Friends....Question or Statement??

Hello readers! I hope you are all just fabulous! I on the other hand have been in kind of depression. I moved about 60 miles from my hometown about 8 months ago and I have participated in church things and also work at a place that is filled with younger people my age ....and yet I have yet to make one friend. It's not like I haven't tried. My friends from back home said when I moved that they would come visit or meet me half way and we would hang out a lot. Well only two friends have met me half way, once each.  There is only one friend that I really talk to, the rest don't answer messages or anything. I'm just kind of tired of being alone and it is really starting to depress me big time! I have five bridesmaids in my upcoming wedding and none of these girls are the one that I talk to most of the time, is that bad? Can I really call them friends? I'm just so confused on what the meaning of the word "friend" is suppose to be I guess. Three of those girls are family so I guess they aren't obligated to talk to me but what about the other two that are suppose to be my "friends"? I have no idea where to go around here to find people our age, I feel like I just started school again for the first time, but then I think that was so much easier.  In kindergarten you just say "Hey, want to be my friend?" and they say "yes" and then you are friends and in a small town like the one I'm from you are friends until you graduate from high school. You go to college and you are put in the dorms to share a room with someone and that person becomes your first friend and you join clubs and meet people so easy.  But what happens when you graduate and you move away? How do you go about making friends? How do you go about keeping yourself busy when nothing is going on in your little subdivision? I'm just so depressed without someone to talk to and don't know how to go about making friends that aren't my fiance or mother-in-law to be.  I love my fiance, Aaron, and he is my very best friend but sometimes you need a girl to talk to, and I love my mother-in-law to be but she is just that, my mother-in-law to be. I call my mom a lot but again she is my mom, not a woman in my position in life, not my age. I just don't know what to do anymore, I can't afford to drive to my hometown every time I'm feeling like I need to hang out with someone. At what point do I say "Are you my friend or just someone I know?" to the people that said they would come visit or meet halfway and don't??? I don't know what to do in this case of my "friends."  Are they friends or what you call acquaintances?

Baby Fever :)

Hello readers, I thought I would blog about something a little different today.....I have baby fever big time! :) Everywhere I go lately everyone is pregnant or talking about babies or have brand new babies, I am going crazy because I want one of my very own and obviously I'm not drinking the right water because I don't have one.  I don't know if I am just liking the idea of a child that is half me and half Aaron, and to just share that connection with him or if I am wanting a baby because they are just so adorable, who doesn't love a baby.  I really want one to love, play and take care of, but I also want that connection, like next step in our relationship, with Aaron.  We are getting married in about 4 months so we are going to wait until then at least but I just can't help but tell Aaron all the time that I want our very own little bouncing bundle of joy.  We have talked about names and what we would want for him or her in life, I just feel like we are ready to take that step after we are married. I'm just so excited for us to get to married and start a family, it's just exciting to start a new chapter in our lives together :-)!

Wedding Blog #9 - The Dress!!

HI!!! So if you have read all my wedding blogs up to now, there is one question you want to ask, "Did you find your dress yet?" YES, I have found it. I got it in mid-January from David's Bridal. I am not going to describe it because I don't want any chance of Aaron finding out at all any part it. :) It is the most beautiful dress I have ever seen and I have tried it on many times just because haha.  The experience of going to David's Bridal to find the dress was the worst customer service experience ever but I am so happy that I found a dress that brought me to tears.  My mother, future mother-in-law and my cousin (who is also my maid of honor) went with me to the bridal salon.  My cousin is the one who put all the dresses on me, not the consultant, my mother-in-law to be was picking out dresses that I told the consultant I didn't want, which if the consultant was around like she was supposed to be she would have had more dresses for me to try instead of ones i didn't like. I was disappointed in the customer service experience of the whole thing but like I said my dress is BEAUTIFUL! My dress was also on sale! (money saved$) My grandmother is going to make my veil, just like she made my moms, so that is so very special to me.(this is also another money saver$)  I am going to wear flats I know because I want to be comfortable the whole time, and heels are not my idea of comfort. Also my second money saver$ with the dress is that my alterations and bustle will be done for almost nothing by a friend of my moms that's coming to the wedding that is a seamstress on the side. I'm just so excited to put that dress on and walk down the aisle to Aaron and become his Mrs.!

Wedding Blog #8 - Bridesmaids Dresses

Hello readers of mine :) I hope your enjoying reading about our wedding journey. Bridesmaids dresses was actually one of the first things that I picked out but forgot to blog about it until now haha. My goal as the bride was to pick something that was within budget for people so the dress is about $50, the shoes are about $20 and the shawl is about $30. Also my second goal was to pick something that they could easily wear again to a nice holiday party or cocktail party or another wedding as a guest :) So I chose the options below all from davidsbridal.com, the dress is in apple color and the satin shoes are just plain black pumps and the lace shawl is is in black as well. Seeing all these, my bridesmaids could easily wear them all again. :) Hope that they like them and I know they will all be beautiful!

