Closing THAT Door.

Every single time that we've been in the thick of the newborn phase I have begged Tony to PROMISE me that we won't do this again. Yes... even with our first kid. The exhaustion outweighed the preciousness for me. It didn't negate the beauty of it all. But the beauty didn't take away the need for sleep either.

After our second kid, Tony thought we were really done. The spinal fluid leak issue I experienced certainly added to that for him. And again, the newborn phase that was chock full of sleep deprivation, I thought I was done, too. But then magically around the one year postpartum mark after having Molly, the baby fever started up again like it did around the same time frame after having Presley, too.

Can you blame me?!

I really had to talk Tony into trying for a third kid. But eventually he got on board. Even before baby #3 came, we pretty much decided this was it because we thought that would be the most responsible choice financially moving forward for our family. And then in the thick of the newborn phase and perhaps the worst of the sleep deprivation we'd experienced yet, I really pushed for Tony to have a vasectomy. Because I was done. He was done. 

{Reason #16 I love my husband: He was absolutely okay with going through with any potential pain from a vasectomy because he acknowledged the sacrifices and hardships I endured while bringing our children into the world. He looked at it as his contribution... this was something he could do for us.}

And so, he had one. The procedure was really simple and they even let me watch! It was fascinating and a little thrilling to be on THIS side of it all. (I was always the one on the table in stirrups with Tony watching and vowing to take care of me afterward.) I was FULLY prepared to tell Tony to SUCK IT UP because this was surely going to be a painless procedure and I'd had THREE KIDS and this was nothing in comparison. But as I watched it happen I FELT LIKE I WAS GOING TO PASS OUT AND THROW UP ON THE WAY DOWN. It did NOT look painless. So... if you find yourself in my spot then I actually do suggest watching your husband have his vasectomy because I did not pass out or throw up AND most importantly I was so much more understanding, empathetic, and compassionate to the pain that Tony was in afterward. (Of course also a nice reminder that measuring pains is stupid! Pain is pain!) Just like that we decided we were done and we closed the door on having more kids.

And for a while I was okay with that. Until I wasn't. I think we even talked about the fact that this would likely happen... that as time went on I'd open my heart back up to having more and that we'd better go ahead with the vasectomy BEFORE it got to that. And man, there have been some times where I've just felt heartbroken over it. How I wish we could have another. How I wish I wouldn't have insisted on it.  And honestly I wonder if that'll ever fully go away. It's gotten better but part of me still wants to have and hold another baby of ours.

For the first time I stopped to think of something today. Tony and I have been married for 8.5 years now and LITERALLY EVERY BIT OF IT I have been pregnant OR breastfeeding. 100% of our marriage has been about building and growing our family. Nearly nine years of my life has been dedicating my body to that dream.

(Yep, got pregnant on the honeymoon. Oh yeah, I'm still breastfeeding Crosby. I've whittled it down to just once in the morning after he wakes up/while I'm still waking up. If it was up to Crosby he'd still be breastfeeding morning/noon/night. Yes, he is three years old. No, I did not intend to breastfeed this long. Yes, this is the longest one of my children has ever breastfed. Yes, I'm a little sensitive to negative comments about it. No, I do not intend to breastfeed until he's school aged. And as always I'm absolutely open to talking about it if anyone has any questions!) 

So while I really do think part of my melancholy about not being able to have any more children is truly over the fact that I really would enjoy loving and raising another baby of Tony and mine... maybe it's also the unease of closing the door on this huge, life-altering chapter of my life. And back at the time of Tony's vasectomy, I didn't stop to reflect on how I would feel about it all at this point. Or maybe I thought I'd finally feel okay about being done having kids. But so far, I'm not feeling peace in our decision. I'm trying to navigate my own feelings and balance them with the feelings of my husband as well as the reality of what's best for our family.

So, our door is closed.

Both my home and heart are full. So many days I question how I am even going to be a good mom to the three kids I have today. And some days my heart aches for the kids I'd still love to know. I'm grateful for my husband who meets me where I am that day and loves me through everything marriage and parenthood and life in general has tossed our way. I'm looking forward to taking better care of this body that has put in so much work and seen a lot of transformations over these last 8.5 years.

I'm hopeful for this new chapter. For our marriage and for our family. And I'm grateful we get to navigate it together.

