Memphis, back to school, and praying for a fast Fall...

This past weekend, Will and I went to Memphis to visit his parents and grandparents. Before Will and I started dating, the only times I ever had gone to Memphis was for tennis tournaments and college matches. Needless to say, my opinion of the city was not too high. Now, however, it is one of my favorite places to visit! Will's parents live in East Memphis and I think it's such a neat area of the city. The houses are older, and there are so many good restaurants around. Plus, we are only a few minutes drive from the midtown Memphis or downtown. On Saturday morning, we had plans to go rent SUP boards and paddle at Shelby Farms, which is this huge park in the middle of the city. However, the person in charge of the rentals never showed up! I was so disappointed! Luckily, Will knew how to make me feel better and took me to Target. :)

For the rest of the weekend, we ate good barbecue, ate Suzanne's delicious cooking, ate in Midtown Saturday night, and just relaxed. So...basically...we ate and sat. Saturday afternoon Will and I also drove to Germantown to indulge in one of my favorite hobbies, "Anthropologie browsing." Poor Will. He's really just such a good fiance. 

Though we never got to paddle board, the weekend was just so much fun and the perfect end to my four week break from school. My allergies had been bothering me so much the previous week (and still are!) and it was nice to spend some time not doing a whole lot of anything. 

As of last night, I have officially started my Fall semester. I have 12 hours worth of classes, and on top of working full time and trying to get more wedding things taken care of...I am a little stressed out by just thinking about the next three and a half months. Will and his parents will be in town for Labor Day weekend and the first football game. We then skip a weekend and everyone will then be here for our engagement party! The NEXT weekend Will and I travel to Chattanooga and Huntsville for our first premarital counseling session, and then two weekends from then, I will spend back to back weekends in Mobile. And in case you haven't been able to keep up with all of that, that will officially put us into the middle of OCTOBER! Time really is flying by. Will and I always laugh because we get so tired of hearing people tell us "how quickly our wedding day is going to get here." But...it just doesn't seem possible that we are almost at the end of August! I really think that in the midst of school, work, seeing Will as often as we're going to this Fall (!!!!!!!), and wedding planning, it is going to be December before we know it! In the meantime, with all of our traveling in the horizon, I am making it my own personal goal to try and never have school work to get done on the weekends. I want to be able to spend all of my free time with Will when he is in town or I am in Mobile and not have to worry about an assignment due. We'll see how that goes. It is hard for me to feel relaxed during the semester. Even if I am somewhat caught up on my work load, I always feel like there is something looming ahead in the distance. Luckily, as a side note, this is my second to last semester! It seems hard to believe. Unluckily, next spring is going to be CRAZY. But...I can get to that later. Hope everyone had a great weekend as well and enjoyed the incredible Fall-like weather we had!

SLD

HGTV's House Hunters: Mobile, AL

So after ranting a bit about the awkwardness of wedding dress shopping, I figured I'd get into something a little more fun. At the end of May...Will and I bought a HOUSE! I mean...that's just crazy right? A house. We have a house. Ok...technically, Will bought a house. My name goes on the deed when we get married. But no need for technicalities. WE ARE HOMEOWNERS! And seriously...our house is just incredible. House hunting definitely trumps dress shopping, it's just a much longer process and slightly more expensive. Will and his parents had a friend living in Mobile who conveniently happened to be a realtor, so after we got engaged, we immediately began our own version of HGTV's House Hunters: Midtown Mobile. Before meeting with Lexi (realtor), Will and I went and visited a few open houses one Sunday. There was a street with a few houses for sale that Will and I had already seen online. They were all having open houses. There was one house in particular that we had no interest going into. We knew already we wanted at least 3 bedrooms with 2 full baths. Nothing else would do. However, we were already on the street, there was an open house, so we decided we'd quickly run inside the 2/2. Whoops.

Within seconds we fell in love. 9 North Reed was beautiful. Every architectural detail was something straight out of Southern Living. The ceilings (almost a whopping 12 ft high) loomed over us and transitioned from room to room with transoms, pocket doors, and huge wooden doors.

The light fixtures had amazing, ornate ceiling medallions. 

Each main room of the house had an incredibly beautiful fireplace. 

Master Bedroom

Dining Room

Living Room

Guest Bedroom

Oh and that third bedroom we so desperately wanted? Well...we made lemonade out of those lemons when we saw they had turned the third bedroom into a closet. Yes girls. That's right. I officially have a closet that is the size of a bedroom. I like to call it my "Sex and the City closet." Will didn't get that reference so I made him watch the first "Sex and the City" movie. I doubt he'll question anymore of my references. So, we thought for sure we'd found our dream house. And then.........we made it back into the kitchen. 

It really doesn't matter what else the kitchen looks like. I'll brief you: white countertops, white cabinets, white appliances (we will most likely be replacing all of the aforementioned). They also did a whitewash on the hardwood floors in here, and I absolutely loved that. BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERS. Because...there are satanic brown masks staring at me from every corner of this entire room. Our beautiful 12 foot high walls are plastered in this stuff. And yes you little smarty pants reader out there. I know. It's only wallpaper. It can be removed (as you can see I've already started to do). I kid you not, this wallpaper and this wallpaper alone was almost a deal breaker for me. I often show pictures of the wallpaper to my friends and don't tell them how much I hate it. I usually get responses such as "Oh that's very different" or "Wow how interesting." Once I tell them it's coming down ASAP or how much Will and I hate it (or fear it in my case), you can see extreme relief cross their faces as they express their utter disgust with the brown madness. So, as many of the pictures I will be posting on here of our house will be, consider this a way WAY before picture. If you look closely in this picture, you might be able to spot some future plans in store for our kitchen.  ;)

I guess I got a little bit ahead of myself (which you'll notice is a trend for me). We bought our dream house. We looked at close to 20 other houses in the Midtown area. There were some really awesome ones out there. There were also some that Will and I didn't get past the front yard before politely declining to enter. We looked in a few other areas of Mobile as well (newer construction, suburbs, etc), but in the end 9 North Reed just didn't even compare with all of the other houses. The other huge sell was the street alone. It seriously was like stepping onto Mayberry. The neighbors sit on their porches with each other while their kids play in yards. The mailman walks up to your door and slips mail through your mail slot.

