Texas Lou

Archive for the ‘Wedding’ Category

This photo from our wedding reception describes exactly how I felt that night.  Happy, in love, and having the time of my life surrounded by the people I love the most!

A couple of weeks ago, September 8th to be exact (I know I am really late posting about this), we attended the wedding of my friends Amy and Joel in Crozet, Virginia.

The wedding was outdoors at the beautiful home of Joel’s mother.  About an hour before the ceremony was to begin, a thunderstorm rolled through the area which gave the bride and groom and their bridal party a scare, but thanks to awesome bridesmaids, groomsmen, and ushers, everything got put back together just in time.  I think the storm was a blessing in disguise because it brought in some cooler air which made for a perfect night that wasn’t too hot.

The wedding was beautiful and the bride was gorgeous.  You could see all of the hard work that Amy and Joel put into planning the event with every little detail and personal touch of the ceremony and reception!  We had a great time dining and dancing with friends and celebrating the beginning of Mr. and Mrs. Harrigan’s new life as a married couple!

Check out a few of the lovely pictures from the evening below!

The lovely couple just after the ceremony!

Ben and I enjoying the evening

Sarah, me, and Cris…lovely ladies in blue!

My sister-in-law and I!

The Davidsons!

Lovely cake with the most adorable cake toppers made by the bride’s sister!

I also want to give a shout out to my sister-in-law/best friend/sister, Sarah, and my brother in law, Ian.  Today is their two year wedding anniversary and I still remember their beautiful wedding like it was yesterday!  Here’s to countless more years of happiness and love for both Sarah and Ian and the newlyweds, Amy and Joel!

The title of this post is one of my favorite quotes about love and relationships.  I think I really like it because it describes the teamwork, partnership, and cooperation that I believe is necessary for a healthy and lasting relationship.

Speaking of love and games, I wanted to show the cornhole set that I had custom made for my wedding.  The theme of the wedding was Texas and Virginia (mine and Ben’s home states respectively in case it wasn’t already obvious).  We had lots of little aspects of the wedding that went along with this theme like the Texas shaped bride’s cake (yes, you read that right, we had a bride’s cake instead of a groom’s cake) and the Virginia wine and beer served at the reception.  I think this game brought the whole theme together quite nicely, not to mention it was great fun to have at the wedding and Ben and I can enjoy them for years to come.

Board 1: Texas

Board 2: Virginia

The boards were hand made by the extremely talented Derik of Cornchucker LLC .  He did a beautiful job and let me customize the wording, colors, and logos on the boards.  I know Ben and I are going to have these set up in our backyard when we finally buy a house and they will always remind us of our wonderful wedding weekend!

There have been ALOT of changes in my life since my last post.  I was laid off from my job at VGT back in March.  I was so lucky to find a new job before my lay off date hit  so I didn’t have to worry about being unemployed.  I really like my new job and am learning so many wonderful and valuable skills and gaining new experience in the web programming field.  I’m also getting the opportunity to meet alot of really great people.  But with all of that said, I’m having a very difficult time adjusting to this new part of my life.  This is my 12th week at the new job (10th if you don’t count the 2 weeks I took off for my wedding and honeymoon) and I’m still waking up most mornings paralyzed with fear about my day ahead.  The work is difficult and challenging, but it’s nothing I can’t handle and I have already seen an improvement in my performance now that I have had time to pick up on some of my training and gain some experience.  Sundays are especially difficult as all I can think about is how I’ll soon be subjected to another 5 days of terror.  I know my anxiety is rooted in many fears:  what if I can’t cut it, what if they fire me, what if I never make any new friends, what if this new job takes over my life and I have to become one of those people who works 60 to 80 hours a week, what if I totally screw things up, what if they realize I have no clue what I’m doing.  It’s very scary.

