life

Wedding Wednesday: The Engagement Sessions

| cheriarmour

It’s really fun to do these Wedding Wednesday posts now that I’m married, and I’m not taking any time away from doing any wedding things. Yes, I could be writing some more thank-you notes at this precise second, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

So I have a confession to make.  A big, huge, horrible confession.  A confession that I’m ashamed to make.  But…years and years ago, I asked myself as I looked at a friend’s engagement photos, I thought to myself – “What is the point of engagement photos?”

Even after we were engaged, I wasn’t necessarily sure what the point was of getting these photos done.

Couldn’t we just save the money, skip the photos, create a really cute save-the-date without our faces being plastered all over them?  And I suppose we could have…until we saw the engagement photos of this gorgeous couple I went to school with.  The engagement photos literally took your breath away, and suddenly, as we were gathering a down payment on the house that would be our first home together as a married couple, I envisioned a home with zero pictures of us when we were young and freshly-engaged.  And I couldn’t do it.

So a year after we were engaged, I contacted the gentleman that I knew wanted to do our photos, and explained our weird situation to him.  He seemed open to the idea of it, even a year after our engagement, and he agreed, with all the grace that a human being could have with a silly couple like us.

image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios
image via Blest Studios

And once we spent the afternoon with Cole of Blest, it became extremely clear why engagement photos were important, perhaps even necessary, when you’re getting married.  

  1. Luckily, I knew Cole, and Blest Studios long before I was engaged, and I knew that the quality of his work was head and shoulders above what I’d seen from other photographers.  However, taking this photos really got me comfortable in doing photos with my husband.  You might think you’re really comfortable with someone – until you have to take photos of you making out and groping your husband on camera.  It really, really gets you comfy with each other. 
  2. Taking these photos gets you comfy with your photog.  Especially in cases when you don’t know your photog or his or her work, this can be really important.  I mean, you don’t want someone to eff up your memories, right?  If it takes some money for you to find out that you don’t jive at all with your photographer, why not, right?
  3. They serve as memories of an incredible times with your spouse.  We didn’t take the photos right after we got engaged, however, even after waiting a year, the pics, even taken a month-and-a-half ago, remind me of a beautiful time, where we met up in a park and met up with a friend to take some photos.  I remember being nervous, I remember showing Cole the spot we got engaged at, and I remember feeling so close to Austin as our story seemed to unfold for Cole. I won’t be forgetting that anytime soon. 
  4. You know what you’re gonna be getting for your wedding.  Direction, organization, light, editing.  We got the good stuff – and we knew that. And you will know that with engagement photos. 

I can admit when I’m being kinda rude, and kind of judgey.  Engagement photos?  Worth it.  

Check out Blest Studios, whether you’re engaged, pregs, celebrating an anniversary, or if you just want some gorge photos of yourself.

Annnnd they’re not paying me to say this.  I mean, it would be cool if they were.  And I’m opening the floor now for some payment 🙂 but Blest is just that good. 

Did you do engagement/pregnancy/anniversary photos?

Running at Night.

| cheriarmour

So first things first (I’m the realest). I’m sorry, I had to.  Couldn’t help myself.  But I hope you all had a really great Labor Day.  I woke up at some point really early in the morning to my husband yelping that one of that cats was ricocheting his feline body off of our end tables.  It sounded sort of like a demon had been released in our room.  So we remedied that by putting the offender in question in the guest bedroom, where he proceeded to rocket around the room like a big cat, but we managed to get some sleep, at least for a little while, which I’m not sure we’ve enjoyed since we got married last week.

I was able to convince Austin to take me to the WaHo (the Waffle House, for those of you not well-versed in all things breakfast).  And for those of you who’ve known me ever, you know I love southern breakfast food, so it’s really nice to treat myself to that once in a while.  So I was able to convince the hubs to take me there with the promise that we would hit up the run club to run a few hours later.

Now if there’s something disgusting on the menu somewhere, there’s a good chance that my husband will order it.  With that in mind, look at this monstrosity that my husband ordered.

BreakfastI believe that is an ENTIRE plate dedicated to hash browns adorned with jalepeños, ham, cheese, tomatoes, hot sauce, and I believe onions.  And he ate ALL of them.  (He ran twice yesterday to make up for it.)