Nine Pictures of Us {thursday thoughts}

To start out, I am already guilty of skipping a Thursday! But to be honest, with everything going on in the news and around the country around this time last week, the last thing I wanted to do was write a lighthearted blog. Now after a week or more of so much heavy in the news and around us, it feels like exactly the right thing to do.

I thought this particular blog entry would be super easy and fun... and while it did evoke "all the feels" it was SO difficult to choose just nine photos of us. Before getting started I thought nine would be kind-of a lot of photos but now I realize it doesn't do justice in allowing me to accurately show all our history OR delve into much of our present, either.

All of that considered, this was still a ton of fun. I loved going through photos of Tony and I and recalling so many happy, fun memories with my favorite person in this world. These are some of my favorite photos of us over time (though not all of my favorites) and putting these together in one blog entry really shows me how important photo taking is... what if we had let these moments pass without capturing them on film? And how many beautiful, wonderful photos do I have undeveloped these days? It reminds me how important it is to capture moments on camera. And with that, here is a quick(-ish) trip down our memory lane...

{may 2003}
I love this picture so much. This was my first prom with my first love! I was a freshman and Tony was a senior and we were going to prom at my school... so besides his best friend and my older sister, there weren't a TON of people that either of us really knew. It was exciting and awkward and a night full of a million butterflies all night long! Our first dance together happened at prom along to Kid Rock's "Only God Knows Why" which is absolutely hilarious! We had been sitting down at a table talking and hanging out and I told him - "Okay, we are going to dance to the NEXT SONG that is slow that comes on!" because he didn't really want to dance. So of course it was the least romantic song they probably played that night. But it didn't matter. I loved dancing with him. I loved getting all dressed up and spending that night hanging out with him. He was (and still is) the perfect gentleman. He bought me the most beautiful corsage. He picked me up in his Granny's gorgeous car that night and if I remember correctly we ate at O'Charleys beforehand! He looked so incredibly handsome. (He wore a bowtie! SO precious.) We took pictures beforehand at my house and then again at his best friend, Damen's house - which would later become a second home to me over the coming years and Damen's family a second family to me. The reason I like this specific picture from that night is because it is just so... us.

{august 2008}
This picture means a lot to me because it was taken at such a huge changing point in our life. In the two years since I graduated high school I had been enrolled at two different community colleges... one in Illinois and the other in Tennessee - which is where we had currently been living. My credits didn't transfer from my first college to my second but they all would transfer back to my first college. I wasn't happy in Memphis and we both had great opportunities to look forward to in Illinois. It was a huge leap of faith for him - he had never lived outside of Memphis or away from his own friends and family. It was a make or break moment: would we move to Illinois together or would I be moving there by myself? When it came time to talk about it he didn't really bat an eye - he said he would go where I go. So this is us on our last night in Memphis on the cusp of so much change.

{april 2009}
Here we are riding four wheelers around Sullivan Hill in Eudora, Mississippi - one of our happy places! I love, love, LOVE Tony's family and spending time with them was never, ever dull, that's for sure! I'd love going over to his parent's house to have dinner because his mom always made the best food. (Though on this particular night we took the four wheeler to go pick up pizza down the road and it was so much fun!!!) I've always loved this photo of the two of us. This was a place that felt so much like "home" and I always looked forward to visiting here from time to time while we lived in Illinois.

{may 2009}
My first college graduation. This was a special moment and such a happy time. Tony has been so supportive of me from the very beginning. I could have done it without him but it would have been so much more difficult and a whole lot less fun. He encouraged me. He didn't make me feel like a loser when I didn't do well in a class or on an assignment and he didn't judge me when I skipped a class here and there. He read countless papers I wrote, helped me study, and was genuinely proud of me when I succeeded. When I wanted to quit, he talked me out of it every time. My accomplishment is mine but it is his as well. This was such a happy day - his mom and Granny surprised me and showed up for my graduation. I don't know if they ever knew how deeply that touched me.

