Oh my goodness. I have been such a bad blogger lately, and there really is no excuse for it. We have been doing so much wedding stuff lately, and yet I haven’t mentioned a word of it. Over the holiday, we have crossed the following things off our to-do list:

-Groom and Best Man suits…kind of (it’s a looong story, and I’ll be sure to tell it soon)
-Ties for the dads
-Icicle lights for reception table decoration
-Decided on a cake and confirmed it with our baker (aka my cousin, C)
-Found a bustier that will actually work under my dress, and actually fits me (a miracle!)
-Fixed my “something old” earrings and made them new again
-Decided we’d have a day-after brunch at my in-laws’ house
-Got the ball rolling on what the moms (well, Jason’s mom and my grandma) will wear
-Started working out a day-of timeline with the photographer and venue
-Found our cake toppers

And probably so much more.

And I haven’t told you about any of it.

There’s no excuse at all except that I am lazy. And a bit overwhelmed. I’m not one of those girls who has dreamed about my wedding for my entire life, but for the past couple of years, yes. I love weddings, everything about them, and I have waited for the day to come when I got to plan mine. So sometimes the fact that I’m really doing just that, that it’s finally “my turn”, that I’m getting to do fun things like pick out tie colors and cake flavors and table linens and centerpieces and whatever else — it can feel overwhelming, in a completely good way. Sometimes I get so thrilled over such simple things that I have a hard time putting my excitement into words — I have come to think of it as the “happy coma”, where I feel completely and utterly comatose with happiness and excitement that I can’t find the right words, the right combination of photos and turn of phrase, to properly express it. And thus, the lack of blogging. When my brain has nothing more eloquent to say than, “Blarblarblarg I’mplanningaweddingthisissomuchfunI’mgettingmarriedI’msoexcited CAKE TOPPERS OH MY GOD SUITS TIES FLOWERS CAKE TABLECLOTHS BLARRRRR,” it makes blogging rather difficult. I mean, I could easily write a hundred posts just like that, but somehow I don’t think anyone would really want to read them :)

On the other hand, I’ve also recently been rejected from a wedding blog project I had really hoped to get into — and it stung. A lot. Had I not been at work when I got the rejection email I may even have shed a tear or two. I applied to blog for this site way back in early November, and they’ve been reading and reviewing my blog, along with a bunch of others, to pick their next bride bloggers. Five weeks after submitting my application, I found out I would not be one of them. I’ll be able to reapply in three more weeks, but that first rejection sort of burst my blogging bubble temporarily. I needed a little break, but I have missed writing here more than I would have imagined.

So I’ll be back soon. I want to finish out the holiday season working on some other things — wedding related and not — and after the new year I’ll be back here to tell you all about the planning that has happened over the holiday. Trust me, there’s a lot that’s been going on, and I can’t wait to share it all!

Have you ever needed to take a break from blogging? Has anyone else ever suffered from “happy coma”?

Hi blog. Did you think I forgot about you? I didn’t, I promise. It’s just that my week this week has looked mostly like this:

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Noticing a trend? Yes, I have joined the corporate zombies of the world in my new 9-5 job, and I am not loving it so far. My day pretty much goes: Smash alarm clock from 5:30-6:00am then roll grudgingly out of bed –> Try to stay awake at boring job all day, clutch caffeinated beverage for dear life –> Home by 7pm, crash on couch and stare out glassy-eyed wondering whether it’s too early to go to sleep –> Crash into bed at 9:30pm. Rinse and repeat.

I’m sure things at work will get better once I start getting assigned actual tasks; since it’s my first week no one quite seems to know what to do with me yet. I’m sure this will change soon and I’m sure I’ll enjoy what’s given to me — that’s why I took this job, after all! But needless to say, adjusting to my new schedule has left me more than a little drained, and with zero time for blogging. Or wedding tasks at all, really. But I think my new M.O. will be to write all or most of my blog posts on weekends, and schedule them to go up throughout the week — that saves me all the work on the days when I’m exhausted, but still lets me write and have that creative outlet that I so need. I’ll start that this weekend and see how it goes.

In wedding-land, a few fairly uneventful things have happened this week:

-The bolero I decided on sold out, and when I asked the seller when she’d be restocking, she said she probably would not be making that style again. Just my luck, right? So, I’m back to square one there — but I think I’m now leaning towards Bolero #1 from that post. We’ll see.

