I'm not sure how many people are even going to read this, but if you do, I am asking for prayer this evening as I go to the doctor to take some tests. It is kind of a big deal and then not at the same time, but I just wanted to ask! Thanks so much!!
- b -
P.S. Alex got a job!!!!! Updates later! :)
29 January, 2010
28 January, 2010
Blessed Blessed Blessed
For the past three weeks I have been feeling just so grateful and thankful for everything that God has blessed me with. I'm not sure why this feeling has just been abounding in me, but it has and I am just so happy. I think about everything that I have in my life and compare it to those who might be less fortunate, and I cannot help but thank God daily and try to help others in any way that I possibly can. At Passion 2010 (Jan. 2-5) in Atlanta, 25,000 college students, including me and my friends, helped raise over 600,000 towards coutnless chairities all around this country & our world. It was truly a humbling experience to be able to learn about these different organizations whose sole missions are to share the love and generosity of God to those who need it. I can't possibly talk about all the charities that we served with, but I will mention one particularly because I just received an e-mail update from them. The organization is called One Verse, and it's mission is to help translate the Bible into the languages of people that don't have that don't have it yet in their native tongue. I was so surprised at how much it costs to translate a single verse, but it made perfect sense in the end. A lot of peoples don't have the Bible written in their language because they don't even HAVE a written language. Missionaries and other people have to go and live with these different tribes and first, learn their language, second, help develop a written language and then third, translate the gospel into their language. For some missionaries, it is their life goal to translate the Bible or even just a portion of the Bible into another language. So the estimate that they gave us at Passion was that it takes $25 dollars to translate each verse of the Bible. If you do the math (I did a quick estimate), it takes a little less than $1 million dollars to translate the entire Bible into another language. Take a second to take that in. $1 million dollars to translate the Bible. That is crazy, and of course, I wanted to help. My friend Holly & I decided to each buy a verse to be translated, and it was one of the most rewarding experiences that I have ever lived through. We stood in line at Passion and told the lady at the booth that we each wanted to buy a verse, and she took our payment and then GAVE us the verse that was being translated because of our donation. It was SO COOL!! We then proceeded to go to this big banner that they had hanging in the convention center, and we wrote our verse next to the ones that had already been "purchased." It was so neat, and if you feel called to help bring the gospel to someone who has never heard it spoken in their own language, click here to help.
My Verse:
So the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free gift. And we are certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham's. For Abraham is the father of all who believe.
~Romans 4:16
We are truly, truly blessed.
- b -
24 January, 2010
The Journey
As I said before, Mrs. McCall came up to Louisville this weekend with her friend Stephanie to help with wedding planning. We needed to pick out our rehearsal dinner venue so Saturday morning we piled up at around 9:30 and just drove around Louisville to different places that we had researched. We didn't really have any appointments, but suprisingly, many people were able to meet with us. We went to the Kaden Tower, a beautiful Bed & Breakfast, the Seelbach Hotel, the Brown Hotel, Farmington Historic Home, Churchill Downs, and a couple other places. As I said in my last post, we ended up booking the Rathskeller room at the Seelbach Hilton on 4th street. We all just absolutely loved it! At first I wanted to make sure it wasn't going to one-up our actual reception, but the two just don't even compare. The Rathskeller is very old and artsy and historic while the ballroom at the Country Club is very contemporary, classy and BRIGHT (lol). There is not a single window in the Rathskeller and at Standard Country Club, the walls are almost entirely windows. You just can't even compare the two.
We also met with the florist that we chose to do our flowers. We picked out my bouquet as well as the ones that my bridesmaids will carry. We picked the boutonniere's for the groomsman & then for Alex and our fathers/grandfathers. Our moms picked out their corsages, and we brainstormed some ideas for centerpieces! We were there for almost 2 hours, but I'm glad that we got it over with. It was actually kind of fun even though it was one of the last places on our list, and we were all extremely tired.
Friday evening we went and met with a friend of ours from church, Amy Henson, who will be making our wedding cake. I don't want to give away too much on this blog because I want people to look forward to what we have planned, so all I am going to say is six tiers. ;o) Our cake is phoenomenal. I love it. And Amy is so great to work with, and the cake is delicious and is going to be beautiful. I'm so excited about it!!!
