No news is good news!

It's been a long time since I last posted. Partly because... I haven't done any wedding planning! Man, I'm a slacker. But I figured I'd fill you in on what's been going on in the life of the future Mrs. Stephens (Surprisingly, it's been quite adventurous).

As you all know (well that's pretty presumptuous but whatever,) Marshall and I moved to Nacogdoches, TX in June. We moved into this 900 sqft apartment that we had only seen online since it was kind of hard to make a trip to find an apartment. It wasn't bad but it definitely wasn't great. The layout made it feel small and cramped. The carpets were stained and gross. The walls were a dull gray color and the worst was that there was no good spot for the cat's litter box except the second bathroom which made it completely unusable and stunk up the house.

"Hello, welcome to our humble abode! Why yes, the air freshner that we use is cat shit! Isn't it lovely?"

Anyways, by the time January came around we were just fed up with it. We looked at the option of getting out of our lease (not an easy task considering there's no section for breaking the lease in our lease.) When I called, the manager was not so friendly. Those of you who know me know that I don't do well calling people to begin with but adding in a bitchy manager who doesn't want to accept the fact that I am not a college student but a working adult with a college degree did not do well with me. So, my knight in shining armour (or button up with a tie) went to the apartment office and worked his magic to get us off the lease. *My hero, he's just sooooo dreamy!*

So, the time came to start looking for a house to rent. The very first house we looked at was great. It was in a small, quiet neighborhood and it had somewhere around 1,500 sqft. It had lovely wood paneling on the walls (sarcasm, my friends) but other than that, it was great. Oh, except for the rent. $1,000/mo. Not really feasible here in Texas and trying to have a social life. So, we declined. The landlord then showed us a house in Garrison which is about 20 minutes outside of the city for $675/mo. We saw it and fell in love. We weighed the pros and cons (mostly being outside of the city) and decided to take it. Unfortunately (but fortunately) the landlord and his family ended up having to move into that house. They wanted to give their son the best education and attend the high school there and had to move into that house to prove residency. The landlord felt so bad that he gave us the first house (with the beautiful wood paneling) for the same price as the Garrison house.

[Look at that wood paneling. It's so purty! ;)]

So, in short, we have moved into a house inside city limits for the same price as a house outside city limits! We moved in last weekend and surprisingly enough, I don't mind the wood paneling! All the positives of the house definitely outweigh the wood paneling (and the fact that once there's furniture in the house it's not as bad!) The kitties LOVE being able to run and slide and we LOVE that the litter box is off to the side so our wonderful air freshner is only kept in a small area. We even have a large backyard with a patio. We immediately bought a grill. Because, I mean, that's obviously an important and valuable investment. I'll be sure to add more pictures of the new place when we get the whole house decorated!

Best investment yet!

On a completely irrevelvent note, I think I mentioned before that I was modeling in two Bridal Shows for a local dress shop. I had so much fun! It's always nice to put on a pretty dress (especially an expensive pretty dress!) Let me say that by no means am I a model, nor am I coordinated enough to not trip over my dress (fortunately, that did not happen but the train of one of the dresses did decide to wrap itself around me so in order to get out I had to take a giant step over... so graceful!) Regardless, I had a ton of fun and met some beautiful and sweet young women! The best perk is that I get 20% off my next purchase ("Shut up and buy it Daddy!")

One of the dresses I modeled. I use the word model very lightly.

My parents will be here in two weeks (along with my best friend who is flying out from Portland, Oregon EEEEE!) to go dress shopping. We are also meeting with our photographer where my dad will inevitably ask her how to cover up Cydnea's tattoos (or as he likes to say "how to FIX it!" Oh Daddy, you never cease to entertain...

Hopefully the next post will be a little more timely. But who knows... I don't own a watch.

Ew, that was a Daddy joke.

Happy New Year!

Well, Christmas has come and gone so now the wedding plans can be put into motion!

Marshall and I went to Tennessee for Christmas. We went to the Christmas Eve service at one of the prospective Catholic churches to have the wedding. As soon as we pulled up, I fell in love with it. It had a stone exterior. It was a smaller church, but could hold plenty of people. It was just stunning. We would have to ask another priest to do the wedding though. The one there is French... hard to understand. Luckily, Marshall's family knows some :)

Christmas Day we went out to the field next to Marshall's house and just looked at the land. Perfect for the wedding reception. There's view of mountains from practically any place you stand, there's electricity back there, plenty of land for parking and it's flat. Things are definitely coming together!

{Marshall and I checking out the field}

Mom and Dad are coming to Nacogdoches in late January, early February for wedding stuff (I think I've already mentioned this.) I am so excited for them to come visit and we can start getting down to business!

