Wedding Weekend in Asheville

October 29, 2015October 28, 2015 | cheriarmour

Honestly, middle of the week last week, I thought I wasn’t going to make it to the weekend.

Tuesday evening, I was at work, and attempting a quick dinner. It was one of those evenings when I couldn’t seem to get a second to myself at work, and I got a call over the walkie for like the 700th time. I pushed myself back from my desk, maybe a little too hard, and my laptop cord got caught in the wheels of my desk chair. Before I realized what was happening, the computer crashed to the floor, and I knew it was bad.

I screamed a word that is not considered appropriate to God-fearing people, and the computer worked for about 20 more minutes before it completely crapped out. I immediately contacted IT, but was pretty computerless for the better part of two days, save for an old laptop I was able to dig out of a drawer at work.

So after that, I cried to my husband that I did think I could make a wedding we were planning to attend with the pile of emails that were sure to await me.

But, before long, and with me making a trip or two back to our corporate headquarters to drop off my laptop and beg our IT specialist for mercy, I had a fix – the fall destroyed the hard drive, and sweet Jim replaced it for me. Thankfully, Google Chrome saved a lot of the bookmarks I needed for work, and all was not completely lost, and after a few meltdowns, I was comfy to head to the wedding of Kim and Nate on Saturday.

Wedding Weekend!

So, this time on our trip to Asheville, instead of getting a hotel, we did an Air BnB. Because we left early enough, we had time to get into the place, a cute basement apartment hanging off the side of a mountain, and I had time to go for a short run while Austin took a little nap. By the time I got back, he showered, and I was in full swing, getting my hair pinned up before I hopped into the shower to make my face look decent.

**Side note** I once read something that Jamie Chung said, something along the lines of the fact that her pre-pretty dress routine is to run, and that always stuck with me. So before a fancy event, before getting into a dress, I like to go for a run as a little routine for myself!

Rentallll! Funny enough, I wasn’t sure if I was gonna be crazy about this one – the inner part of the dress was just tight enough around my getting-bigger butt, and I wasn’t sure if I would look like the dress was riding up. But I think it turned out perfectly!

Adele, pictured here, also rented the runway. She and a friend actually picked this dress out for me when I found myself getting overwhelmed by the options.

Not pictured: this rad cape I got since the ceremony was outside and just a little bit chilly. But it was awesome. and really high fashion. If you saw me in it, you might even think I was a fancy classy lady!

So the wedding of Kim and Nate was really fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed the break. The wine was flowing, and I really enjoyed dancing with friends, as well as this cute little girl we met on the dance floor.

The next day, after I woke up really early and took Aleve and vitamins before the storm hit (praise you Lord for that insight), and prepped to push off and hit brunch with some folks from the wedding, as well as an old friend from Elon.

We were missing part of our crew, and the mystery was solved when Adele told us that they got a text at like 3am from some of the boys, telling us they’d just gotten back and they weren’t going to make it back. Oh well!

After we gobbled up brunch, I sort of rudely invited myself to join Wayne (Elon bud) on his quest to find his sister’s booth at a local flea market.

Can we talk about this flea market for a second? K. Tiny plants. Vintage clothing. Someone told me I had a nice voice. Like speaking wise. Which is hysterical because when I speak I sound like Hilary Banks, but that’s beside the point. I find some old silverware, which is like ME THING, and got to walk around drinking alcohol next to the French Broad River.

And then…

WE MET THIS TINY CAT AND THEN WE PUT IT IN A MUG.

I’m not really in the market for any more pets because we’re psychotic and already have like two too many, but don’t let that fool you. I briefly considered stealing this kitten and raising him as my own.

Enough about me…what did you do this weekend?

One Year

August 25, 2015August 24, 2015 | cheriarmour

Austin and I have been married for a year.

One beautiful, whirlwind of a year.

The year Austin and I started dating, I was working at camp in Pennsylvania. One of the kids named Brenda told me she was going to read my palm. I don’t really believe in that stuff. Or I say I don’t. It scares me a little bit.

Brenda looked at me.

“People tell you you have a ton of energy right? They don’t know how you do what you do. Your job is gonna be like that.”

I assumed she was talking about me teaching fitness classes. That one was pretty self-explanatory. I mean, she had probably heard that around camp, right?

“You’re dating someone right? You don’t really like him.”

