A letter to my 17-year-old self

Dear 17-year-old self,

This is the year that you will have your heart broken into a million pieces. You will fall in love with a guy that doesn't deserve you. You will make excuses for him and his bad choices. You will cry yourself to sleep every night for months. You will blame yourself for not being pretty enough, fun enough, good enough. It will take a long time to heal this hole in your heart. But! God planned this heartbreak to teach you many lessons.

This is the year that you will learn that family is irreplaceable. Your precious mom will sleep with you and rub your back for weeks while you cry yourself to sleep. She will be there to simply listen when in reality she should be telling you to WAKE. UP. and get over this jerk! Your sisters will become your best friends, finally!

While you are suffering through this heartbreak and wondering how you will make it to tomorrow, God is preparing your heart for your future husband. Hold on, 17-year-old self, because next year you will meet your future husband! I know it sounds too good to be true! When you two meet, it will be the perfect timing. He will turn your world upside down! You will have your guard up and have a hard time letting him in due to the way you've been treated in the past, but he is so worthy of your whole heart. He will cherish you, respect you, and mend your precious heart.

In the midst of this heartbreak, your parents will break your heart even more. They will blindside you with the news that they are getting divorced. No warning, no fights, no big fall-outs. They've just grown apart. You will immediately jump into "middle child mode" and try to make sure that everyone is ok. You will comfort your mom, go house hunting with her, and never leave her side for fear that she will feel alone. You will take care of your baby sister and try to provide her with a sense of stability and normalcy. You will neglect yourself in order to take care of everyone around you.

This year will test your faith, your strength, your friendships. But you will come out stronger in the end.

This year God will teach you that you are worthy. You are a Princess of the King and you deserve to be treated like one. He will teach you to trust Him. He already has your whole life planned, so why are you worrying? He will teach you that a relationship with Him is the only relationship that will not let you down. Remember that.

17-year-old self, the best is yet to come.

Linking up with Annie

Thoughts for Thursday: flash mob!

While planning my wedding, my best friends and I wanted to do something fun at the reception to give it a little "flair". So, we decided on a surprise "flash mob". We got together a few times to make up the dance and practice and we sent a video of us practicing to the out-of-town girls so that they could practice too. And, it went off without a hitch! My dj was the ONLY person who knew… I didn't even tell my mom! Everyone was so surprised, especially my groom. It was such a fun touch that I will never forget!

His face was priceless! I think he was impressed by his new bride's dance moves ;)

Best. night. ever.

Wedding Weekend Part IV: my favorite details!

It's been a while since I've done a wedding post! I've decided to write about a few of my favorite "details" from our wedding day. I'm not a detail-oriented person at all, but these few things from our wedding were things I knew I wanted to do from the day we got engaged!

[1]

We decided to nix the idea of a traditional wedding cake because to be quite honest, I don't think I've ever had a wedding cake that knocked me off my socks. Instead, we had our favorite desserts made by people we love. Garrett's Nana is his favorite person in the world, and her homemade lemon pie is to. die. for. So, she made mini lemon pies for our reception! And lemon pie may or may not have been the only thing I ate the entire night... woops! My aunt is an amazing cook and she made Hershey chocolate cakes, carrot cakes, and red velvet cakes. I can't tell you how big of a hit our dessert bar was! I had SO MANY people say they were the best desserts they have ever had. And the fact that it incorporated our family into the wedding made it even better!

[2]

I knew I didn't want to do the traditional guest book either. I've never seen one that was "cute" and what's the point in having a book with people's names in it stashed away in the attic!? So, we decided to incorporate a little bit of baseball since it played such a huge part in our relationship and our lives. And I am SO glad we did this! It turned out so cute and we have the baseballs displayed in a fancy bowl in our dining room now. Such a fun and unique way to remember who came to our wedding.

[3]

Koozies are a must-have for weddings these days! We wanted to add some sort of UNC touch to our wedding and this is how we did it. I love how they turned out and we have gotten so much use out of them since the wedding!

[4]

My bouquet was wrapped in my grandmother's old linen handkerchief. She died when I was 10 and I miss her every single day. What made it even more special is that the handkerchief had her monogram on it! 

[5]

Garrett and I are HUGE s'mores lovers. Being that we had a winter wedding, we thought it would be awesome to have a s'mores bar at our reception. We served it as a "late night snack" and it was a huge hit! 