The only people besides our mothers that we haven't "dressed" yet are the groomsmen and they are next on the list to pick something out for but they will most likely be wearing tangerine since the girls are wearing cranberry. :) I'll keep you updated! 

Wedding Blog #7 - A Few of the Little Things

Hello readers :) I thought the next stop on the journey was to kind of pick up on all the little things that matter but aren't really enough to do a blog post on haha.
The first thing is very important: Hair and Makeup :) I am getting my hair done by Stephanie Taylor, she can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/tayloredhairfashionsew. She does great work and has done a friend of mines hair for a few years and has done a great job. I am most likely going to get an up-do of some sort but I am still thinking it over. Plus she is doing all my bridesmaids, mom and mother-in-law to be's hair, and since there is so many of us she gave us a good price, which is even better!
I am doing my makeup myself because I whenever you have someone professional do your makeup they put way too much on and I wanted light weight and natural looking makeup.
Security  is the next thing on the list of little but important things. The venue required us to have two security guards so CrimeTek Security is who we chose for a good price. They have been very nice to us as well and I am happy so far with their service.
Our officiate is the next little but very important thing. Pastor Kimothy Bankston is going to be the man to marry us on our big day! He is from a little church in Sonora. Aaron is actually the one who got him because he knew Aaron's grandparents very well, so I am happy to have him as such a big part of our ceremony.
The next little but I think also very important thing is the unity candle. Now I was going to buy a set that was all beautiful but they were so very expensive. So I got the stand at Michael's for about $25 and then bought some cheap, non-scented, white candles and rhinestones.  So it was cheaper and I got to design our unity candle, which means it is one of a kind! :) Here's a little peak below :)

So one of the things that Aaron has kind of teased me about a little is my "bridal binder." Now any of you that know me for real know that I am so type A personality, everything is always organized especially when it comes to receipts and orders and what not.  So I have all my contracts and pages to write each payment on and everything is separated my vendor.  I LOVE the organization! :)

One of the most important things (Aaron thinks hahahaha) is the open bar. My dad's friend has agreed to be our wonderful bartender so I am excited because he is such a nice guy (another way saving money$).  We are having one white and one red wine and most likely one beer.  My dad has been put in charge of this element of the wedding so I kind of just left it up to him.
And last but not least the most important little detail i can think of is the marriage license! We will officially be married in the County of Merced, so we have to drive quite a ways to get our marriage license from where we live and it is actually about 30 mins from where we are getting married because we are getting married pretty much on the county line between Merced and Stanislaus counties. We have to do this in about June / July. :)

Wedding Blog #6 - Save the Dates and Invitations

Hello readers!! So the next thing after taking our engagement pictures was to do the save the dates and invitations.  This was the part that I was so excited about!! The save the dates we had made at snapfish.com. We had received a save the date from Aaron's cousin that was made on Snapfish and we thought it was awesome so we found one we really liked on there.  We chose this one below, it kind of has a country chic feel which is what our wedding is going to be. It took only about a week to make these and receive them in the mail. These were our favorite romantic pictures out of all the ones Angela took.  So we hope you enjoy how they turned out, we sure do! :)

So the next thing to do was our invitations.  We designed and ordered our invitations from theamericanwedding.com.  The site was easy to use and they were very quick to get them to us after we ordered them.  The colors were really true to the computer. As I have mentioned before our colors are cranberry and tangerine, so when tangerine was an option for the inside of the envelopes i knew it was meant to be. The invitation is mostly black and white with touches of color. I made our names cranberry so it was that little pop of color we needed. We put the invitation, response card and the registry card (not pictured) in the envelopes.  We bought clear address labels and printed our addresses on them instead of handwriting or paying someone to write the addresses, this saves money and it still looks very classy because we got to pick whatever font we wanted them in. Aaron and I are so very pleased with how they turned out.

So the save the dates have gone out already, right after we got all the postage, and the invitations are all put together and ready to be mailed in June / July. I think in this area we are set to go and we are so excited!!