{november 2009}
This was taken by a stranger on the beach just moments after I accepted Tony's marriage proposal and just about a week after I turned 22. He surprised me on my birthday and told me he was taking me to Anna Maria Island, FL to spend time with my Grandmother!!!! That was the best present of my life! He knew how special my gramma is to me, how sad I was that it had been a while since I had seen her, and that this was such a special place to me and a place I would love to visit alongside him. Plus it was all such a huge surprise! {Reason #14 I love my husband: He LOVES to surprise me! And he really does give the best surprises... even though sometimes I am a pain in the ass when it comes to surprises!!} Before leaving I started to wonder if he was going to propose on the trip and I turned to my cousin to see what she thought. She told me he was worried I'd get my hopes up and that when he didn't propose that it would ruin the trip... he told Breanne he didn't have the money to buy the ring he felt I deserved and that it wasn't going to happen. Not only was that such a sweet, heartfelt reason - but it really showed me how it didn't matter about a proposal, that I had him and that's what was important. We had such a special few days and on our last day of the trip we went to the beach one last time (at his insistence) where we walked the beach, had a snack at a restaurant right there on the sand, and on the walk back to the car he asked if we could sit down for a minute and enjoy it all for a few more minutes. He pulled out a piece of paper and started reading me a poem he wrote where at the end of it he pulled out a ring and asked if I would marry him. All of it from beginning to end was just perfect. And knowing he wanted to spend the rest of forever with me was the best of all.

{december 2009}
This is a photo that a friend of ours took during a photo shoot for our engagement downtown Memphis on Beale Street. I think it might be one of the most beautiful photos I've ever been a part of... I absolutely love it. Memphis is such a great place to be and it's the city where Tony and I grew up, met each other, and fell in love. It's the city we saw countless movies in, went on a million dates together, and made so many memories. I'm so grateful to Nicole for taking this one and I hope she knows just how much this one means to me. Your engagement is usually a short, short time in your life together with your significant other and to have this happy time chronicled in a photo is absolutely priceless.

{may 2011}
Of course I had to include a photo from the happiest day of my life... our wedding day! We had so many mishaps that day and truly none of them mattered to me! We were with our best friends and family members and we were finally GETTING MARRIED!!! My little sister took this photo when we were on the way from the ceremony to the reception. It was an impromptu photo taken just minutes after we became Mr. & Mrs. Duggan and I was on cloud nine. I absolutely love this picture, this moment.

{february 2012}
And exactly nine months from the last photo is this one - the birth of our first child! It is MIND-BLOWING how much our life had changed in that amount of time. It wasn't about us anymore... our life together was now about even more than all of that. It was about raising and loving our kid. It was about breastfeeding. Diaper changes. Sleepless nights and days. Dealing with and surviving postpartum depression. It was about well visits and vaccinations. It was about first steps and first words. It was trying to navigate being a newly married couple while figuring out parenthood and that learning curve was crazy difficult. But like so many before us, we figured it out. We survived. And then we started to thrive again. And having Tony there through labor and delivery... it's another one of those times where I probably COULD have done it without him, but I just sincerely doubt it would have been as successful. It was a horrendously long labor with so many painful roadblocks along the way but this moment right here when they placed this little warm body on top of mine was magical. To see the pride all over his face when he first held Presley is something that could never be replaced for me. The way he stepped up from the very first moments. How he never left my side. So much encouragement from him during labor, while pushing, to keep at breastfeeding, that I was a good mama, etc. It's no mistake we are next to each other in this life and to parent with him just adds such a meaningful layer of our life together.

{june 2014}
Meeting our second baby was thankfully a bit easier than it was the first time around - but of course not without complication. And through all the setbacks this time around (revolving around complications from having an epidural) Tony was an absolute champ. And I truly fell even more in love with him through all of it.

The time together has literally been such a life changer. It's a special thing to look back on and to cherish. It's a little bit insane how much and in what ways our life together has changed over the course of the sixteen years we've known each other. Knowing about it all and living it is all one thing... but reliving it in this capacity it a little strange. There are so many little moments that are easy to overlook or that you forget about once those moments are long gone.

I love sharing life with you, Tony! Thank you for being the father you are to our daughters and for always being my best friend. You deserve the entire world and I hope to give you as much of it as I possibly can. I love you.

Finding a Parish in Memphis.

