I've wanted to start a new blog for a while now to start recording some of mine and Brandon's adventures with our families, our friends, and with each other.
Nursing school is drawing to a close for me now in around a week and a half, so I'm hoping this Summer I will be able to post lots of blogs about "remodeling" our house, going on adventures to Pigeon Forge, Lake Hiwassee, and (hopefully) the beach sometime or other, and our day to day life together as we get ready for September and the rest of our lives...
Speaking of September, we're done with our actual wedding planning! :)
Brandon and I have bounced around between a lot of ideas for our wedding, and we have struggled a lot with finding something that suits who we are and what we want. We started out with the big-sha-bang church wedding. At first, this was a wonderful idea for our wedding, and it put us getting married at Brandon's church which means a lot to him and to me as I consider it my own church too. When our guest list quickly hit 300 to avoid hurting feelings, we decided that wasn't for us. Not only was I panicked about the stage fright I would have to endure having to walk down the aisle in front of so many people (I'm kinda a klutz, and being nervous makes it a LOT worse), but we realized we were getting away from what we really wanted our wedding to be about: Us and our amazing Love. When this idea got so big, we saw that it wouldn't be truly about us and that a lot of our day would have to be stressful and spent making sure everything was good for everyone else. It just simply wasn't us. We then moved on to our next idea... a destination wedding. We started out looking at Lake Lure for a Gazebo wedding that would have about 50 people. It was very hard to find those 50 people (when our previous guest list was having to be cut down SO much), and for $1000, a few hours with nothing but the venue just seemed like a rip off. We couldn't convince ourselves to do that, and we felt like this wouldn't be what we wanted. Our next stop was a cabin wedding in Pigeon Forge. We LOVED this idea. We were going to get married on a huge deck of a cabin where our families could stay for the weekend and enjoy a vacation and get-away as well as our wedding. We had plans for a bachelor party out on the strip for the Shades of the Past weekend, and a bachelorette party with pizza and Disney movies at the cabin. It seemed perfect. We had around 30 people planned for this, and it quickly snow-balled into around 60-70, which was no way manageable at this cabin. It seemed like no matter what we did it quickly got away from what we truly wanted: a small, intimate ceremony with the people who love us most in the world and who really wanted it to be about us. We were kinda at a loss for what to do...
Until we found the perfect solution.
We cancelled the cabin we had reserved for the cabin wedding and down sized the wedding as small as we could possibly manage. We had talked a lot about eloping, but we really wanted our immediate families to be there. So... we had our solution and we started planning.
We're having our wedding on September 8th as we had originally planned but now in Gatlinburg Tennessee. We found a chapel that is rustic and enchanting and gorgeous and perfect for the two of us. We're having a private wedding that weekend with our immediate families only being his parents, my parents, my siblings, and his grandparents. We love the idea, and we feel like it perfectly matches who we are and what we wanted. We're going to go in to Gatlinburg Friday, stay Friday night, and have our wedding Saturday at 6:00 PM. Our wedding coordinator there at the chapel was amazing and so helpful with our planning. We're still getting to do all of the special wedding things we wanted to do for our ceremony like our own vows, a Unity Cross ceremony, and we get to have a Maid of Honor (Brenna of course!) and Best Man (Ronnie, Brandon's Dad) like we had wanted.
Another wonderful thing about doing our wedding like this is that we will still get to celebrate our marriage with all the rest of our family and friends! On September 29th we're going to have a cook-out reception back at home where everyone can come and eat and play games and enjoy time together with Brandon and I and all of our family and friends. We're excited that we'll still get to share this time with everyone and get our actual ceremony the way that we wanted it to be from the beginning. :) We're still working on a place/time, but as soon as we know where this will take place, we'll update the wedding website and this blog to let everyone know. ;)
It feels so good to be at the end of planning for our wedding, and at the same time it makes us both all the more impatient for the big day to get here. We're so happy together, and so excited, and we both just feel so extremely blessed that God sent us to each other when we needed each other most, and that we get to spend the rest of our lives with our best friend. We're ready for this big adventure to begin! :)
With a Sigh of Relief and One amazing Wedding Chapel,
Jordo
Jordo
For those wanting to check out the Chapel and our Wedding Website:
1. Official Chapel Website: www.logchapel.com
2. Chapel's Facebook Website (LOTS of pictures!): www.facebook.com/logchapel
3. Our Wedding Website: http://WestAndGodman.ourwedding.com