Just wanted to update you all about what's going on. Nothing too stressful since not much has really happened. Hopefully there's some more stress with the next post because stress makes me a funny Shannon (or so I like to think)

Oh... I'm learning how to knit (yes I've aged tremendously) Maybe I can knit some bridal accessories? Or bows for the kitties?? Marshall would kill me.

Hold for the holidays

So, I really stink at updating this blog. Maybe blogging is not my forte. Or maybe it's because wedding planning has been put on hold for the holidays. I'm going to go with the second one so that way I sound better. I'm so involved in Christmas that I can't plan my wedding... yes that's it. Or, my parents are so involved in Christmas that I can't talk to them about wedding planning. Eh, same difference.

I recently went with some friends from work to try on some wedding dresses. One of the other ladies recently got engaged and ended up buying her wedding dress. It is absolutely gorgeous and she is going to look stunning walking down that aisle next December. I honestly don't think she could have picked a better dress and I'm not saying that out of fear of her reading this. It was gorgeous! (Hi Jennifer!) My family wasn't there, so I knew going in there that I wasn't ready to buy a dress but more to find out what styles I liked. 

My entire life (well, ever since I walked down our living room hallway in my sisters communion dress to get married to my English Springer Spaniel, Mikey, who was wearing a black long sleeve shirt of my dads) I've pictured myself in the A-Line dress or a ball gown. I still like those styles but I want a wedding that will involve a lot of dancing. There's only so much space for that and I don't want my dress to be taking up most of it! Yes, these are the issues that I am dealing with at the moment. Preventatives of dancing. Dress, shoes, space, encouragement for guests to dance [alcohol] and choreographed routines. Okay, maybe not that last one.

But I digress, I tried on the A-Line gowns. They were okay. Nothing took my breath away. Tried on a mermaid style gown. Everyone else liked it... but I didn't. And that's what's most important, right? Plus, if I'm going to go as a princess, it sure as hell isn't going to be Ariel. I like my legs. I tried on the fit and flare and fell in love. I felt skinny and I felt like it was a ball gown. Best of both worlds! But despite the fact that they were having a 40% off sale, I knew I wasn't going to get it. I can't image not having my parents see me in the dress before I buy it. And that was only one place... it's me. I need to check out all my options before I commit. That's what I did with Marshall. ;) just kidding. 

So, along with the rest of the wedding planning, the dress shopping as been put on hold until the madre and the padre come to visit (late January, early February). 

The best and newest development? We found our photographer! Didn't take much looking considering it's our friend, Donna, from softball. We were really lucky to have met her and get such an amazing photographer for our wedding. We're just hoping she likes Tennessee!

By the way, the gray hairs are gone. Hooray for hair dye! Any bets on when the next one pops up? I'm thinking two weeks after the wedding planning goes back into full swing.

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

Going to the Chapel...

And we're gonna get married!

I've been engaged for almost three weeks now and the wedding planning has begun... sort of. Three weeks into it and I'm pretty sure I've already spotted two more gray hairs. Let's just add "getting hair dyed" to the list of things to do before the wedding. Thank goodness I have a year and a half until the wedding!

My fiance, Marshall, proposed to me on Thanksgiving. He works for the local newspaper as the ad director and got a full page ad of him standing with a sign asking "Will you marry me?" Behind him were pictures of the two of us from our two years together. I was a little shocked at 2 a.m. when I saw it (yes, that's two in the MORNING. Someone claimed to be a little too excited about Black Friday ads to sleep...) After asking if this was real and realizing I wasn't dreaming, I put the ring on and called my best friend. Cutest proposal ever? Yeah, I'd say so... in a totally not biased opinion of course!

After pulling my eyes away from my beautiful ring (this was not an easy task and took about two days) we began researching wedding venues. I'm from Virginia, currently live in Texas and am planning our wedding in Tennessee. Talk about a bit of a struggle. I called around to a few places that I thought looked nice just to get an idea of prices. I was greeted with happy voices eager to take my money saying numbers that either exceeded my budget completely, came pretty close or I couldn't even dream of ever having. "$15,000 for a venue? Hahaha really, what is it? Seriously? Does that include my dress, the bridesmaid dresses and all decorations? No? Oh. Okay. Thanks for crushing my dreams."

This is when the gray hairs began to grown. I'm pretty sure if I stood in front of the mirror after each phone call you'd see another one pop up like a weasel in the ground. BOOP!

So I decided to save my brown hair and do the next best thing -- put on some PJ's, grab a beer and start Pinteresting things to my wedding board! Speaking of which... I've got some pins to examine.

Until the next dilemma,

Shannon