Soooo maybe I'm losing my sanity......

This time next week I will be a WIFE. Holy. Stinkin. Cow. (I say that in a super excited tone because I am SO excited)

It's currently 1:27 AM and I just spent the last 2 hours trying to locate all of our flight information for our honeymoon.We booked some of our flights with reward points and we are flying to Puerto Rico on Monday to avoid having to take 5 different flights to get from Lex to Antigua. Yes friends, I kid you not. It was going to take 5 flights and 13+ hours of travel time if we did it all on Tuesday. Holy Insanity. It's actually worked out really well with us getting to spend a whole 26 hours in PR before we head to Antigua. Neither of us have been to PR before, so we are pretty pumped to explore the island in our extended layover. With all of that being said, we had some flights booked through American, and the rest were booked through Orbitz, which I cannot for the life of me remember my log in and password; hence the 2 hour search for flight info and calling about 4 different companies to get things figured out...... This has been my life this past week......and I think I'm borderline losing my sanity, just keep reading and you'll understand why......

Causes of this bride to be going insane- all accuring from Tues-Sat:

1.Last week of school. If you're a teacher you understand how crazy this is/was....

2. My hair trial had to be canceled last minute because my hair girl was sick. Not the end of the world, but still, frustrating that my trial will now be 2 days before the wedding....

3.. Found out one of our ushers is going to be out of town coaching his volleyball team at Nationals. Yay for them for making it to Nationals, but boo for us on losing an usher.....

4.Wednesday afternoon: I log into my bank account and it's overdrawn. I freak and then I notice a several hundred dollar purchase from a company that I used to order a Mrs. Kinney bikini and tank from several weeks ago. Well, apparently another Cooper re-ordered some stuff under her account but it somehow got charged to my debit card. Yay that it wasn't an ID theft, but boo on having to deal with the whole situation during my planning block. Once I called them, they issued the refund, but it didn't show up until Friday afternoon. This resulted in my account being frozen and thus denying me at the post office while trying to buy stamps on Wednesday evening (hi, embarrassing).....So, rather frustrated at the whole situation and just flat out exhausted from school being crazy, I head to M's and he suggests we head to dinner. He jumps in my car, and we head out. 3 minutes later, a man takes a turn too close and plows into my car- THE car we were supposed to use to leave our wedding ceremony in.....Oh yes friends, my sweet little convertible was smashed to pieces.

Lovely, right?!

Thankfully, everyone was okay and I KNOW it could have been worse. I was in a near fatal car accident in 2004, so trust me, I know it could have been much worse. But seriously, why my sweet car and why 10 days before the wedding?! I tried to keep it together..... I just kept repeating in my head, "You're okay, M's okay, the other driver is okay, there's starving children in Africa, there's people suffering from cancer, and you're okay, everyone is okay, it's a car, it can be fixed, so don't freak." Over and over and over this repeated in my head as we waited for the police to show up. I kept my composure, smiled, and told the man who hit me that it was all okay (when he found out we were getting ready to get married he felt AWFUL and kept saying how sorry he was, etc etc). All the while I was trying to convince myself that it really was going to be okay.... I was pretty proud of myself for not having a sheer bridezilla moment on the side of the street because friends, it was brewing.

5.Thursday afternoon: After dealing with the insurance companies allllllllll day long, and in the midst of trying to keep my students under control (think ADHD kids who are one day away from summer vacation) we finally head to Enterprise to pick up my rental. The insurance company told me they would give me a "premium" rental for my wedding day so that it would be comparable to my wrecked car. I dealt with one of the rudest and most arrogant employees at Enterprise and he told me that "All I can get you for your wedding is an Accord." And this, my friends,  is when I snapped. I start crying in the middle of Enterprise trying to get him to give me something better and he just kept saying "Sorry (in his super arrogant tone), that's what you've got." Poor M, he didn't know what to do as I was literally snapping right in front of him and the rest of the people in the Enterprise office. Hi, I'm crazy.... I just couldn't help it- it was like a crazy woman was over-taking me, but I was just at wits end by this point, and literally losing any sanity I had left. We left Enterprise in the regular rental they gave me to use for all the other days and I just cried the whole way home. I then (in my crazy bridezilla manner) call the insurance adjuster and very firmly told him that "They better figure something out because an Accord and an Eclipise convertible are NOT in the same category and I am NOT leaving my wedding in an Accord." God love his heart for dealing with me.....