Our invitations are picked out, we just have to finaize our guest list and get everyone's mailing address so that we can order the invitations and start getting them ready. We have quite some time before they will have to be mailed out, but I want to get it done with as soon as possible. We're meeting with our DJ on Wednesday to hopefully sign a contract and talk music! We still need to find a videographer & pick out the groomsmen apparrel. So much is getting done! Thanks for taking the time to read this! I know people aren't as excited as I am, but I needed to write about it somewhere! Hope everyone has a blessed week!
- b -
We also met with the florist that we chose to do our flowers. We picked out my bouquet as well as the ones that my bridesmaids will carry. We picked the boutonniere's for the groomsman & then for Alex and our fathers/grandfathers. Our moms picked out their corsages, and we brainstormed some ideas for centerpieces! We were there for almost 2 hours, but I'm glad that we got it over with. It was actually kind of fun even though it was one of the last places on our list, and we were all extremely tired.
Friday evening we went and met with a friend of ours from church, Amy Henson, who will be making our wedding cake. I don't want to give away too much on this blog because I want people to look forward to what we have planned, so all I am going to say is six tiers. ;o) Our cake is phoenomenal. I love it. And Amy is so great to work with, and the cake is delicious and is going to be beautiful. I'm so excited about it!!!
Our invitations are picked out, we just have to finaize our guest list and get everyone's mailing address so that we can order the invitations and start getting them ready. We have quite some time before they will have to be mailed out, but I want to get it done with as soon as possible. We're meeting with our DJ on Wednesday to hopefully sign a contract and talk music! We still need to find a videographer & pick out the groomsmen apparrel. So much is getting done! Thanks for taking the time to read this! I know people aren't as excited as I am, but I needed to write about it somewhere! Hope everyone has a blessed week!
Here are just a couple beautiful wedding reception photos I found online! Enjoy!
- b -
Mission Accomplished
Isn't the architecture of this room to die for? When Alex's mom visited this
weekend to work on wedding planning with us, we visited this room
at the Seelbach, and we immediately knew it was the place we wanted
to have our rehearsal dinner. So... it is booked! :) I am so excited!
More pictures to come later!
- b -
21 January, 2010
For LOVE
Wouldn't it be fabulous if I could afford to buy these shoes to wear with my wedding dress? Sigh. I think I'll save this as my background picture for a few weeks. Enjoy!
- b -
08 January, 2010
Happy New Year! Time to UPDATE!
Happy 2010 everyone!! I know that I have not updated in a while, but I really am trying! I have months & months of updating to do so I'll start with wedding stuff so that I can get it over with! Alex & I have been engaged for almost 2 months, and they have FLOWN by. We will have an 8 1/2 month engagement until we are married on July 31st of this year. A lot of places and vendors book up a year in advance so we were really crunched for time when it came to planning. Planning has been a little different than what I expected it to be. I guess I just feel so rushed because the wedding is less than 7 months away, and there is still so much more to do. It also seems unreal that all this time & effort is going towards planning a single event that will be over in a matter of hours. It's crazy yet I am looking forward to it at the same time. I'm trying to enjoy the process, but it is just a lot of work! I feel like all I do is make appointments, compare & contrast different vendors, make decisions & write a check. It just gets tiring after a while! I don't want to sound like I am complaining, I am just trying to describe how it is making me feel!!