We topped off breakfast by going into my job for a little while for me to catch up on some emails and for me to move the cycling bikes back into the studio for the week after we got the floors refinished, and ended the day with a long, hot run through downtown Raleigh.

Running at Night

I was at the coffee shop writing, right by the windows, when I saw her.

She was tiny, gorgeous, and fast, and she was running.  Nothing wrong with that quite obviously – I run like I brush my teeth, I sort of feel like it’s necessary for me to function like a normal human being, but I was struck by the fact that this tiny girl was running at night.

My first instinct was to think, “She shouldn’t be doing that!? Is she dumb or something?!”

And then I had to pull it back.  I should be able to run out night – she should be able to run at night without me thinking about how stupid of a girl she must be.  And unfortunately, a few stupid, horrible, sick guys have made it so that we can’t even do what we do at night without fearing for our safety.

So me?  I don’t really run at night.  Sometimes, during the winter especially, it’s unavoidable, but running at night, while exhilarating, makes me nervous, and takes away from my run.

Ladies, what do you think?  Do you run at night?

Doomsday Preppers

| cheriarmour

Have you guys ever seen this show on Nat Geo?

image via http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/doomsday-preppers/
image via http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/doomsday-preppers/

It’s kind of like Hoarders, in that it’s sort of freaky to look out, but you really can’t look away.

So the premise of the show is that these folks, usually the male heads of households, are prepping for whatever disaster they think is going to befall our society.  Now, I think preparedness is awesome – there is nothing worse than being that idiot who doesn’t have any candles or a flashlight that works when the electricity goes out.  But these folks are the extreme cases – they’ve stockpiled ammunition, dehydrated food, coffee, alcohol, weapons, and usually built some sort of underground bunker as well.  Usually, their teenaged children are extremely embarrassed, and their wives pretend to go along with it, but wish their husbands were into normal things, like paying $50 to be a part of an imaginary football league.  

By the way, I’m going somewhere with all of this…

So, in the course of planning this wedding, I managed to get nearly 200 mason jars together, most of them purchased from folks off of good ‘ol Craigslist.  Since we’re moving to the new house soon, I needed to move some of this stuff quickly, so I threw up an advert on Craigslist, and got a response from a man who seemed normal.  In fact, we’ll just call him Mason to be safe. 

So I played it really safe, I had everything packed up for him, had one of the neighbors watching out for me, and let my husband know what time, and where me and Mason were meeting up with the jars. 

Here’s where stuff gets weird. 

Mason and I met up to do the exchange of goods, when I made the fatal mistake of asking him what it was that we was doing with all the jars.  Now, you have to imagine this in a southern accent to make it legit.

Mason: Ya ever heard of preppers?

Me: ::incredulously:: Yeah…so…but what is it that you’re canning?

Mason:  Oh EVERYTHANG.  I already have dehydrated food, enough for 4-6 years….

Mason went on to share the following.  

  • He has 60-70 guns STOCKPILED on his property somewhere.  He also gives stuff to his son to hold onto when he runs out of space.
  • He does not drink, but that he is thinking about starting to stockpile alcohol.  It is very multipurposeful and could be a good bartering tool.  However, should disaster befall our society, he “might not be in a sharing kind of mood” <-direct quote
  • He recently built himself an assault rifle that fits nicely into a tennis racket.  However, he does not carry it in his car because it makes police officers really nervous, and he doesn’t want the hassle of trying to get it back if it gets confiscated.
  • He has a lot of ammunition in his car just rolling around in the backseat.
  • That he needs to stock up on fishing line in case he needs to do some emergency surgery on anyone when doomsday comes.

And THAT is my one and only interaction with a real-life doomsday prepper.

Now legit question – all weirdness with Mason the prepper aside, how prepped are you and your family for normal emergency situations?

Our wedding.

| cheriarmour

If you’ve ever gotten married, you understand why I’ve been disappeared for the last week or so.  The lead up was crazy – but I don’t even need to get into that right now.  You want to get into the good stuff right?  The stuff I’ve been talking about for the last year or so?

We got married on Saturday!

I will break down the whole thing a little more in detail in a few days, but I will give you guys a little taste of what we did this weekend.

Our wedding was gorgeous.  It was perfect.  It went off without a hitch.  And I am officially a Mrs!