6. Friday morning, I woke up feeling a tad less Bridezilla-ish and decided to call a different Enterprise branch to see if I could get someone to help me feel sorry for me. Thankfully, I got the sweetest girl, who apologized for arrogant man's attitude, and who told me she'd help find me something suitable for the wedding. The insurance adjuster called back to tell me that they approved me for a "luxury" rental and asked if that would be okay. Enterprise girl (I wish I remembered her name because seriously, she was SO sweet) said the luxury category could get me a Jaguar. Apparently my crazy fit of bridezilla rage worked- I think the adjuster could see my insanity and quite possibly feared for his life if he didn't get me something better than that Accord. Ha!!

7. Friday evening, I'm getting ready to head to my waxing appointment and get called 1 hour before telling me it is cancelled b/c that girl is sick too. Goodness gracious. Can't a girl catch a break here?!?!

8. And then there's Saturday where mom and I spent the entire day running bridal errands and cleaning and organizing M's house (he's in Pittsburgh for his bachelor party) that has yet to be put up for sale. We still cant find the candles we went to 4 stores looking for and knowing his house is still not on the market, a week before the wedding, makes me want freak......

And then we end up where this post started, trying to locate those stinkin' flight times.....

I just keep telling myself "It will be okay. It's all going to be okay." Surely nothing else will go wrong, right?!

XOXO
The losing all here sanity bride to be :)

Wedding Wednesday....On A Thursday....The Invites :)

We completed our final per-marriage class last night hence the late post. We decided to participate in the Prepare and Enrich program at a local "mega-church". While it's not the church we call our church home, we do love that church and we were glad we did our per-marriage counseling through them. If anyone is looking at doing per-marriage counseling, I highly recommend finding a place that uses the Prepare and Enrich curriculum. I also HIGHLY recommend pre-marriage counseling in general. Honestly, M and I thought we didn't really need it since we've read tons of books, grown up around healthy marriages with our parents, are pushing 30, etc., but, we are so glad we did. It was SO nice to sit down each week and hear everything a second time and also to interact with other couples to see their views on things. We felt pretty prepared before, but now we feel super prepared to tackle this whole husband and wife thing :)


Now, on to the invites! As mentioned before, we found our invites for a steal of a price-around $1 total including personalized envelopes and reception RSVP cards. For me, invites weren't something that I wanted to drop big bucks on because face it, they end up in the trash. Little Miss Bargain hunter here was bound and determined to find something that looked fabulous, but was cheap. After receiving a catalog in the mail from Exclusively Weddings, I decided to order some of their invite samples since they had great pricing. They will send you five free samples, so I chose five different varieties of ones that I liked and had them shipped. They arrived a couple of days later and we quickly narrowed it down to two. One, elegant and simple and the other contemporary and colorful. Since we are doing an evening wedding, we decided the elegant ones were best and to our surprise, they were the cheapest ones of the five we chose. After signing up for the email updates from the magazine, we received a coupon for an additional 25% off any purchase over $100- score!
When looking at the over-all quality and construction and printing of the invites, it's hard to believe they cost us $1 per one. The paper is high quality card stock and the printing in the raised lettering. The envelopes were lined with gold (to tie in our champagne color we are using) and are high quality as well. We were even able to have my parents addressed printed on the envelopes in the same raised lettering as the invites. We've received lots of compliments on our invites and we just couldn't be happier with the overall product. If you're looking for your invites, I highly recommend Exclusively Weddings.

Paper is ecru color and font is navy

For our rehearsal dinner and bridesmaid tea (which I'm doing morning of rehearsal due to 3 bm coming in from out of town), I wanted to do something fun. After searching and searching and searching for something I loved, I finally stumbled upon PolkaDot Designs. I loved their design options and while they aren't super cheap (still priced reasonable though), I LOVE the invites-especially our rehearsal dinner ones! Since we were only buying a few, I felt it was okay to drop a few bucks per invite-they were printed and shipped super quick, too!

I LOVE these!!!