Linking up with Amanda today! What are your Friday favorites?!

Five on Friday: 5 honeymoon tips!

My honeymoon was the best week of my life... hands down. Can't we have a honeymoon every year?? That would be amazing. We chose the Iberostar Grand in Riviera Maya, Mexico. Here are the 5 things I would tell any engaged couple when planning their honeymoon:

[ONE]

Go somewhere that someone you know has been before. We knew we didn't want to go somewhere that everyone we knew had been, but we also wanted to know first-hand that where we were going was pretty, clean, etc. I posted a comment on Facebook asking for suggestions of resorts/places and got a million responses. It was super helpful and I researched a lot of the resorts before we made our decision. Pictures on the internet are always edited and don't usually acurately portray the resort [for the most part] so knowing that someone has actually been to your honeymoon location and approved can ease your mind and make you confident in your decision. It was super important to us that the food was good, resort and rooms clean, staff nice and helpful, and beach gorgeous. A friend went to this same resort for her honeymoon and assured us that we would be impressed, and we were!

[TWO]

Go the week after your wedding! I know this can be super hard with schedules and the busyness of everyday life, but it is so important that you spend time with your now husband to unwind, spend good quality time, and set the foundation for the rest of your marriage. Even if it's just for 2 days, DO IT! Postponing a honeymoon was not an option for us, so we planned entirely around my school schedule to ensure that we could have a week honeymoon [which is why we had to get married 3 days after Christmas]. It was so much fun to re-live the weekend together and cherish a week of no school, work, emails, stress and just enjoy each other.

[THREE]

Pack an outfit in your carry on bags! Don't you agree that the absolute worst trip to lose your luggage on would be your honeymoon? Yep. That happened to us. Thankfully my brilliant husband suggested that we pack a bathing suit in our carry ons, just in case. Otherwise, we would have been stuck in our room the whole first day. Or he would have ;) Luckily [for me] they lost his luggage and not mine! We had to cancel our dinner reservations and order room service the first night because dress pants were required for men, and he had no clothes! We were super bummed but thankfully his bag came late that night. Moral of the story: be prepared with carry-ons.

[FOUR]

Put your phone down. Luckily we couldn't use our phones in Mexico so I wasn't tempted, but I encourage you to cut it off, put it in your bag, and DON'T look at it until you get home. This is the one week that you can feel guilt-free for not responding to emails, family, friends, etc. I am so guilty of using my phone too much in everyday life, but I am thankful I didn't have it on our honeymoon. Our conversations were uninterrupted, engaging, and it was super nice to have dinner every night without a single text or phone call!

[FIVE]

Don't make plans ahead of time. If you are like us, you will just want to relax. We considered going on an excursion but decided we were happy just sitting on the beach. We were so glad that we didn't book the excursion ahead of time or we would have had to go. Just get there and see how you feel! It is ok to do nothing!

My husband's goal of the trip was to get on this huge wooden horse. So after one a few too many drinks, I made sure no one was coming and he gracefully hopped on. We have never laughed so hard.

Wedding Weekend Part III: Old, new, borrowed, blue

I began thinking about my "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" soon after getting engaged. 

My 'something old' was a gorgeous white linen handkerchief of my Mama's [my mom's mom] who died when I was 11. It was even monogrammed with her initials which made it even more special. My amazing bouquet of white peonies was wrapped in it. I miss her everyday so I knew I wanted some part of her there with me on my wedding day.

My 'something new' was my dress. New and amazing.

I knew my 'something borrowed' would be my sister's wedding veil. She wore a plain cathedral length veil, which is exactly what I wanted. When we got it out of the closet my heart sunk-- it had a huge rip down the middle. SO SAD. We took it to my next dress fitting to see if there was anything they could do, but the rip was so close to the middle that the veil would end up being not gathered at all at the top after they fixed it. So, it was a no-go.

My 'something borrowed' ended up being a gorgeous diamond bracelet of my mom's. Vintage, dainty, and timeless. I tried to keep it after the wedding... she didn't agree.

Sadly, I didn't get a great picture of it. But you can see it in this hilarious pic with my niece-- too interested in the photographer to give her Owey a kiss.

My 'something blue' was my shoes. They were Badgley Mischka and matched my belt. I knew from the beginning that I wanted blue shoes, and that they had to be Carolina blue. Hubs loved that about them ;)

Hope everyone had a great Monday!