No kidding. 

It was just perfect for us. Now...I just have to continue waiting to move in for the next 9 months. Patience is a virtue I have yet to acquire. 

Home Sweet Home (soon)

Blogging disclaimers and the not so pretty side of wedding planning

Ok so here's my first disclaimer: Thus far, I've already lied to you. I am not in fact, yet, a "Displaced Vol Fan." I'm still living in the heart of Tennessee football, and will be for the next 9 months. So...my apologies. If it makes it any better, my heart is in Mobile, AL. And 98.9% of the time, so is my head. I've titled this blog the way I did because my fiance Will and I are both born and raised in Tennessee and we bleed orange (just please don't tell our Bama-fan neighbors). Of all places, we are starting our first year of marriage down in the  heart of Mobile. Luckily, our new street is full of SEC fans. Disclaimer number two? I'm not the world's best blogger. I won't claim to be. My goal is to post at least once a week. If a month goes by...so be it. If a year goes by...I'll probably end up deleting this page. However, I love to write, I always have. So I figured it might be nice to have a bit of a creative outlet outside of grad school where I can keep my friends and family updated on what is going on with Will and myself. At one point I had a blog where I attempted to post about various art projects I had been working on. I will post some projects on here, but that's not the main intent. I just want a place where I can post about life, grad school, projects, wedding planning, etc.

Wedding planning you say? Yes! After five years of a long distance friendship, Will and I decided to test the waters of dating each other (long distance of course). Two months later we started looking at engagement rings, and another two and a half months later we were engaged! It may have seemed fast to some, but for Will and I, it was five years in the making and couldn't have happened soon enough. However, we may have gotten a bit ahead of ourselves and after getting engaged, we then began to embark on a 14 month engagement. Awesome. So, it's now August, almost five months into our engagement, and it is just now getting to the point where it is appropriate to begin some serious wedding planning. Of course, I am also getting ready to start my Fall semester of my masters program, and therefore will have little to no time to do anything wedding related. Also, I love to plan. I have a Lilly Pulitzer planner that I never leave home without and it is usually filled with not only my schedule but Will's as well. This comes in handy when, for example, he forgets his allergist appointment and I am able to remind him while he is driving to work. A little OCD? Maybe...but it works for us. Anyway, you'd think that a planner like myself would be in planning heaven with a wedding in the forecast! Let me just say that wedding planning is not really as glamorous as people make it out to be. It's actually quite stressful and exhausting. Let me walk you through dress shopping for example. First, you walk into a bridal boutique where you're greeted by an overly excited attendant who wants nothing more than to dress you. That's weird right? I thought so. She gives you the freedom to browse row after row of lace, taffeta, netting, and beading. You're then expected to pull numerous dresses to try on. What's that? You aren't crazy about any of them? Doesn't matter. Pull them anyway. You never know how they'll look on. Side not: You're already exhausted from pulling these 45 pound dresses off of their hangers. Here comes the fun part. You go into a dressing room (where you can hear cries from other girls insisting to their attendants that they want a lace-up dress with more beading) and your attendant morphs into your Victoria's Secret saleswoman where she measure every inch of your body, making you seriously regret eating a bagel rather than running Cherokee Boulevard that morning. You're then brought a "bra" that is the length of your entire torso and at least four sizes larger than any size you've ever worn and told to clasp all 90 of the back clasps (this is in fact impossible if my sarcasm didn't tip you off). Finally, once you're "dressed" in your bridal undergarments if you will, you're taught the dive that your swim coach tried to teach you when you were seven years old. Arms over your head, squeezing your ears, as the attendant lifts pounds of lace above you. Once the dress is somewhat on, the attendant (we'll call her Lisa) begins pulling. First she pulls all of the material down so that it falls perfectly at the ground. That part isn't so bad. But then, the pulling and clipping starts. From every angle, material is pulled, stretched, and clipped all around you. This makes the size 32 dress that they have on display look like it fits you (aside from the yards of extra material hanging awkwardly behind you). Then, you have the initial decision of looking in the mirror and deciding whether or not this dress is worthy of showing the anxious friends and family members waiting outside to see the ivory mess that is now you. My mother's response to my first dress? "It's nice." Not quite the reaction you're looking for after sweating  yourself through that process. What's that? Oh...yes...I started sweating somewhere in between the pulling and clipping. Or perhaps it could have been when I was on clasp 83 of the megabra. Anywhere from 13-14 dresses later, I'd found "the one." Maybe it's that our society has glamorized dress shopping so much with shows like "Say Yes to the Dress," but finding my wedding dress didn't bring tears to my eyes. I didn't get chills, and I didn't want to stay standing on that pedestal twirling like I was Cinderella for hours. I posed for enough pictures to thoroughly show my future mother in law and bridesmaids my dress. I was then beyond ready to be able to breathe normally again and raise my arms over my head without flashing the boutique.

Now please don't read into this that I am some ungrateful bride. I love my dress. I mean I just love it. I feel beautiful and skinny and princess-like when I am in it. I just also was literally so tired after finding it that I took a two hour nap followed by a shower after finding it!

So as not to overwhelm you, as I know I have the ability to do to people, I am going to end this post before it turns into a novel. Thanks for reading! Hopefully, I will be able to keep this updated!

SLD