As you guys probably are already well aware of - we just recently purchased a new home at the end of March in the Memphis area after having lived in the Midwest for the last five years.  We've been in the Memphis area for the last several months while looking for a home and Tony and I also both grew up in Memphis.  However, we are both new to living in Cordova (which is a suburb here).  When it comes to finding a church, we are starting the hunt by checking out the churches closest to us.  We were members of a seriously wonderful Catholic Church back in Moline.  Christ the King Catholic Church is the church I had visited for years when visiting family, the church I went to throughout my last year of high school, where I made my all my TEC weekends, home of the priest that we just absolutely love and appreciate, the place where Tony & I took RCIA classes for his baptism, the church he was baptized in, the place we got married, the church where Presley was baptized in... it just is a place that I hold so close to my heart with so many absolutely priceless memories.  So how do you follow-up a church experience like that?


It's gonna be tough and will require us to start fresh with open minds.  We're looking for a new parish with a strong sense of community.  It'd be great to belong to a church that offers activities for young, active families and that is really what we're looking for.  Neither Christ the King nor the church I grew up a part of had a school attached to it, so part of me is looking for that again (since a lot of time, energy, emphasis, and money goes into the school rather than strictly the parish when there is a school involved...) but seeing as SO many of the local parishes also have schools, I am going to just check them out individually and see how it feels.  Oh, and in the Diocese of Memphis, you can be members of more than one parish... so I suppose that is something to keep in mind as well - though I hope we find one that feels like "home."

Here are some of the places we'll be starting:

St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church
This church is literally part of our neighborhood... we could WALK to church every Sunday.  (How sweet does that sound?)  It's just under 2 miles from us - so we certainly would have no excuse to ever being late!  They offer mass times of 8:45am, 10:30am, and 12:15pm on Sundays.  It boasts the largest parish of the entire Diocese of Memphis - something I never knew before now!  And it has the largest Catholic elementary school in the entire state of Tennessee.  But to be honest, both of those fun facts make me shy away from this as an option and will more than likely be the LAST place to visit in the area.

St. Ann Catholic Church
This church is only about 5 miles from our house and I don't know a whole heck of a lot about this parish.  They offer mass times of 9am, 11:30am, & 5pm on Sundays.  They're also part of a school - which I believe is K through 8th grade.  Their music coordinator is John Angotti - who I just ADORE.  He is such a talented musician and is honestly a huge reason to consider checking this church out!  This parish also offers Parents Day Out, which is something I have been considering for Presley in the upcoming months.

Church of the Nativity
This church is about 7 miles from us and they offer mass times of 8am and 10:30am on Sundays.  It doesn't have a school that is directly affiliated with the parish and is another church I don't particularly know much about but look forward to checking out.

Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church
This church is also about 7 miles from us and they offer mass times of 9am, 10:45am, and 12:30pm on Sundays.  Rev. Patrick Hirtz is the associate pastor at this church and he was also at the church I grew up attending for a couple years there, so that is a nice connection!  This parish has a K-8th grade school that also offers Mother's Day Out for kids Presley's age.

Church of the Holy Spirit
This church is about 8 miles from our home and offers mass times of 9am, 10:30am, and 12pm on Sundays.  This is the church we visited this past weekend for my nephew's baptism.  I also know one of the priests, Father Mike, from my SEARCH weekends in high school.  We also know a few young families who regularly attend this church.  They offer Mother's Day Out, too.

Resurrection Catholic Church
This is the church I grew up attending.  It's about 11 miles from where we live and the mass times are 9am and 10:30am on Sundays.  I remember three different priests from Resurrection over time - and the final of the 3 that I remember was Father Ernie, who is still the pastor here.  He is energetic and loving and I really enjoyed him and I think I still would, very much.  The church has changed so much from the time I was a kid - so it certainly won't be the church I remember - but I also look forward to seeing how it has evolved over time - the things they've held onto and also the things they've improved.  They now have a school attached to the parish which I believe is K-6th grade.  And oddly enough, I couldn't find a photo of the church on the web!



So, these are the churches we are looking forward to trying out to see how they fit for our family.  I grew up attending a church that wasn't just a place we visited for an hour each Sunday... we really did grow up in our church community.  We played in basketball leagues there for years and also participated in free throw shooting contests (which was so much fun) every year.  We had parish picnics and cake walks and went to PRE (Parish Religious Education) classes every Wednesday night.  We loved VBS (Vacation Bible School) for a week every summer.  We attended youth group every Sunday and participated in ice cream social, regressive dinners, car washes, diocese-wide youth conferences and nation-wide youth conferences.  We went to concerts with our youth group and did Habitat for Humanity and a million other things to keep us busy.  It was just a place that meant a lot to me as a kid and youth and I want that for my kids.  I don't want to just attend my church on Sundays, I want to be involved and to grow up as a family there with other families.