I stuck with the poem theme as I did with asking them to be in the wedding :)

Only 15 more days until we say "I Do" and only 5 school days remaining. The wedding party jewelery has been made (I'll wait until after the wedding to show- I dont want my girls to see them until the tea) and I'm planning to make some coffee filter wreaths for the front doors of the church. As if I need to add any more to my list of "to do's before I do" Ha! But I just love them and think they are perfect for our doors. I'll be sure to post how they turn out :)

XOXO
The Bride To Be

Bad Blogger of the Year Award

Bad Blogger of the Year Award......Goes to Me. Sorry for my slack in posting lately. I went back to work this week and our wedding is in less than 3 week. Holy Cow. Needless to say, between that and school ending in 2 weeks, my life is a hot mess of CRAZY! Just to give you a sneak into the craziness here's what my office, M's future man room, currently looks like:

Honeymoon Takeover!

It looks like Victoria's Secret exploded in my office. But that room is about how my brain feels right now, crazy. I woke up at 6:30 Saturday morning and couldn't go back to sleep because I started thinking of everything left to do.  I took benadryl last night so I would actually sleep and not wake up freaking over things that need to be done! Shew-we, I was NOT prepared for all of the last minute stress of a wedding. We are counting down the days until our honeymoon, so we can simply RELAX and enjoy being husband and wife without all of the wedding stress :) 21 days until we leave!! SO SO pumped!

In other news, my nose is healing SO well!! I had my stitches out on Monday morning and then went into school- my nose was crazy red all day Monday, but it has gotten better each day! It's still a little swollen and tender and I can still feel a lot of tension when doing things like putting on make-up and such, but it looks remarkably well! It is truly a blessing from God :)
Here's a pic from Tuesday morning:

Holy close-up! Sorry so scary :)

I PROMISE to get my shower pictures on here soon! I cant wait to share those plus, all about the wedding invites and such- I have gotten TONS of compliments on them and they were a STEAL of a price!


Happy Mother's Day to all of you bloggy mamma's :)

Ash

Surgery Update!!

Since I shared with y'all about my upcoming surgery, I thought it was only fair to share the results/healing process with you as well! Thank you so much for all of your prayers, comments, and emails- they definitely worked because the surgeon said it was "The best situation possible and definitely best that I didn't wait until after the wedding because the cancer would have spread."

I won't bore/gross you out with all of the details, but they only had to remove one layer overall with doing a second layer in one small corner. My nurse ended up being a former co-worker of mine from high school when we worked in the mall together; talk about a blessing! It was SO nice having a familiar face with me throughout the whole procedure! The Dr was super nice and a huge talker like me, so we just chatted throughout the entire surgery, which definitely made me feel at ease. We even had a nice vent session with each other about how jacked up our government is- me with education and he with health care. Ha!

They removed a dime size circle from my nose and I have 8 stitches running the entire length of my nose. Holy Frankenstein!  I'm attaching a picture I took yesterday morning- the bruising and swelling is definitely worse today (I currently have a big ol' black eye-so sexy), but they said after today, it shouldn't get any worse... I've been icing my nose and face down every 2 hours with some frozen peas- they are the BEST ice packs- and can start taking Ibuprofen tomorrow which should start reducing the swelling :)

M has been so amazing throughout the whole ordeal- he's taken the whole "in sickness and in health" thing to heart and has been right there for me with anything I need. He's was even carrying my "Bride" bag around the surgery center and he didn't even care that it had Bride spelled out across it in sequins! Haha :) I wish I had a picture-it was too cute.

The doctor said that he is almost 100% sure that my cancer was a result of using the tanning bed. While this is of some comfort to me since I wasn't sure if I was getting too much "real" sun each summer (he said I wasn't), it just further proves how dangerous tanning beds truly are! Seriously people, stay away from them!! I haven't even been in one in years and never even went on a frequent basis, but here I am/was a 29 year old with skin cancer. Scary stuff. But praise God for awesome doctors and their ability to remove it quickly!

Here is the pic from yesterday

And here is a truly comical pic that M took of me last night while watching my drama filled obsession, The Real Housewives of the OC. I was so tired of holding the peas on my face, that I busted out my head band and put it to use. Hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do :) I asked M if I looked scary gangsta? He replied, "You're wearing a Mary Kay head band and you have peas on your face, so no honey, you're not gangsta!" Ha! 

 Personally, I thought I looked pretty darn intimidating ;)

I'll be sure to post some more pics on Monday after the stitches are removed and I'll try to post a Wedding Wednesday later tonight :)

We had two more showers this weekend, so I have lots to share!!

XOXO

Ash