Ok. I wasn’t sure how she knew that. But she was right. I was dating someone. And it wasn’t really going well. I think he sort of liked having me around. But it was mostly a waste of time. He would stand me up, drank a lot, and told me once that he would like to “have sex with a Latina.” [Disclaimer: I would NEVER fetishize a group that way, those were actually his exact words.]

“You’ve already met the man you’re going to marry.”

I had no idea who she was talking about. No idea who she could have been talking about. But I was a little weirded out.

A month or two later, I found myself out with the campus rec crew. We drank a ton. I ended up seeing an ex that night. But somehow, Austin and I forged a friendship, and what began as a few beer dates where we would talk, started to turn into something more.

“Would you date a white guy,” he asked one night.

I shrugged. “Yea, sure!”

One date. Then another. Then another. And almost 5 years later, we were cutting a teeny white cake on a table in Asheville, laughing, rapping, and wondering where a year of marriage had gone.

I don’t know what to say except this. If you have found the person you’re going to marry and you’re considering it? Go for it. Jump in with both feet, be honest, and enjoy the gift that is marriage.

I’m certainly not one to preach, but God, the Universe, my father and my brother (who taught me what a real man should be) gave me an incredible gift in this marriage.

Happy one year to us.

Weekend Update!

August 17, 2015August 16, 2015 | cheriarmour

Full disclosure. This post contains some affiliate links. Cause mama needs to pay these student loans down, times is hard!

The next few weekends are going to be banana-rama, so you should definitely be reading along nonstop because it’s all good interesting stuff. Plus I finally did my eyebrows so I don’t look as werewolfy as usual, so you may have some pretty things to look at!

So moving right along. This weekend was really really jammed, but all with good stuff!

On Friday, I worked for the first part of the day – sent emails, and sent the September scheduling requests out to my team. I started getting the warm fuzzies on Friday. I really truly love my job. I waited for such a long time for a job like this one, and I was so upset during the time when I was job searching, but I think it was worth the wait, and the big guy upstairs and the universe knew when I would be ready to take on this team. And what an incredible team it is.

^^ all that to say, I looked up on Friday from my work, and realized that I was running behind what I was supposed to be, and I had to quickly rush home and rush into the shower so I could get ready for my father-in-law’s retirement party (which they combined with my stepmother’s birthday party). After my dress didn’t show up for the event, I just threw something together, and we drove the two hours down to Albermarle to party.

Dan, my FIL, flew for 41, count ’em, forty-one years! It was pretty cool to see. One observation I did make, however, is that there aren’t a lot of black pilots. I was the only black person in a room of 175, and it got me thinking – perhaps this is the next place we need to encourage folks of color to go – just a thought!

So Saturday, I rushed to get a run together and busted open my Rent the Runway (RTR) just in time for the wedding of someone I have known since I started school at Elon University. That’s a solid 10 years of friendship!

So I rented this dress, and funny enough, a friend of mine wore the same dress at my wedding last year! The dress was comfy, really forgiving, and I was not at all expecting the sheer volume of compliments I received on the dress. I think mostly, people were just in shock because I wasn’t wearing dirty workout tights and I actually fixed my face for once.

Austin and I have had a pretty calm wedding season, and this was the first wedding of the year we went to. The ceremony was at a church that was close to Elon, and then we all hopped on buses and limos to head the reception, where we enjoyed food, dancing, and fireworks under a tent.

We partied, then headed home where my brother was still up packing some things. I quickly hit some push-ups…

And hit the sack where Austin and I actually got the chance to sleep in for the first time in a million years. It felt so so good!

I finished off the weekend by helping my brother set up his apartment which is literally like 3 or 4 miles from here. We helped him pick out the best tv for the value, and while I was there, I found a stack of some familiar HD antennas…

The associate saw me looking at them and told me that they were the “best”. Duh fool, I know! And it sounded like their Leaf-30 was all gone – I couldn’t find any on the shelves, and another associate walked up and told me that they were flying off the shelves with all the college kids moving in. Yay! (Can you tell that I’m sort of a big fan of the Leaf? May have something to do with my husband’s engineering skills…)

Whew! Okay what did you do this weekend?

Blest Studios

March 19, 2015March 18, 2015 | cheriarmour

This has absolutely 0 to do with running, my insatiable appetite for sweets or reality television, or my job (that I’m obsessed with). But I’ll be absolutely damned if I didn’t share this with you.

