose a question: If this were my first marriage, would you be questioning why I want to have a wedding? Would you be questioning why I want to wear a beautiful dress, walk down the isle and live out the fantasy that I acted out a hundred times as a little girl in my dress-up clothes? I do not believe you would. So please, do not treat this any differently than you would if I had never been married before. You all know that, in the end, that marriage was not at all worth celebrating. But this is. THIS is the one, the ONLY one that matters. End of story.

So please, if you are one of the people who have asked why we are not just eloping, please stop asking, because you now have the answers. Please take the opportunity to celebrate with us as we look forward to the next 13 months. And take a moment to think of how special you are, because, apparently, we would not want to do this without you there. :)