Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?
Our wedding day was the most blissful, loving day of my entire life. Not only could my husband and I feel each other’s love- we felt the love from all of our close family and friends who joined us. We had an intimate destination wedding with only 23 guests, and it was truly the most perfect day of my life. I get goosebumps and teary-eyed thinking about it now. Everyone was so supportive and happy for us- it was truly a magical day.
for years we’ve heard the same questions over and over again: everyone was always wondering why we weren’t engaged or married after being together for so long. people will always have their views, and most of the time you’ll find that it often has to do with society. it’s funny how people complain about “society’s standards” and then simultaneously push them upon one another, when in reality, society isn’t even meant to be in your relationship- so why let it dictate your timeline?
as I’ve been healing and growing throughout my life, I’ve recognized the importance of blocking out noise. people will always have an opinion or something to say, but they are NOT in your partnership. I feel it is important to hear people out if those are people who truly love and support you, but when it comes down to it, your relationship is about you and your partner. it’s important to pay attention to who is giving you advice and who is projecting their own issues and opinions. you wouldn’t ask someone who is thrice divorced for marriage advice, just like you wouldn’t ask someone who has never purchased a home for homeowner advice- so why let that outside noise affect your relationship?
when Cameron and I started dating, we were 16 years old. we told each other we loved each other after eleven days of dating. he wrote me a letter after a couple months where he told me that he understood why people would meet and get married within six months. if we would have gotten married in a rush at that age, I can’t tell you where we would be, but I can tell you that society and others around us would have disapproved. when we were buying a home at age 21, we had people asking why were we rushing to do that, while simultaneously asking us when we would be getting married. to us, it never mattered what people told us.
we have always listened to what we wanted and needed, and I am so blessed that we have been able to grow along side each other for the past 13 years. marriage is a lifelong commitment, even though society may not see it that way any longer, but it is to us. I’m glad we spent time building our foundation and I am so excited to spend forever with my husband.
It was just 5:55 on the clock, which is the angel number for “change.” Well, in two short days I get to marry the love of my life! I’m so grateful that we may it to our destination safely, and I also already had some family arrive as well! The rest of our friends and family arrive tomorrow, and then Wednesday is the big day!
We get to spend the next few days in our lovely suite with the ocean view! Although we may already miss our cats, it will be nice to be away from work and chores for a little while and just be able to focus on each other and all the love that surrounds us. 🤍
Happy Friday the 13th!
I know most people feel like today is superstitious and unlucky, but I am the opposite. Today I am feeling blessed, grateful, and overall full of love! The wedding is only 19 days away and I am so ready to be married to my fiancé.
I also cannot get over that we’re getting married on our 13th anniversary, and 13 has always been his lucky number. We also happen to have a new moon solar eclipse the day of our wedding! Although we won’t see the eclipse, it’s exciting to have a celestial event going on during our special day!
Everything feels like divine timing and alignment, and I am so happy to be present to it all.
Yesterday my fiancé and I had our joint bach/engagement party with our friends! We went go-karting and had some friends back to the house after for some drinks and yummy mini bundt cakes! Everyone who couldn’t make it had told me to take pictures and have fun, and I definitely only did one of those things!
I only got a couple photos at the racetrack, and none had me in it LOL, but I’m happy with how everything turned out. My fiancé won first place, which I honestly expected with how much racing he does in VR and with set up he has in his office. I did not place overall which was expected LOL but I had a such a fun time and I am definitely sore as hell this morning.
Part of me wishes I got more photos, but the rest of me is so happy that I was just immersed in the experience and in the conversations with all of our friends there. It was nice to see everyone and just have some laughs and good food! I am so happy we were able to organize this event for us and our friends to celebrate before we get married in October!
I have been feeling very present and grateful lately, and I’m truly working on soaking it all in. I feel like everything is working in divine timing, and I am being blessed randomly by the universe around me. Just this past week I had something amazing happen!
My fiancé and I are planning to have a “Til Death Do Us Party” a couple weeks after our small destination wedding, and we had a plan to have a cute vintage phone record messages and use that as our guest book. There are companies that rent these phones, and there are also phones you can purchase that have this purpose and ability already built in, but my fiancé wanted to try to build one himself.
He is into computers/programming, and he figured he could buy an old phone and a raspberry pi computer to make the phone into our audio guestbook. We placed an order for a cute, black vintage phone and the raspberry pi, but when we opened the box, we were shocked at what came.
Inside the amazon box that literally was labeled “black vintage office phone” and was a cream colored vintage phone, with a center button that said “record your memory.” This was the exact thing that he was planning to make. He looks at his receipt and sees we definitely did not order this phone, in fact, the one we ordered was $40 and did not have this technology. I start looking up this phone we received and it is a $135 phone!
As much as I wanted a black phone, I couldn’t help but be excited about this random accident that happened! I feel like this phone was meant for us and I am just going with the flow of it all. Whether it’s my angels and guides or the universe at large, I am feeling very connected and protected at this point. I am so lucky and blessed to be living here in the present, and I don’t want to ever take this for granted.
