I’m a blog stalker

I will openly admit that I’m a blog stalker. I stalk the blogs not only of friends, but of people I’ve never in my life met. People I have no plans on meeting and who probably don’t know that I even exist! Let’s not jump right to the assumption that I have a huge list of blogs that I visit every day, really there are only a small handful of them. Two of them are for the people described above (those who have no idea who I am). They are both photographers and I found their blogs because I regularly read my wedding photographer’s blog. So, it’s not so much that I just jumped right into some strangers life but was ‘guided’ there. I love photography, I love pictures, I love seeing and hearing the stories of different people’s lives. I love hearing how they met, what brought them together, the journey they have taken and where they’re headed. Typically the photographer doing the post will give some little blurb on what they loved most about a specific couple which can give so much insight into what their day was all about.

More importantly, I LOVE WEDDINGS. I don’t go to many wedding. I’ve been to quite a few family weddings, but only a small handful of friends’ weddings. Looking at these pictures from different wedding photographers (as lame as it sounds) make me feel like a part of these strangers most special day! I love to see the connection between the bride and the groom. It’s amazing how typically when you see them paired they just LOOK like they belong together. You can almost determine their style, their personality and their demeanor from the details they chose for their wedding day.




Even MORE importantly still, I loved MY wedding day! As I’ve blogged before I’m coming up on my 1st anniversary and even to this day we have frequent conversations with people about how much FUN our wedding was (I don’t want to brag… but I will). When looking at our wedding budget and trying to make a list of expectations Ryan had very little opinion (his choice!). The only thing he kept repeating was “I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to reach for their wallet that day” (whether for the bar, some sort of wishing well, dollar dance, whatever) and “I want to have a GREAT time – I don’t want a lame/serious wedding!” (that means dancing! Drinking! Laughing!). The rest was just fluff and I was responsible for it!


Even though at times planning got over whelming cutting down the guest list, meeting budget deadlines, etc, it was still such a FUN and EXCITING experience. I’ve told people before that I would never again pay that kind of money for one day, but I don’t regret doing it at all! Picking out “the” dress and then “the” other dress, cocktail napkins, rings, suits, rehearsal dinner, HONEYMOON, decorations, the shower, CAKE, the bachelorette party, invitations, THE MOVIE, stories from the bachelor party! Oh and sooo much more! Even though I didn’t have an endless budget, I’m pretty sure there isn’t much of anything I’d change about that day! Our friends and family were all there, they all seemed to have an amazing time, for about 99% of the time EVERYONE was getting along and Ryan and I laughed and enjoyed ourselves through the whole experience.

Now what does this have to do with blogs, other people wedding, and is there a point?? I’m getting there…

Today on one of the blogs I read regularly, there was a “guest” poster. It’s a new feature to this blog as typically Anna herself posts, but it was a great little post and I couldn’t agree with her more! Basically this person was commenting on whether to wear a veil on NOT to wear a veil (her original position was “NO!” because it’s not something she’d ‘typically’ wear):

“…Six months into marriage, I can say the point is this: it’s not your daily life, it’s your wedding. Because even if you’ve cast off the trappings of a religious or traditional wedding, there is deep meaning left still. Fact is, we get married, and we keep getting married in spite of the statistics, in spite of the challenges of melding two lives, because we are looking for meaning. We are looking for something more. More than cohabitation. More than jeans and a t-shirt… and that begins with a rite. With an occasion which demands a costume…”




“…I wore a white dress and a veil on my wedding day. I wore two things I would never ever wear in my daily life. Two things I will never wear again. Expensive? Maybe. But frivolous? No. Not when you do the cost benefit analysis. My exceptional costume let me go to an exceptional place, a place beyond the boundaries of my daily life. It let me participate in a fearless, crazy-blissful, transcendent, powerful, intimate wedding day…”

Again, I COULDN’T AGREE WITH HER MORE! When planning my own wedding, I didn’t have any intentions to wear a veil, in the end I did wear a little one and I thought it was one of the best parts of my whole ensemble! Like wise, since our wedding mine and Ryan’s lives have changed dramatically. We’re still the same people, but even in just under a year it’s crazy to look back over where we’ve been and what we’ve done. Even crazier is looking ahead and seeing how the path we were walking just a year ago has changed. It’s amazing what new expectations we have for each other, ourselves and our lives and how much better this plan looks than our former plan even – no matter how unexpected parts of it may seem.

Before when I would picture our first anniversary, I hoped for some huge celebration, some big event that day, a fancy dinner, a small vacation, something! But I really don’t see any of that happening. I see us sitting at home with our new baby running around the house hoping to find five minutes to acknowledge the day at all (will I even remember the date when it comes??) and that too seems fine! I’m just happy we’ve made it this far and I can’t wait for the years to come! It’ll be great to look back 2, 5, 10 years down the road and see how far we’ve come and what other changes there may have been in our “plan”.