Well so far I feel that I have gotten a lot accomplished, but looking at my to-do list makes for a giant dose of intimidation. Here are a few of the things that we have already done: we picked the date! That was an event all in itself. I had to call all our close friends & relatives to make sure that the people that had to be there could be there. I also had to think through my sister as being a candidate for GSP (Governer's Scholar Program) in the summer. Danielle is my maid of honor & if she gets into this program she will be gone for 5 weeks starting at the end of June. I want her to go so bad, but she won't find out until April if she got in and then she won't find out which session she is going to (if she gets in) until May. It was just so frustrating! But we picked July 31st because we have too many friends getting married in May/June, and Alex thought that those months were too soon anyways. We didn't want to get married in August because it was so close to the start of the fall semester, so we decided on July and then our venue only had an opening on the 31st so that was set! We chose our wonderful wedding party (it's pretty big!) and ceremony/reception location. We are getting married at my home church, Southeast Christian. I have grown up there my whole life, and it really means a lot to me to get married there. There was a good bit of paperwork that we had to fill out and send to get approved, along with our wedding date, and that got done. We start our 12 week premarital classes in April. They will be done in June, and we are looking forward to meeting other couples at our church who are at the same stages in life! What else... I bought my wedding dress in mid-December. They say to give it at least 6 months so that you can get it back in time for alterations. Putting the down-payment on the dress so close to Christmas killed me, but I am excited that it is ordered & currently being made. I love it, and it is just a really neat dress. I can't post pitures because of Alex, but you can just send me an e-mail at bmerante@insightbb.com if you're interested. I understand nobody really cares about any of this, but I just love talking about it every now and then. I haven't picked out the bridesmaid dresses just yet, and that is my next big goal along with the cake. I have looked at some but want to go to a couple more places to see what else is an option. Our colors are chocolate brown, ivory and purple. They go so great together, and I am hoping that it all goes well. We have booked our photographer as of YESTERDAY! Josh Perkins from Red Tree Photography is going to share our special day with us. He does an amazing job, and I am so glad that we chose him! We also looked at Studio E & Eric Graf as well, and I would recommend them second to Josh if you are ever looking for a photographer! Lastly, we decided on who would be doing our flowers. There is a florist right next to my dad's store that he really wanted to use. We were supposed to meet with them and pick out everything yesterday, but there has been a lot of snow, and they asked that we reschedule. So that is pretty much it so far! Oh yeah, I HAVE set up one block of rooms at the hotel I work at for some out-of-town guests. I need to do that at about 2 more hotels because we have a lot of people traveling, but I will do that later.
So my next big goals are picking out the bridesmaids dresses & cake. Also, I am looking for suggestions. Should I get a videographer? To those who are married are you glad that you did/didn't hire one? Would it be a good investment? Just let me know! Thanks for reading!
- b -
Well so far I feel that I have gotten a lot accomplished, but looking at my to-do list makes for a giant dose of intimidation. Here are a few of the things that we have already done: we picked the date! That was an event all in itself. I had to call all our close friends & relatives to make sure that the people that had to be there could be there. I also had to think through my sister as being a candidate for GSP (Governer's Scholar Program) in the summer. Danielle is my maid of honor & if she gets into this program she will be gone for 5 weeks starting at the end of June. I want her to go so bad, but she won't find out until April if she got in and then she won't find out which session she is going to (if she gets in) until May. It was just so frustrating! But we picked July 31st because we have too many friends getting married in May/June, and Alex thought that those months were too soon anyways. We didn't want to get married in August because it was so close to the start of the fall semester, so we decided on July and then our venue only had an opening on the 31st so that was set! We chose our wonderful wedding party (it's pretty big!) and ceremony/reception location. We are getting married at my home church, Southeast Christian. I have grown up there my whole life, and it really means a lot to me to get married there. There was a good bit of paperwork that we had to fill out and send to get approved, along with our wedding date, and that got done. We start our 12 week premarital classes in April. They will be done in June, and we are looking forward to meeting other couples at our church who are at the same stages in life! What else... I bought my wedding dress in mid-December. They say to give it at least 6 months so that you can get it back in time for alterations. Putting the down-payment on the dress so close to Christmas killed me, but I am excited that it is ordered & currently being made. I love it, and it is just a really neat dress. I can't post pitures because of Alex, but you can just send me an e-mail at bmerante@insightbb.com if you're interested. I understand nobody really cares about any of this, but I just love talking about it every now and then. I haven't picked out the bridesmaid dresses just yet, and that is my next big goal along with the cake. I have looked at some but want to go to a couple more places to see what else is an option. Our colors are chocolate brown, ivory and purple. They go so great together, and I am hoping that it all goes well. We have booked our photographer as of YESTERDAY! Josh Perkins from Red Tree Photography is going to share our special day with us. He does an amazing job, and I am so glad that we chose him! We also looked at Studio E & Eric Graf as well, and I would recommend them second to Josh if you are ever looking for a photographer! Lastly, we decided on who would be doing our flowers. There is a florist right next to my dad's store that he really wanted to use. We were supposed to meet with them and pick out everything yesterday, but there has been a lot of snow, and they asked that we reschedule. So that is pretty much it so far! Oh yeah, I HAVE set up one block of rooms at the hotel I work at for some out-of-town guests. I need to do that at about 2 more hotels because we have a lot of people traveling, but I will do that later.
So my next big goals are picking out the bridesmaids dresses & cake. Also, I am looking for suggestions. Should I get a videographer? To those who are married are you glad that you did/didn't hire one? Would it be a good investment? Just let me know! Thanks for reading!
- b -
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