These kind of experiences might not take place at the local churches here anymore, so my hopes might be too high, but I believe it could easily take place again... even if Tony & I have to start things like that at our local parish.  For the most part, I am not looking to duplicate my childhood experience, I am just looking for the feeling of family and community I always felt from my parish and I don't think that is too much to hope for at all.

**And by the way, there are certainly more churches to check out in the Memphis area... this is just where our list begins!**

Marriage Monday: Getting to Know You -- Link up!

Happy Marriage Monday!

Today, I am not sitting behind a computer currently typing (which is why this post will ACTUALLY be on time this week!) - instead, you can imagine me sitting on the beach at this very moment because we are on vacation!  Which honestly couldn't have come at a better time for us.  But more on that later!  We planned this vacation a few months ago and have been looking forward to it so very much.  It'll be Presley's first time visiting the beach and I can't wait to see her reaction to the sand and the waves and the seagulls and all the sights, sounds, and smells of the ocean!

This week I wanted to post something light, airy, and super fun and decided to host a link up!  One of my favorite things to do is to get to know people.  Sometimes this means getting to know new folks, learning more about the people who are already in my life, and one of my favorites... getting to know Tony every day.  Plus, seriously guys?  I do all the talking here!  I am constantly trying to think of ways I can get to know your marriages better.  Perfect way to make all these things happen?  Host a link up and find a way to involve the hubs as well.  This means... QUESTION AND ANSWER TIME!

My answers will be in green.

His answers in gray.

How did you two meet?
We met through similar interests and similar friends.  I was dating one of his best friends and we were all playing soccer at the same church. 
We met at the soccer fields of Brookside Baptist Church in Memphis.  She was dating one of my best friends, Peyton. I was riding by her and her friend Christine on my yellow mountain bike and she said hello.


What were your first thoughts when you met your other half?
Oh my goodness.  He is THE CUTEST boy I have ever met.  I can't imagine what it would be like to date someone like him.  He is way older than me and couldn't be more out of my league!  Of course, I was twelve at the time... but to be honest, I still think he is the cutest boy, ever and I don't ever forget how lucky I am to be his wife and best friend. 
She’s very pretty! And she is has to be the fastest girl out here on the soccer fields!


When did you know you were going to marry your significant other?
Hmm.  I guess that's hard to say because when started dating we were both in high school.  Not only that, but I was a freshman.  So naturally, with him being my first love, I felt certain we would end up getting married.  Over time I got that same feeling for different reasons.  Ultimately, when we lived 8+ hours away from each other and I could never keep him out of my mind, life, or heart, I knew that we would always be together. 
I can’t really remember a specific moment when it clicked, but she was the first girl I ever really loved and I wanted her to be the last and only one.


What is the one thing you will always disagree on?
(Or likewise, what is something you will always agree on?  Whichever way you prefer to answer!)
How often the car needs to be washed.  He washes our car all the time! 
What to eat for dinner? What movie to watch? Lol. I can tell you what we will ALWAYS agree on, PEPSI SUCKS! COKE RULES!! #1stworldproblems


What has your other half recently done that made you love them even more?
Anytime he washes the dishes that are piled up in our sink.  (Which is... always.)  Also, the way he automatically wakes up with Presley every morning on the weekend without a word from me.  Best husband and best father I could have ever dreamed of for me & Presley! 
Well recently and a little in the past. But she is such a great mom to Presley and I really feel like Presley is growing up to be such a happy baby and so loved and cared for. Ali takes such good care for her and always puts her first. It really cements my feelings that I married the right woman to raise my children with.

P.S. She also enjoys Top Gear (BBC) maybe more than me sometimes and bought me some laps in a badass Ferrari!! =D

And that, in a nutshell, is us folks!  Hope you had fun getting to know our marriage a little bit today.  I had a blast reading my husband's answers and love love love hearing these affirmations from him.  If you're interested in partaking in this link-up, you have the next week or so to take part so start working on those hubbys now!!!