I’m 6 months into my marriage and I’m madly, madly in love with my husband, and In love with being married. It’s a blast having my partner here. And at least daily, I get the chance to relive our wedding day because of the prints I had made of our wedding photos, plastered over ever surface in my office.

I will not spoil the fun for you and post the photos here. Instead, let me tell you a bit about our photographer and his team that documented our day. Then I’m gonna send you to Cole’s blog to check out the photos.

Austin and I weren’t going to do engagement photos. When we got engaged, we had a lot going on. My mother was sick, my grandmother died shortly after we got engaged which wrecked me, and as a result, engagement photos were something I felt like I wouldn’t have time to do. But after I saw a beautiful couple I went to school with who’d gotten their engagement photos done, I decided, last-minute, to schedule us a session which occurred about one month before we nupped it up. Oops. Cole was a good sport, and came and met us in the park where we got engaged to snap some gorgeous pictures.

Here they are. Make sure you scroll all the way through and check out the photos of us dancing in the park.

Now, these wedding photos. I don’t have many words, which is pretty shocking because ya girl always has words, but all I can say is that I look through these photos at least once a week, and relive our wedding day, which still, to this day, feels like a perfect dream.

Here are the wedding photos.

No words. Except ::sigh::. Which isn’t a word.

And…if you’re looking for a photog? I’d suggest Blest. Period.

What’s your favorite photo that’s ever been taken of you?

14 Big Moments of 2014

January 2, 2015January 1, 2015 | cheriarmour

Um. So 2014 is over? When did that happen?

So it was a big year, for things both good and bad. And here, in no particular order, are some of the biggies from 2014.

14. Coco. Coco the poodle came to us from a friend of a friend. She’s an older dog, so she was probably not going to get adopted, so without much thought, we took her in. It ended up being a pretty sweet deal, because she’s a sweetheart, and a joy to have. She came to the beach with us, and visited with my mom when she was sick.

13. We went to Fripp! This was one of my favorite memories. My friend, Kelly, invited me and Austin for a weekend. We drove down to SC, and had a blast of a weekend. One of my favorite memories of the year!

12. Snow, snow, snow! Remember snowpocalyspe that rendered Atlanta crippled? About two weeks after, Raleigh got a similar storm that left Austin stranded for hours after work. Melanie, another friend got into a little accident. And my current boss’s boss had to run home in the storm.

11. I made this, than caught a stomach flu. I’m pretty much a straight-up vegetarian, not a pescatarian now.

10. I modeled a little bit here and there. I did some shoots for Headbands of Hope, did two shows for a local boutique. I’m hoping to do some more jobs here and there to help pay off my student loans!

9. We bought a house! Which is kind of a relief, we had a few weird experiences renting, the latest of which was when a man tried to break into the girl’s apartment downstairs in the middle of the night to do her some sort of harm for not calling him back.

Us the first Saturday when we came to scrub the house.

8. A close friend lost her mother to cancer. The experience was jarring, to say the least, and a really painful reminder that our parents are getting older.

7. We acquired a foster beagle. After Mel’s mother passed, an older female beagle was left behind. We are hanging onto her until she finds a new furever home. If you’re interested….

6. I saw Stevie Wonder live! And in good seats! Stevie Wonder announced tour dates in September of 2014, and I went on the hunt to find affordable tickets, which was no easy feat. Seriously, the scalpers had bought up all the tickets, and I was lucky enough to find tickets that only cost me about $300. We had seats on the floor, and I feel like I can officially cross seeing one of the greats off my bucket list!

5. I ran….far…in Vegas! My first trip to Vegas was not some drunken slob-fest – rather – I ran an Ultra relay in Vegas with Bondi Band.

4. I literally got my dream job. I may have told this story here before, but if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, mother effin’ try again. I’d had my eye on this job as a Group Fitness Director for over 3 years. The first time I interviewed for the job, I made it through a few rounds, and didn’t get the job. I was devastated (and remember, this is all taking place back in 2012 when my ego was already wounded from learning that jobs aren’t super plentiful), and I stayed in bed for days. A few years, and some more professional development later, the job was open, and it sort of fell into my lap. It worked out probably about a month before we got married.

3. My sister got engaged, then married! Deb and Luigi had been dating sort of on and off, and they decided, in the late spring, that they were going to make it official. They got engaged, then married pretty quickly in South Carolina. They celebrated with a reception just a few weeks ago.