-Jason picked his wedding band! Well, the style he wants, at least. This actually sort-of happened last month when we went wedding band shopping on our dating anniversary. He was immediately drawn to this bevel-edged, satin-finish style:

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The other day we went to the mall and looked at some jewelry stores for my band (because of course I have no idea what I want — I’ll have a post on that soon), and every time he looked at the mens’ wedding bands in the stores, he wound up liking that exact same style. So that is what he will get, in white gold. Now we’re just price comparison shopping to get the best deal, but I think the site linked above is definitely the winner so far!

-We booked our engagement photo session with our photographer! It’s set for mid-October in Shadyside, our old neighborhood, during the “golden hour” — the hour in the late afternoon when the sun is low on the horizon and everything is awash in warm light — exactly how I pictured the setting for these photos. I’m so excited. Now I just hope it doesn’t rain!

I think that is really everything that’s happened worth noting. I will be back with a post about my “somethings” and a more in-depth post about wedding bands next week — I promise!

In real-life land, we just paid a deposit on a lovely little duplex in a suburb of Pittsburgh. This place has everything we have been looking for…literally…and it’s officially ours. We sign the lease on Monday or Tuesday and can move in any time after that.

We are just so relieved that the search is over. We have made so many appointments and phone calls and emails and gone to see so many places over the past few months that have turned out to be complete, utter crapholes. It was getting so exhausting, seeing shanty after shanty and wondering, was this the standard we would have to lower to in order to find somewhere to live? Is this really what people in the city call “home”? It’s not like our standards are particularly high, either — we just wanted something clean, fairly new/updated on the inside, and not falling apart. We couldn’t find that anywhere in the city. We came home dejected so many times and spent countless hours searching Craigslist and many other websites to no avail. It was getting downright depressing, exhausting, to come by disappointment after disappointment. It became funny, even — because if we didn’t laugh about it, we would have cried.

And then this happened. We got our credit approved, went and saw other places just for argument’s sake, and went back today to pay the deposit. No hesitation whatsoever, no regrets. Just happiness, and excitement, and relief. We finally have a place to call home, it’s ours for the next year, it’s got lots of big rooms, it’s two stories, it’s in a fairly modern house, it has a place to put a garden, a living room big enough to fit a Christmas tree, a kitchen we can cook big dinners in, an extra bedroom to host guests, a dedicated office, and just everything, everything we have been looking for and thought we’d never find.

We learned our lesson with our current place to look at prospective apartments with both eyes wide open — and we did. We opened every cabinet. We turned on every faucet. We asked inane questions. We checked the washer and dryer, the dishwasher, the oven, the fridge. We were there yesterday in the pouring rain and there wasn’t a leak in sight. We talked to the landlord about the history of the place, how he came about owning it, what the neighborhood is like. We checked the baseboards and the ceiling corners for bug-escape holes — none.

And so this weekend, we pack. And spend a whole lot of money on moving expenses. Next Friday we will get the utilities started, and spend our first night in our new home. I could not be more excited!

Three years ago today two confused, lonely teenagers kissed in the wee hours of the morning on the girl’s parent’s front porch. If you had told them then that they would end up engaged to be married three years later, they would have laughed in your face.

But here we are, and tonight to celebrate our third anniversary we are going shopping for the rings that will represent our bond as husband and wife. The rings we will place on each others’ fingers on our wedding day, the rings we will stare at in amazement and giggle over on our honeymoon, the rings we will fiddle with uncomfortably during a particularly difficult time, the rings we will stroke nervously when one of us is in the hospital, the rings that will get scratched and dinged with time, the battle scars of a lifetime, and the rings we will wear until death do us part. It seems like a most perfect way to celebrate our third dating anniversary, and our last anniversary as an unmarried couple. It is crazy and overwhelming and exciting to think that next year at this time we will be married, and we will have a new anniversary to celebrate, a bigger one. And I can’t wait to celebrate that anniversary and many more with this man, this man who I will call my husband, who will call me his wife.

After three of the best years I could possibly imagine, I finally get to make this man my husband. And I couldn’t be more excited.

There is no grand proposal story, at least not “grand” in the typical sense. But it was grand enough for me because it was real — 90-degree-heat sweaty, cheek zit-y, headachey, totally unglamorous and real. We picked out the ring together. I brought it home from the jewelers myself. He had a bad headache but wanted to see the completed ring anyway. I gave it to him. He took it out of the box, slipped it on my finger, and asked me to marry him.

I said yes.