<div align="center"> <a href="http://theduggans2011.blogspot.com/2013/07/marriage-monday-getting-to-know-you.html" title="Chasing Moonlight & Roses" target="_blank"><img src="http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj141/alibaby3203/gtkulink.jpg" alt="Chasing Moonlight & Roses" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

If you'd like to take part in the link up, grab the button up there and start answering!  Can't wait to see what everybody comes up with so come back and share your links below!

Marriage Monday: Wedding Day ABC's {Part One}

I'd seen a few of my blogger friends (Caitlin & Patty) take part in this - and I thought it would be a lot of fun to reflect back on such an awesome day!  I will definitely be breaking the wedding day ABC's down into two different posts.


Attending
I honestly don't remember how many people attended after all was said and done - but I do remember that there were quite a bit more people at the reception than there were at the ceremony!  Somewhere along the way, I remember wishing we had kept the guest list down to our most intimate friends & family so that it would be an overall more intimate, smaller, and more personal affair.  I am pretty sure it was between 200-300, but don't quote me because that sounds like a ton of people.  We even had a couple of wedding crashers!!!  Okay, so they were family of one of my bridesmaids (and were most welcomed!)... but that was a big funny thing that evening!

Our wedding crashers on the right

Bridesmaids
I had both a maid and matron of honor and both of them were my sisters, Ashley & Amanda!  I had four additional bridesmaids that consisted of my cousin, Breanne, and three of my best friends - Betsy, Katie, and Becca.  At that time, only ONE of my bridesmaids lived in the same area as me - the rest traveled from Indiana, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and North Carolina to come for the wedding weekend!

Cake
Friends of ours offered to make our cake and to be honest, I don't even remember the different flavors of cake we had!  (I know one of them was red velvet.)  The only bit of cake I tasted all night was the little piece that was shoved more in my face than in my mouth by my new husband!  I wish so badly that I had just relaxed enough to enjoy a piece of cake on our wedding night!!!  We also had a bit of a cake emergency... before the wedding party arrived, the cake fell over!  They did a darn good job at salvaging everything - and thankfully it fell over onto the table rather than the floor!!!  So here is both a before and after picture.  We got so many compliments on how yummy the cake was!

Before the accident the cake had 3 tiers

After the accident it had 2 tiers!  They did a great job of redecorating by placing the flowers all over!  Love it.

Dress
I found my dress at David's Bridal during one of those $99 dress sales!  I got my dress and the slip I needed underneath for under $150 (the dress alone was originally $650!!!)... amazing!  I had already gone to try on dresses with my bridesmaids once before, but the main purpose of that trip was to choose a bridesmaids dress and to have fun trying on different wedding gowns.  We walked away that day without choosing a dress for them or for me!

Some of the dresses we tried on that day!

I went back a couple weeks later with my mom during the dress sale, not feeling particularly hopeful that we'd find "the one" - and of course, we did!  Most of the dresses I tried on were discounted, but very few of them were actually $99.  I let my mom pick a couple for me to try on - she chose one from the rack and it didn't appear to be anything that I wanted, so I almost sent it back.  I tried it on anyway and couldn't believe how much I loved it!  So cliche, but I even cried!!!  The woman helping us kept asking if I could visualize myself walking down the aisle to my future husband in each dress and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I could literally picture just that!

 The bridesmaids dresses ended up being these black Target dresses - $30!

I used the picture of my sister, Ashley, in this dress because she never ended up wearing this dress the day of the wedding!!!!!!! She accidentally left her dress at home in Tennessee and had to go out and buy one nearly just like this one a few days before the ceremony!!! She didn't tell me about this until WAY WAY WAY later and I never noticed her dress was different the day of the wedding!!! So hilarious.

I can't find any pictures that really make it obvious that Ashley's dress was different... this is the best one for comparisons.  You can kinda see that Amanda's dress is more of a "V-Neck" and Ashley's is a scoop neck!  Anyways, makes for a funny story!