To say I am feeling refreshed would be an understatement. As much as my body is tired and moving slowly today, my heart and my mind feel so full. This weekend one of my best friends from high school flew in town and we had a fun-filled girls’ weekend! On Friday we visited our other high school best friend at her workplace and enjoyed delicious wine. They were hosting a new local food truck called WaffaDilla which was absolutely fantastic! Literally think waffles and quesadillas…. it was heavenly. They had a variety of mouthwatering sauces like zesty ranchero and spinach artichoke; not to mention their signature corn relish?! UGH so good! I am nowhere near a foodie blog, but they deserved the shoutout.
On Saturday I enjoyed a very special day with my closest friends and my mom as I went wedding dress shopping for the first time! When we first got there and I was looking through the showroom, I started feeling slightly overwhelmed and honestly disappointed at what options I was seeing. Everything was so glitz and glam and just overall too big and ballroom like which was not what I envisioned. Luckily we realized there were way more options in a different section and the shopping began! As I had quite a few options picked out I started feeling less overwhelmed and I let the excitement set in.
I was there with my favorite people (minus my fiancé), and I was trying on dresses for my freaking wedding day!!! One of my friends took so many photos for me on my phone and truly captured how I felt about every dress I tried on, and after trying on six different dresses, I said yes to the very first one I tried on!!! Mind you, I had favorited about nine or ten dresses before getting to the shop, and this one was not even on my list. The way that it made me feel and how it literally made every single one of us tear up, it was such an easy decision. I found the perfect veil to match and somehow got the best deal in the world and spent less than $250 total!! I feel so beyond grateful right now, and I am also just so happy that I am feeling so present in all of this.
After making that exciting purchase, me and my high school besties enjoyed a girls night out with good food, dancing, and too many shots LOL. I will say we started the evening very classy with yummy martinis in a quiet cafe bar, and it was fun to transition into the loud bars with dance floors after that. At bar close my fiancé came to pick us up, and we went home to enjoy some pizza rolls and our leftover fries and tots. Well, two out of three of us did LOL! One of us had a little bit too much fun and had to spend some time in the bathroom, but nothing we all haven’t experienced before! I was honestly surprised I didn’t throw up, but I think I saved myself by ordering water at the end when my girls were ordering more seltzers. Overall it was a fun, successful girls night full of honesty and great vibes!
Sunday we took it easy and enjoyed a yummy breakfast out at my favorite place (you know, where the love of my life asked me to marry him), and then went to see the Bob Marley movie! Honestly, it was very good and it tugged my heartstrings nearly the whole way through. Ziggy Marley, Bob’s son, is shown before the movie stating that he was there nearly every day for filming to make sure the story was portrayed as accurately as possible, which was appreciated. After crying for two hours we just chilled the rest of the day and went out for dinner later on. She is currently on her flight home and I am just taking it easy and relaxing before getting back to work tomorrow. I wanted to sit and write about this because it is the weekends like these that will be the memories I look back on when I think about wedding planning and really just looking back at 2024.
Today is a full moon and a lunar eclipse, which is fun for witchy people like myself. According to some spiritual Instagram page (just keeping it real LOL) it says this about lunar eclipses: “Bringing final endings. Emotions are high. They make us aware of the passage of time and make us sentimental. Memories and dreams come up to the surface.” I have definitely been more emotional lately, but it also is that time of month so that definitely doesn’t help. I’ve had lots of rage, and then lots of tears, both of sadness and of happiness.
Full moons are also looked at as competed cycles and as a time to reflect and celebrate the wins and the growth we’ve experience recently. I have been so proud of how I have been communicating and being more present and aware during conversations. I have been very aware of my emotions and allowing myself to feel them and just be, rather than controlling or shaming. I have been great about adding healthier foods to my diet and still taking my ginger shots and vitamins. When it is nice out, I get outside for walks and enjoy the sunshine. I have been working on being more in tune with myself and my body, and I am excited to keep moving forward on this journey. I am so thankful for this beautiful life I live. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Today is supposed to be my productive day, and it did not start out how I planned. I had a few things on my to-do list, and this morning I was starting my day at UPS to ship off one of the orders I got over the weekend. It was raining when I left the house, and by the time I got to UPS (which was only six minutes away) it was down-pouring!
I got soaked getting out of my car and when I got in to find out shipping prices I was in shock! $45 to package and ship a couple of mugs to Miami! The girl at the counter was even shocked by the fee and said that Florida rates are high right now. Luckily the girl who ordered from me was understanding and paid for the shipping, but I was shook! Now I had to tell the other two people who made orders how much their shipping costs are and I’m waiting on their responses.
I got very lucky over the weekend and one of my cricut creations was recognized by the Official Cricut Instagram account and they shared my post to their 1.4 million followers and tagged me! I gained some followers on my crafting instagram, my etsy shop got favorited a couple of times, and I had three people place orders with me! So even though this shipping thing is annoying, I’m so grateful that this happened, and am happy to be learning the best ways to ship as a small business!