Wedding Blog #5 - Florist

Hello lovely readers of mine :) The next stop on our wedding journey was the florist. I met Jacquette at the bridal fair and thought she was so nice and her displays were beautiful and her prices were just what i needed.  Since I decided to do silk flowers for my tables and bridesmaids bouquets, I really only needed a corsage for my mom and Aaron's mom and my bouquet of course. I of course started looking online at her gallery of flowers she had done and came across exactly what I wanted and booked it right away. I am so excited to see how they turn out! She can be found at http://www.facebook.com/EnchantedFlowersByJacquette?fref=ts

This is kind of what my bouquet and the corsages will look like :)

Also I was thinking around my bouquet I would get a charm that would hang down from it of a little picture frame with a picture in it of Aaron's grandparents since they have passed on and were such a huge part of his life, I want to honor them some how.  Still some thoughts in process. :)

Wedding Blog #4 - Photographer

Hi!! I hope your day is going good and your not getting blown away like I am today in the bay :-) Well the next stop on our wedding journey was a ... photographer! This is one thing that I was actually very picky about and looked at so many different website galleries of photographers in the area and some from even out of the area. I saw so many at the bridal fair and looked up each and every one of them.  I couldn't decide which one I liked best and was having a really hard time deciding on one, I talked to Aaron about it and he showed me these pictures from a wedding of someone he went to high school with and they were really good.  He said that someone he went to high school with took them and has a new photography business she was starting.  I am all for helping out the businesses just getting started, also they are usually a little cheaper and popularity hasn't gone to their head yet haha. Anyways, we went and met with Angela and she just put me at ease with everything and her prices sounded awesome and the packages were great. So we booked her! She can be found at http://angelaspillerphotography.com/.  So after we booked her we needed to get our engagement pictures taken almost right away cause our save the dates needed to go asap.  So we did and she had them edited and on a CD back to us in no time at all. Here are a few of my favorites, hope you enjoy them as much as I have :)

Wedding Blog #3 - Photo booth and DJ

Hello awesome readers and welcome back to my blog. I have been talking about my wedding, which was FIVE MONTHS from yesterday!!! So I thought I would continue doing that by heading into the next thing  Aaron and I looked for: the photo booth and DJ.  So like I said in my previous blog about the caterer, I went to a bridal fair after I got engaged, at this bridal fair I got to see a lot of vendors from the area.  One of these vendors was our photo booth.  My mom thought it was so cool. One cool thing was that we got to try it out when we were at the bridal fair. The pictures we took turned out great and we had a lot of fun trying it out that we just had to book it.  So we booked The Platinum Photo Booth for our wedding, with the package we got (which was priced very well) we get unlimited photos for our guests to take, props for them to use, we get a CD with all the images taken during the evening, we get to design the logo at the bottom of the photo strip (so this acts as their favor from our wedding also, saves money$), we also get all the photos taken in a scrapbook that everyone signs (it takes the place of our guest book).  We liked that idea better for a guest book because it is something we will look at over and over again instead of just people signing their names on a boring book :). This is where you can find them, they have been so good so far, http://theplatinumphotobooth.com/.  I am so very excited for them!
The DJ that we booked is Sounds in Motion. The owner DJ George is really nice and seems very organized and that made me very at ease from the beginning, because I am so type A its ridiculous lol.  He was the MC for the bridal fair I went to and he was very entertaining but still played music, I loved that! They were on the higher priced side but I am sure they will be worth it. I am also very excited for them as well, they can be found at http://site.soundsinmotiondj.com/.  
Both of these businesses so far have had super nice people and I have had a good testing experiences with both so far so I know they are a right choice for Aaron and I's big day!

Wedding Blog #2 - Caterer

So it's been awhile since I blogged :-( But the next thing on the journey to getting married that we did was to find a caterer.  I had attended a bridal fair right after i got engaged with my mom and maid of honor (my cousin), while at this bridal fair I got to taste this one caterer's food, it was amazing so she was my first choice.  We didn't really look around, partly because there wasn't many places to look at for catering in the area we were getting married and because i couldn't get how good her catering was out of my head.  So we decided on L&M Blodgett Catering, Merri was very nice and kind of gave us some tips on how to pick our other vendors as well.  So we decided on buffet style service and we are having skirt steak, red potatoes, fruit salad, green salad, bread and butter.  For beverages she will provide water, lemonade and coffee and we have an amazing friend that will act as bartender for our bar that will serve wine and beer.  I wanted something simple and classic and i think we nailed it. It was also all at a very reasonable price.
We are having square tables that seat 8 with basic white wooden country like chairs, white linen table cloths with cranberry colored napkins. Our dinner plates, which we just got from a local rental company, are going to be basic white china with clear basic water goblets.  One of the plus' of having Merri as our caterer is she provides all the silverware for all the guests in her price, which is great! one less thing to worry about getting back to the rental company.  
Our centerpieces are going to be very simple.  I ordered some very nice silk flower bouquets, that happen to be in our colors exactly, they will go on each table in a pint size mason jar with red gems in them and a fake candle tea light (since we can't have real candles at the venue). Each table will be numbered with a year starting with 1985 when Aaron was born.  Each table marker will have the year and a picture of me and a picture of Aaron in that year. I thought that would be something fun for people to look at on the table. I decided to assign people to a table but not assign them to a specific seat, that way they have a little freedom and its not so stuffy.
I think that is just about it for the tables, centerpieces and food. Besides cake because we haven't figured that out yet. 
Thanks for reading about our journey to the married life!