  •  I heard from someone at the venue that our food was the best.  We did fried chicken (tofu for me), collards, mac and cheese, potatoes, and biscuits.  It was straight-up as southern as it gets.
  • My dress.  Ahhhhh that dress.  It was delicious, and I never ever wanted to take it off.  After we got back, I kinda flopped down on the bed in our suite for a good 20 minutes before I had to take it off.
  • I danced literally for 100 hours.  I had to shower after.
  • The day was perfect, and I love my family – my family family, and my new family – new husband especially!  Feels cool to finally call him husband!

A few photos to tide you over until I do the FULLLLLL recap?

photo 5
This was a quick screen grab that stopped me in my tracks. We actually got into a tobacco field for this one. Photo via Blest Studios.
photo 4
A drunken groomsman who charmed the pants off of all of our parents snapped this quickly at sunset.
photo 3
A guest snapped this as my father escorted me down the aisle. He’d been talking about wearing this tux for months and it TOTALLY came together. Love it!
photo 2
This was us, the HOT day of the rehearsal/rehearsal dinner.
photo 1
All lined up to practice walking down the aisle!

So, this is just a little taste, as I ease back into my life.

What I can say, however, is that I feel SO loved – by friends, by family, by my husband and I’m looking forward to years and years of celebrations like these.  I love you all, and thank you all for an amazing weekend.

That said…what did you do this weekend?

More reality tv!!

| cheriarmour

You ladies k?now I love trashy television, right?

There’s this one…

Nene

This.
KK

 

Oh.  This too.

Teen MomAnd then there’s been Real World, Road Rules, Taking the Stage, Real Housewives of All the Places,  Total Divas, Below Deck, Botched, Shah’s of Sunset, Flipping Out with Jeff Lewis, Party Down South, and that’s about it.

Until I was watching Party Down South, and stumbled upon Steve Austin’s (yes, the wrestler guy) Broken Skull Challenge on CMT.

Now, while a Broken Skull Challenge doesn’t sound like a jolly ranchin’ good time, this show is awesome.  It’s American Ninja Warrior meets wrestling – lot’s of dirt, lots of heat, and some running.  What’s not to love?

What’s your latest reality show obsession?

 

Stress Dreams

| cheriarmour

I’ve stressed dreamed since some point during high school.

In high school, I would dream that I’d get a report card and I would have all F’s and D’s on the report.  I would dream that I was being attacked by dogs during exams.

In college, even though report cards weren’t a thing and we’d just go online to check our grades and transcripts, I would dream that I’d failed classes.

When I first started teaching fitness, I’d dream that I was late to class (huge no-no) or that Yoga music would come on for a Zumba class.

I’ve stress dreamed (dreamt?!) that I’ve shown up late for races, another thing that could screw up a race day in a heart beat.

And now, I’m stress dreaming about the wedding.  The last few nights have been horrible.  Absolutely horrible.  And it’s not because I have a single doubt in my mind about this guy…

Knife…Pictured here holding a knife he just added to our Zombie Apocalypse bag.  (Seriously, and I have not seen him beam like this or talk about any object like this since the last fancy pocket knife I bought him.)…

But it’s more because I want everyone to have a good time.  I want to look pretty.  I want everyone to have enough food.  And I want for us to have good memories of the day we got married.

So last night, I dreamt that the day was here, my shoes had not yet arrived in the mail, and that I had no one to help me the day of.

Eek!  I talked it over with a planner who happened to come into my office at work, and she eased my worries a little bit.

But what I need is to chill chill chill, have a tea, and hear about your stress dreams.

What do your stress dreams revolve around?

 

Remember the big announcement that wasn’t?

| cheriarmour

A month or two ago, I blogged, incredibly disappointed about a big announcement I’d wanted to make.

We found a house in a really cute area of town, went to go ahead and sign on the dotted line, and we couldn’t do it.

2380 Y_sch9At some point during the process, it started to appear that the purchase we were about to make was not smart as far as our cash was concerned, and we had to back out of the deal.  I was sad, just because I’d started to envision our lives in the house, but it was the best thing for us.

So in the mean time, we’ve been searching high and low for a house.  There was the house of horrors on Peartree.  I never saw this house, but Austin visited a home where the poor woman living there was an actual hoarder.  There was also this house that looked so so cute on the outside, but was so 90s inside, that everything in the home would have to be replaced should we ever want to have people over or you know, sell it.

