With everyday that passes, it's hard not to just sit back and reflect a minute or two on how much has changed in my life and what has brought me to where I am today.

I am glad I made a lot of stupid (STUPID) mistakes in my life because I learned a lot about myself through them. Mostly relationship mistakes are the ones that tend to stick with me the most. I tend to be one of those who "forgive but never forget". But nonetheless, I am glad these things happened to me even if at the time it was  sometimes horrific for me to deal with.

I am ME and I'm proud of it.

Epworth United Methodist Church

Mac and I had an appointment yesterday afternoon with his pastor at Epworth in Franklin. We took a tour of the historic church and the new location to decide where we want to have the wedding. I fell in the love with the new location and it got me a little excited about it. It made me feel a little bit nervous as well actually talking with him and talking about prepping for wedding plans. We are trying to plan everything a little at a time and get the church and reception location set in stone as soon as possible. Those are the two biggest things to worry about and then everything else will fall into place. *Hopefully!*

We plan to start house hunting soon. For now we have just been browsing online, taking a peek at houses in our price range and there are quite a few to choose from. Like several hundreds of houses. We plan to stay in Spring Hill because that will put us close to our families. We both have also grown up here and we really like the area.

Three weeks later and I still can hardly believe we are taking the next step in our relationship. I'm excited and nervous at the same time.

But this has never felt more right than anything else in my life. Crazy! But in a good way! :)

:D

I had the day off today and I spent the majority of it looking up various wedding information. Researching catering companies and bakeries and photographers. I am almost positive we found someone to cater the wedding. It just depends on how many people will for sure be coming to the wedding. I stumbled upon an amazing photographer tonight and I am pretty sure we will be using him! Just have to see what Mac thinks of his work. It's totally in our price range and the wedding packages are by far better than anything else I have looked at.

I achieved the following so far:
- My half of the guest list.
- Potential Caterer (Enchanted Events Catering)
- Potential Wedding Cake (The Sweetest Day)
- Engagement/Wedding Photographer (Check him out! Epic Image of Nashville)

My mom is stressing me out a little. She keeps suggesting things that we don't want. She and my dad aren't even paying for the wedding so I'm not exactly sure why she's hounding me about the cost of things. (Gotta love my MOTHER!) My parents decided years ago that they felt it was more important for my sister and I to have a nice home when the time came for us to get married. So they plan to help fund our down payment on a house rather than to pay for a wedding. They plan to match half of what we can save ourselves. I think that sounds like a pretty good deal!

I just want to start planning this all a little at a time to try to prevent me from a stress overload. We are meeting at Mac's family church on Thursday to take a tour and meet with the minister. I have already seen a few pictures of the historic church and it got me pretty excited about this being the right location choice.

Ready, set, GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Let the wedding planning begin!

Almost three weeks later and I'm still sorta in shock about this whole engagement thing. We haven't really thought about much planning just yet other than setting up an appointment to take a look at Mac's family's church in Franklin. We are wanting to of course do this wedding as cheap as possible because we are also house hunting as well now. The day is about us and not about how much money we can spend on it to impress people. That is soooooooooooo not me!

For now, all I have done is contact some catering companies about pricing information and I also took a look at what it is going to cost to make my wedding invitations. (Which I am soooo stoked to get started on, even though I don't need to worry about those right now!) We are going to have to save money for a down payment on a house and a wedding so I'm sure this year is going to be a little stressful for us. We had agreed to pay off any debts we had before getting married and we are more than halfway done with that. My SUV will be paid off in April and my credit cards are just about paid off to that lovely $0 balance I have been working so hard to get to.

Wish me luck. I'm trying to not get stressed about money so I'm going to have to do whatever I can to keep myself calm and collected.

I'm engaged!

Most of the online world already knows but I can't help but say it again. It just feels so weird. I've been engaged for almost 6 days now. My ring was done two days early getting sized so I got to pick it up today. I got there two minutes after they were officially closed but they let me pick up my ring anyway! I was sooooooooo glad! Props to the people over at Genesis Diamonds in Cool Springs. After going to five different stores, the fiance
(that's soooooooooooooooo weird to say!) decided to buy my ring there. I love, love, love what he picked out. I always knew I didn't want a huge ring and he picked out the perfect size for me.

I am so excited for the next step in our relationship. It's definitely an amazing feeling when you know you've found the one. I was so shocked and the engagement was so unexpected! Our 2 year anniversary was July 25th (Everyone always says it seems like we've been together longer but we've been friends for 6 years. So maybe that's why.) so we decided to celebrate by going out of town the week after to Gatlinburg for 4 days. The funny thing is that I got him a card for his birthday which was the day before our anniversary as well as an anniversary card. He didn't get me a card at all and I was so hurt that he forgot to get one. Little did I know that 3 weeks prior he asked my parents permission to marry me.

We got engaged on July 28th and I've been in shock ever since. I'm excited and a little overwhelmed already but I'm so happy because I know that in a year I will be marrying my best friend.

This picture doesn't do the ring justice but I took a picture with my phone at night. So I will take another with my camera in the daytime.