Now that they shared my work, I have been more confident and motivated and I now want to make/post at least one project weekly! I have been following more pages and hashtags to get inspiration, and I want to start making some fall items! I know it’s still summer for now, but kids are going back to school and fall is right around the corner! I’m also thinking about having a Halloween party again this year and going all out with crafting/decor!
I am going to start planning out projects and times to do certain things as I find it easier to stick to a schedule. My boyfriend and I are also making a list of updates we want to do on the house over the next couple years so we can plan for those. We are still without AC right now but it should be fixed this week- I really hope it’s soon because it’s going to be in the 90s for the next three days!
Overall I’ve had a lot of stress coming up, but also a lot of excitement! I am trying hard to focus on the positive things and be grateful, rather than let the stress bring me down. We will always have stress and not-so-great things that happen to us, but as long as we remember to practice gratitude and be aware of what we have, I feel that can only benefit us in the end.
I’m attaching the photo from instagram that was shared! If you have instagram, go ahead and check out some out the items I’ve made (@jenamadeitems)!
This weekend was interesting to say the least. My boyfriend and I were in our good friends’ wedding and it was stressful as fuck. Don’t get me wrong, we love them so much and are so happy for them, but it was so much work and so exhausting.
After having to get up at 6:45am and working until 1:00pm, my boyfriend and I drove to the rehearsal dinner on Friday, and we were all supposed to start at 6:00pm, but the main people needed were running late to this got delayed to 7:15pm. That unfortunately kind of set the tone for the rest of the events to come.
With starting late, the actual dinner part of the “rehearsal dinner” didn’t happen. Instead we all went back to the hotel to set up for the wedding. The bride and groom ordered us all pizzas and we got to work- setting up tables, blowing up balloons, decorating the reception area, and so on.
My boyfriend and I were so tired, and especially me because on Thursday night I went over to the bride’s house to help her and her MOH with last minute wedding crafting and then I had to retwist my boyfriend’s hair so I didn’t go to bed until about 1am. I’m sure running on 5 hours of sleep and then the schedule running behind really added into my stress levels.
We ended up going to bed around 11, while others stayed back to continue helping. The coordinator had already left so they were just finishing up the balloon arch, but I still felt bad leaving. However, when I spoke to the bride she said that she was up doing stuff until 3:00am! Then I felt even worse, but also we had to be at her hotel (different one than we were staying at/where the reception was) at 8:00am to start getting ready.
Once everyone was there and getting ready things were pretty smooth sailing when it came to timing, but then shit started hitting the fan. I honestly don’t want to go into details, but the poor planning and feeling everyone stress levels for HOURS was so draining. I started having a panic attack on the trolley where the whole bridal party was minus the bride), but was able to stop crying and calm myself down. I was also lucky enough to have my boyfriend with me, which helped tremendously.
After her horse-drawn carriage entrance, and the live butterfly release, we took 8 million photos and were late for the grand march and delayed the whole reception by 45 minutes. Once we were there I was just so happy for all of this stress and timeline shit to be over. I was so triggered because I hate running late and I hate when things don’t go as planned and everyone else was feeling stressed and angry, and I could just feel everyone’s negative energy.
So now that we were finally where the open bar was, I was just so happy to finally get food and drinks. My boyfriend and I loved the greek buffet food, and we really enjoyed drinking and dancing the night away with each other. He really doesn’t like big events or being around people, but we truly had a wonderful time together once all the stress was gone (other than having to help clean up everything at the end of the night).
I truly hope the bride and groom didn’t feel all of this stress, but I know for sure the bride was stressed a few times. I can say they will have great pictures from the wedding, but this whole thing really reinforced my thought that big weddings are really about trying to impress other people and I think people get lost in it.
I’ve never wanted a big wedding, and my boyfriend agrees. We decided years ago that we will have an elopement ceremony once that time comes. When we went to Aruba in 2019, we decided that we want to get married there! We’ve been ring shopping in the last couple months, and last night when we did our video message to the newlyweds he said that our time was coming soon (to be fair I caught the bouquet)!
We are coming up on our ten year anniversary in October, but we’ve been together since we were 16, so we’re still young! I’m okay not being married right now, but I mean we’re basically married already. We have been living together for seven years, we bought a house together, and we take care of our cats together lol! I get so happy when I see my friends getting married and having kids, but I’m also so happy that we still have those things to look forward to. Weddings always make me emotional, and I’m so happy that I have such a great life partner.
On Friday one of my best friends got married in her backyard; after many months of rescheduling and re-planning her perfect day she managed to pull off an incredible wedding. It was absolutely beautiful and so intimate and it honestly made me want a backyard wedding (Plan A is still Aruba though).
This is the first wedding that I have ever stood in and it was such an honor to be part of such a special day. I was very emotional during the First Looks and the Ceremony (as were all the bridesmaids), and once they finally said their vows the pressure was lifted and the energy felt light and everyone just celebrated together.
It was so nice to have a taste of normalcy and fun- we were all drinking and dancing the night away and it all felt how it should. I will cherish this memory and continue to think positively about the future.
As November closes out I am looking forward to Christmastime and holiday cheer as I create fun gifts with my Cricut! I want to continue to get better at my craft and make fun gifts for people I love!
From Dark to Light 