So the process has been really annoying and nothing at all like it is on Million Dollar Listing.  I think part of the unpleasant parts of looking for a house also were fueled by the fact that I’m completely over renting.   But I digress.

So all that to say is.

Well, uh…

We’re under contract on a house.

WE ARE UNDER CONTRACT ON A HOUSE.

And I ain’t no fool, so I’m not gonna post the address.  But what I WILL do is show you my favorite part of the house.

New HouseThe kitchen, the kitchen, the kitchen!  That island is NO joke, and I cannot wait to put my dips on it.  Dips is what I’m excited about people.  Lining dips down the counter maybe a casserole or two, while my friends laugh with champagne flutes.  We don’t drink out of champagne flutes, but you get it.

Gah so excited!

Weekend recap.

| cheriarmour

I feel like every weekend is really nuts for me at this point, what with us being like a month out from our wedding.  Last week, this fear that no one would show up to our wedding overcame me, which one of my bridesmaids informed me was a normal fear.  But now, all these last minute things are starting to come up and I’m just hoping that we can get it together.  Whew.

So over the weekend, one of my bridesmaids, Ashley, came to spend some time with me.  I think it was good, I needed some friend time, and she needed a break from her insane commute in Northern Virginia, so it all worked out amazingly.

So Ashley came in on Friday evening, and was able to stop by my job to see my new office, which I was really really excited to show her.  One really cool thing about the weekend is that Ashley is going vegan, so instead of doing our usual where we eat everything in sight when she comes, we spent a lot of time snacking at the Whole Foods.

So anyhoo, that first night, we met up with Matthew, my former boss, and noshed on some salads and drinks.  That night, we ended up at the Borough, and met new friends.  I also saw a nose job nose in real life, and it was really scary.

Saturday, I ended up going to work for a little while, and teaching a Zumba® Fitness class where, because of the coffee I’d had earlier that morning, I sweated more than I think I’ve sweated teaching a class all summer.  After a nap, I took Ashley the new vegan to the Remedy Diner, a diner downtown that incorporates a ton of vegan and vegetarian stuff in their menu.  I can’t even tell you what I ate, but I know it was dang good – I’m trying to make it a point to try everything on the menu before we leave Raleigh at some point.

After delicious vegan things, we met up with friends for drinks, and proceeded to run around downtown like we were 22 again – we danced, I saw a bride leaving her wedding reception and I wished her well, and I didn’t go to bed until 3am.

photo 2

I think sometimes when you’re  grownup, you forget to stop and act like a crazy college student and actually have FUN on the weekends, so this weekend was a nice reminder to do that once in a while.

What did you do this weekend?

Dead car batteries.

| cheriarmour

Good morning!  I’m so sorry for my silence yesterday, but I had to buckle down and get the wedding invites finished.  They are done, they look beautiful, and I’m sending them to work with Austin tomorrow so they can just be DONE and out of my face.

And then, I will just focus on getting as much stuff done as possible until the RSVPs start rolling in.

But I realized today that I am getting married next month and I cannot wait.  I am so ready to see all my friends and family, and most importantly, be married and get my swirl on with my man.  So pumped! Eep!

Okay, so on Monday, I told you guys that my achilles was sort of bugging me, so I embarked on some pool running, which was actually really cool, despite the fact that it looks so so dorky.  It feels like it paid off, because I was able to teach my Zumba class at Aradia on Tuesday, and then I woke up early Wednesday morning, and hit up the treadmill for a pre-work run.  The tendon feels great, and I think I will just stay off the trails for the next few days while I let it decide what it’s going to do.

Dead Car Batteries.

So, I was running around, getting ready to go to work two mornings ago, and I kind of thought that my car was being lazy as it was cranking up.  It sort of coughed, but it started, and I thought nothing of it.

Later that day, just before the World Cup game (ugh, don’t wanna talk about it,) I went to start my car up, and the battery was dead.

Dead BatterySo there I am, on the day that felt like a million degrees, bumming a charge off my boss.  Yikes.

So today, I made sure I got the workout in early, headed to the most unfun store ever (Advance Auto Parts), unfun because there aren’t any fun magazines there or good candy, and I bought a new battery, and the ever-handy hubby-to-be replaced it.

Whew!  What a day.

But my battery is replaced, I ran today and didn’t die of heat stroke, invites are on their way, and I am delightfully sore.  Life is good 🙂

What are you doing for the 4th of July?