2. My best friend suddenly lost his brother. Probably one of the worst phone calls I’ve ever gotten in my life was this phone call. Austin and I made the quick decision that the weekend of the funeral, we would drive to Philly and back to pay our respect’s to Michael’s brother. I’ve never seen my best friend in pain like that, so it was hard, and I’m trying with everything in me to support him as best as I can through this really really trying time.

1. We got married on August 23, 2014. It was the most incredible day ever, and when I woke up on August 24th, I wanted to keep my eyes closed and bottle the feelings that the wedding gave me. It was elation, happiness, and the joy of seeing old friends meet new friends all wrapped into one. If you could shoot that feeling directly into an IV and take it, I totally would 🙂

Wedding Weekend!

December 8, 2014December 7, 2014 | cheriarmour

Not mine of course. I tied the knot with my honey-bear in July. But Deb, who sort of eloped in June of this year, celebrated her wedding with a reception in Charlotte.

A few things about it.

I made it through the weekend. If you’ll remember from my ranty post last week, I was completely overwhelmed, and not 100% sure that I was going to be able to successfully make it through the weekend.

I made it, and we all survived. As far as my brother’s hair, I borrowed some clippers from a friend and managed to cut his and Austin’s hair before the wedding popped off. This really provides me little to no insight as to why the girl from the barber shop could not figure out how to cut black hair, because with relatively little experience, I was able to give him a decent haircut. It really wasn’t so challenging. I learned my lesson, and will never, ever, EVER take my brother to a place that can’t handle black hair because everyone is making fun of me for screwing my brother’s hair up.

But moving right along, Deb held her wedding at the Levine Museum of the New South on Saturday. Instead of doing some sort of ceremony or something, we started the reception out with a short cocktail hour, and then Deb and Luigi came down the staircase for an entrance. They danced their first dance to Luther Vandross’ cover of Knocks Me Off My Feet, which was really cute and fun because Stevie Wonder was a focal point for the music at my wedding as well, so my father trained us well.

We ate, danced, and after the wedding is when the real fun began. The wedding itself was awesomely fun, by the way 🙂 We headed to Ri Ra, an Irish pub downtown, where my cousin forced, yes forced me to drink shots against my will. Absolutely needless to say, I will be taking a little breaky from the drank this week as I let my liver heal.

So one really cool thing?

I didn’t have a dress, and I’ve been on a budget. So for Deb’s wedding, I tried out Rent the Runway, something I’d heard of, but never had the guts to try. So essentially, I rented a $700 Badgley Mischka and earring for $70. Dress turned out to be a hit, so I may do the same for a few holiday parties.

It’s kinda cool just shipping it back, and not having to worry about getting stuck with a dress that I won’t be wearing again.

Anyhoo, what did you do this weekend?

How involved should you be in your engagement ring process?

October 29, 2014October 28, 2014 | cheriarmour

Were you like me growing up?

After seeing proposals as a kid on telly and stuff, I always assumed that the entire process of getting engaged was a giant surprise.

Whenever I would see those jumbotron proposals, I would always think to myself, “What if she says no,” not realizing until a teacher told me later, that a proposal, and an engagement, generally, were discussed at length prior to it happening.

So all that said, when I got into a relationship, the sort where I felt like I could share my life with this person, I had no idea how we were supposed to go about choosing a ring.

Wasn’t I supposed to be surprised?

DID I want to be surprised?

And then I thought about it.

I love Austin so deeply. However, throughout the course of our nearly four-year courtship, it became apparent that he might need some help picking out the jewelry that would symbolize the start of our relationship together.

For one, he was colorblind. When colors, especially those on the same note, were mashed together, he couldn’t tell the difference, which I learned after we spent a weekend painting together.

For two, he was a straight male engineer. Engineers are notoriously no-frills. He likes his hair buzzed. He doesn’t like fancy clothes. And fashion isn’t one of his main concerns. And knowing that, I still decided to try the whole “going to pick out a genre of ring, and letting my man decide” thing.

Nope.

My husband didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what was a pretty metal. He didn’t understand why I liked the stone in a certain shape.

So off to the jeweler we went.

We went to a custom jeweler in 5-Points who sat down with both of us. Austin gave him his budget on the DL, and I gave him what I wanted, after I figured out what I wanted. The day Austin got down on his knee, I was surprised, happy, and I think Austin was happy with my answer 🙂

So to answer the original question?

It’s really a matter of individual preference. But for me? I liked having my hand in the design process.