Engagement
The day Tony proposed was one of the best days of my life.  To make a LONG story short, Tony surprised me for my birthday and told me to request several days off from work but he didn't give me any more information.  On my actual birthday (November 10, 2009), he told me where we were going:  Anna Maria Island, Florida to visit my grandmother and to see the beach!  I was ABSOLUTELY shocked.  He also told my cousin, Breanne, that he wouldn't be proposing on the trip and that he hoped I wouldn't get my hopes up, just to be disappointed.  (Sneaky sneaky!  He did this because he KNEW she would tell me this!  And she did.  And it worked!)  He told her he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me but that he couldn't afford the ring I deserved.  We headed down there and I went into it knowing he wasn't going to propose - so there was honestly no expectations for that on my end!  I had such a WONDERFUL time there with him and my grandmother for those few days!!!  On our last day in Florida, Tony suggested we go to the beach to enjoy the ocean one last time before flying home.  Great idea!  So we went, picked up shells, had an appetizer on the beach, and then headed for the car when Tony asked if we could sit down to soak it all in.  That's when he pulled out a poem he wrote "for your birthday" he said - and started reading.  And at the end of it he asked me to marry him!!!!  Amazing just doesn't even begin to describe it.

Flowers
My favorite flowers are carnations!  I love them because they smell good and they are absolutely beautiful.  We went through a florist at Hyvee for our bouquets and the woman was just shocked I wanted to use carnations.  She tried to discourage me by telling me they were "filler flowers" and were commonly displayed at funerals.  Wonderful.  But I was set on having them, and only them and her opinion didn't really matter to me, anyways.  I wanted them to be simple - no greenery and no additional flowers for both the bridesmaids bouquets and my own.  However, our bouquets had greenery all over them and I wish I had noticed that the day of the wedding so that I could have taken the green stuff out of our bouquets!  But to be honest, flowers were the last thing on my mind on our wedding day!!!  And that's life for ya!

Now when I see their bouquets, all I can think of is CHRISTMAS!  Grrrrr....

Groomsmen
Tony had two best men - his brother, Sean, and his best friend, Damen.  His groomsmen also included his friends Chris, Tyler, Peyton, & Nathan.  The majority of his groomsmen came from Tennessee and others came from Arkansas and Connecticut! 

Honeymoon
For the longest time we had no clue what we were going to do for our honeymoon.  I had suggested Disney World a while back but dismissed it and thought Tony didn't want to do that.  A couple months before the wedding, we still hadn't made our minds up.  Tony suggested WDW and I was ECSTATIC!  I couldn't imagine spending our honeymoon anywhere else - it was the best, most magical trip of our lives!

We were so sad to head home!

Invitations
We got the guys' tuxes through Ducky's Formal Wear - the biggest draw to Ducky's was that they offered free wedding invitations!  One less thing to worry about sounded FANTASTIC to me - so we went with them.  I looked through tons of binders to find the right invitation.  I wanted something aesthetically pleasing and simple and I totally fell in love with the ones we chose!

Clearly not our exact invites as we are not Claire & Lucas, but you get it!

Justice of Peace
The man who married us is also our pastor, Father Levitt.  Before he married us, he baptized Tony and after our wedding he baptized Presley!  Such a wonderful man.

Keepsakes

After talking to a friend of mine, we decided not to do wedding favors for wedding guests.  The friend told me, "Honestly, no one expects you to give them a wedding favor!  Back when my husband and I got married, no one did anything like that.  And I end up throwing away 90% of the wedding favors I get on the way our of the reception anyways!"  She urged me to use the money elsewhere and that no one would miss it.  I am so glad she gave us that advice!!!  Tony & I were paying for our wedding and as many of you know, things add up very quickly.  That is one bit of advice I would absolutely pass on to friends.

One keepsakes I carried on my wedding day was a photo of my dad on my bouquet.

Ladies Night
I was lucky enough to have TWO bachelorette parties - one in Illinois with my work friends and one in Mississippi with the ladies of Tony's family!  I don't have any pictures from my Illinois party - but definitely have a ton from the night out with the in-laws!!!  I cannot wait for the next occasion to cut loose with them... they are one of THE MOST fun and enthusiastic people I am lucky enough to be related to, now!!!  We spent the majority of our night at Tunica Roadhouse Casino.  We drank, laughed, rode a mechanical bull, danced to the live band's music, ran into a bachelor party (who we affectionately referred to as the evening's entertainment), did a bit of gambling (didn't we?), ate in the early AM hours and had such a great time.

Music
We had pretty traditional songs throughout the mass.  Though, I walked into the church to the tune of "Let it Be" by the Beatles and "Love Never Fails" by Brandon Health played when we lit the unity candle.  Our first dance was to "Love Song" by 311.

Stay tuned for part two!