Conquered the big test!!!

I know that in the next couple weeks I will have lots of things to blog and I will be really busy so here is my latest excitement.


I passed my Physical Therapy licensing exam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now I can focus on getting married in 3 days! Gavin and I are so excited that we can move forward with all the plans we made in Casper. So here is to not getting sunburned at the family camping trip and to a happy wedding on Saturday!!!!

Announcements out!

So we accomplished a great feat! Gavin and I have been engaged for 11 days and we put invitations in the mail today. :) I really love how they turned out. Other exciting news is we were approved from an apartment in Casper two days ago. It is such a relief to know that we have a place to live now. The apartment we really wanted wasn't available until the end of August so we went with something a little smaller. In order to accommodate all of Gavin's tools, my twin sized (soon to be guest bed, for all my single friends) and other things that just aren't going to fit in the apartment we are opting to rent a small storage unit on the complex grounds.

I'm so excited to have my own apartment at last. Gavin will be there of course, but I'm not going to have to share anything with girls for a while. I can decorate how I want and Gavin isn't going to ruin my stuff.  My roommate isn't going to be up late having parties when I am trying to go to bed early so I can get up for work. Don't get me wrong I understand that there will be adjustments. We decided last night that we are going to have two tubes of tooth paste, both agreed that the toilet paper rolls off the top of the roll, and that he will keep the toilet lid down when he leaves :) We will see how it actually turns out.

Most everything has been planned without any hang ups. The one thing that has caused a problem is my shoe purchase. We bought shoes at the same store. They had Gavin's size at the store, but we needed to order mine. They came to my house pretty quick. It only took two days. I was so excited! Then I opened the box and started to panic. They were the right shoes, but completely the wrong color.

They used to have this store at the local mall, but when I went to see if I could exchange the shoes I found that the store no longer existed. I got online and discovered the closest store was an hour away. I called to see if they had the shoes I was looking for. They didn't but said they could have them ordered to the store. I was just praying that they would come in time. I will be up north this weekend and had a chance to swing by and pick them up if they came in. I was excited when the store called me this morning and told me my shoes had come in and they were the correct color. It wasn't like shoes were going to ruin my wedding, but I was going to be a little sad if it didn't work out how I wanted.

My next big step in getting to the wedding is to take my licensing exam on Tuesday. I've been at my parents house trying to study this week. As you can see by this blog post I'm doing a great job focusing. I've reviewed about two hundred pages of condensed information in the last week. I'm having a hard time wanting to sit around reading my review book anymore. I already missed playing racquetball with my friends on Monday. To put it lightly, I'm going stir crazy.

I feel like once my test is over on Tuesday time is just going to fly by. That is what I'm hoping for at least. Gavin and I both agreed that we just want to be married already. I know people think we are crazy for having a short engagement, but the long one didn't work out for us :) So if you add it up we will have been engaged to each other for four months total. I think that is a decent amount of time to be engaged. So hopefully you will get your announcement soon and come celebrate with us in starting a new chapter of our lives. The journey only gets more exciting from here.

How many days does it take to plan a wedding?

So I just want to say that this time around is so much better. Everything fit my personality. If you are going to fight about little details the solution I have is to give yourself less time to plan. Gavin and I spent three months trying to plan our wedding to no avail. I don't know if we even had anything really done besides a temple date, but lets get real we even changed that three times.

I have found in school that I work best when things come down to the wire. From the day we got engaged to our wedding date we have exactly 5 weeks to plan and execute a wedding. Throw in that my parents are trying to juggle my sister's wedding as well, I've had to keep things pretty simple.

Last time around my sister-in-law challenged us to make a list of things that were really important to us that we want in our wedding. So as you can imagine after having an extra four months to think about it we have narrowed down our list to the basics.

I really care about getting married in the temple to Gavin. I wanted as many as my family and his to be there as possible. I didn't want a lot of down time before the ceremony. I wanted to get amazing wedding pictures and I wanted a nice reception. Gavin decided he wanted to marry me in the temple too, that was his number one. Good to see that we are both on the same page. Next we wanted his family to be there and then he wanted really good pictures as well.

So we picked a date that would work best for our two families. What better time than family reunions? We picked a temple which I love and allows us to have the most people attend the ceremony. We found a fantastic photographer who fits our personalities very well. I'm excited to meet her and work with her.  Last but not least I have planned a fairly simple back yard reception.

It is amazing how things have fallen into place this time so easily. I contribute that to 5 key things:
1. Gavin and I are so in love.
2. The fact that we have learned how to communicate better with each other.
3. We are open about our opinions and explain our reasoning.
4. We understand what the other person wants and are focused on helping them get what they want not what we want.
5. We understand that we get grumpy when we are too tired and hungry. (this has been a huge help to realize)

I am a really A-type personality. Gavin also has a strong will, but is really laid back at times. There have been several things about wedding planning that he has helped me stop trying to impress other people and just be myself. So along with our wedding being really low maintenance, we have tried to really express who we are. Here is a sneak peak at some of our engagement pictures. Janneke Marquez did such an amazing job.

Also to answer the question in the title. It took us 5 days to plan our wedding. We have a few things left to do that just come with time like sending out invitations and having bridal showers. August 3rd can't come fast enough for either of us!

Motto for wedding....Easy, simple, done

Engagement week 1

While this wasn't the way I envisioned planning my wedding, I much prefer it to the couple other times I tried. It is a whirl wind of getting things done, but it is amazing the things you can accomplish during crunch time. So far we have done the following:

1. Picked a date and scheduled the temple
2. Notified immediate family
3. Planned 1 bridal shower with a 2nd in the works
4. Scheduled engagement pictures
5. Found an apartment in Wyoming
            -Co-signer
             -Money order from bank
6. Scheduled park for dinner
7. Obtained discount for hotels on Honeymoon (Michael you are the best)
8. Planned backyard reception
9. Bought everything we need for announcements (now we just need the pictures...Thursday)
10. Gavin applied for school in Wyoming
11. Gavin applied for FAFSA
12. Planned flowers
13. Decided on wedding shoes (now to buy them)
14. Obtain the majority of addresses for announcements
15. Found a place to get ready for the wedding after camping for two days :)
16. Tried to study for big Licensing Exam coming up in two weeks

Things to do on Thursday

1.      Marriage license

2.      Hotel reservation

3.      Registering at target

4.      Housing Application completed and mailed

5.      Ring shopping

6.      Shoe shopping

7.      Tuxedo rental

8.      Take engagement pictures

9.    Find wedding photographer (this is still eluding us. Photographers in SLC are expensive)

Needless to say this is not what I was expecting my week to be like last week. Sometime when things are less hectic I'll catch you up on how I came to be getting married on August 3rd. The last couple months have been a ride for sure.