What do you think? How involved will you (were you) in the engagement ring process?

Engagement anxiety.

October 22, 2014October 21, 2014 | cheriarmour

Being married is my favorite thing ever. Everyone keeps asking me what I think about being married, and honestly, it has been beyond amazing. I felt, a few days ago, for one of the first times, that we’re settling into marriage, which is a beautiful thing. It was nice to look out of the window a few days ago, see the shed that my husband painted, and kind of smile and think, “we’re building something together!” And I know, marriage isn’t all la la la kittens and baby turtles, but in the time that it is, I’m relishing the time and drinking it all in.

We got married at a pretty standard age I think, in fact, I’m a little older than some of my friends were getting married. But, I think I’m starting to get into the season of my life where I’m seeing a ton of weddings and a ton of engagements, and I’m so happy for folks. I am so pumped. But I wonder if any of these brides have experienced any of the engagement anxiety that comes with being engaged.

The reason this came up? A few days ago, I ran into a friend who was brand, brand, newly engaged. I spotted her hand sparkling and asked her about it. She raised her arm, almost zombie-like, and showed me.

“Oh my gosh,” I said! “When did you guys get engaged???!”

“Last night,” she quietly drawled.

She didn’t seem sad. But she didn’t seem happy. If anything, she seemed a little…stunned?

And I think that’s perfectly normal. You’ve just made the pre-commitment to commit to someone for the rest of your life. That said, it’s normal to feel:

Stupid happy.
Like a grown-up. You might not feel like a grown up, because grown ups, in your mind, are old and go to bed early. And they never drink too much. And all of a sudden, you’ve done something that really old grown people do. And you might start to feel old.
A little stunned.
Tired. You’re showing off your hand, you’ve recounted your proposal story about 400 times, and people keep asking when the date is, when you’ve only been engaged for like a week. It’s a lot of attention. I thought I liked attention before we got married. Woof, that was a lot.

I can’t speak for the men, but I’m fairly certain they too go through the “oh, shit” phase before it passes and you’re married to your best bud. So remember, my engaged friends, it’s okay to have some or all of the above feelings for a few weeks after engagement.

What was one big life change that had you stunned for a day or two?

The invite list.

October 8, 2014October 7, 2014 | cheriarmour

We’re coming up on over a month of being married, and as I’ve stated again and again, being married is amazing. It’s like before when we were dating, but even better.

On Thursday night last week, our wedding photos, courtesy of Blest photography came in the mail, and I’ve spent the last few days looking through 900 amazing photographs again and again. I’m debating how to share this with you all, if at all, but here’s a little taste for you guys, one of my favorite photos of the day.

At this moment, Cole had just asked us if we minded playing around in the tobacco for a while. Of course we didn’t, and Austin helped me pick up my dress and sort of frolic in the field.

But I’m getting distracted.

Let’s talk invites.

So I’ve hopped around the wedding thing a lot, trying to give you the best info. But since I’ve just gone through it and my sister is going through it (she’s doing a wedding reception with her husband in December), and it’s something that is the source of a lot of grief.

Who the heck do you invite to your wedding? Who don’ t you invite? How do you keep from insulting folks?

This is something we went through – I have a large family, and my parents got married in the 80s, when a lot of times, your parents would invite whomever they wanted, and you, the couple-to-wed, has very little say in who is invited.

Things have changed since then, so here are a few rules when you’re trying to figure out who you invite.

Immediate family. Duh.
Friends. Invite folks that you would invite to your housewarming. Do not invite frenemies. You don’t need negativity on your day.
Work people. For my small, more intimate job at Fleet Feet, I invited everyone, as we often invite each other to big life events. At my new job, I invited no one, and my husband invited folks that were on his leadership team at work.
Family/your parents’ friends. This one got a little tricky for us. We wanted to invite everyone our parents had ever met, but it simply wasn’t possibly. Our venue would only seat 140, and we really wanted to make sure we got everyone in that we could. We invited family friends that we’d grown up with, and Austin’s mom invited a few of the same.

The tricky thing when going through this list is figuring out how you can keep from insulting folks when you don’t invite them to your wedding.

Here’s your answer.

Who cares? It’s you/your partner’s day. And real acquaintances who care for you will understand that you like them okay, but not necessarily enough to spend over $100 for them to eat up all your food and drink all your liquor.

How do you decide who gets invited to big events?

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