In addition, I really miss my old job.  I don’t really miss the type of work I was doing…that aspect was fine and I could have taken it or left it.  I miss the people  and the culture and the environment so much.  I miss knowing most everybody in the building and being able to strike up a conversation with them in the hallway or while getting my morning coffee.  I miss the inside jokes and the teamwork.  And to make matters worse, so many of these great people that I miss are moving away from the area either to relocate to VGT’s office in Tennessee or to find new jobs in larger cities with more opportunities.  It’s been very difficult and sad to say goodbye to so many wonderful people that have filled my life with joy for the past 4 years.

I know I’ll eventually adjust and my current job will become the new normal, but its just been very hard thus far and I hope that by writing about it, I can gather some feedback and support from others and at the same time, get things off of my chest.

The other change that recently took place in my life was my wedding to Ben.  No complaints there…it was the most wonderful and perfect weekend of my life.  I was surrounded by almost every person in my life that I love which rarely happens and we all had a wonderful time celebrating the beginning of mine and Ben’s marriage to one another. I think that might have been the happiest I have ever been.  But now I feel like I’m on the downward slope of the roller coaster.  After all, when you’re at the top, there is only one way to go.  It took me a while to settle into the new normal of not always thinking about and working toward the wedding.  I’ve been trying to find ways to occupy my new found free time and free brain space.  I love being married to Ben and things haven’t changed much for us as a couple.  But I feel sad often thinking about the fact that the wedding is now over and all of my family has come and gone.  I miss everyone sooo very much and it’s very difficult living so far away from them.  I am thankful for my Virginia family and friends who live so close to me, but I also yearn to be closer to my family who live so far away.  They just make me so happy and everything feels right when they are around.  But perhaps I wouldn’t appreciate them so much if they were closer and it was easier to see them.

So I’ve been trying to push all of this anxiety and sadness out of my heart and head by focusing on finding a house and trying to find new projects and activities to get involved in.  I feel like I am making progress and the clouds of change are slowly clearing, but every now and then I have a particularly cloudy or rainy day and need to escape.  I’ve tried talking to my husband and talking to my self (as crazy as that may sound), so I thought I’d try talking to the blogosphere on this particularly rough day to see if it made me feel any better.

My posts have been few and far between this year, but that’s mostly because I’ve been out experiencing life!  Since one of my goals of writing this blog has been to document all of the new and wonderful experiences I have as I make my way through each day, I figured I should share some of those.

Well in no particular order, here they are:

• Got engaged!
• Test drove new cars
• Bought a new car!
• Bought a wedding dress
• Planned and threw 2 baby showers
• Introduced my dad to my future in-laws
• Became a landlord (i.e., invested in a rental property)
• Successfully competed in Warrior Dash
• Found the only Alamo Drafthouse outside of Texas and watched a double feature
• Drove to New Jersey and back in less than 48 hours
• Saw a production of Disney’s Newsies at the Papermill Playhouse and met the cast at a local diner afterward
• Created a wedding website and registered for wedding gifts
• Got a promotion to Software Engineer II
• Learned how to play the awesome game of Dominion
• Planned a wedding (partially)
• Threw a Silpada party
• Got second place in a Biggest Loser contest at work
• Made a fall wreath
• Became addicted to Pinterest
• Went to Smith Mountain Lake
• Watched an elementary school production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Attended the Top of the Hops Beer Festival, met up with an old college roommate, and met a famous blogger
• Had engagement photos taken by an awesome photographer
• Made my own t-shirts for Shamrockfest 2011, the 2011 Charlottesville Women’s Four Miler, and Breaking Dawn Part 1
• Went to a bridal show
• Participated in Office Olympics
• Got my concealed weapons permit
• Attended Scrum training by one of the inventors of Scrum
• Spent a wonderful long weekend in Disney World with my dad, step-mom, little brothers, and my fiance
• Had an AMAZING girls weekend in the Outer Banks
• Helped plan an engagement brunch for a friend
• Attended the 7th Annual Pink Ribbon Polo Classic at King Family Vineyards and met the owner who attended my alma mater
• Watched the Royal Wedding
• Crowd Surfed during the Dropkick Murphys performance at Shamrockfest
• Saw a real live bear
• Experienced my first earthquake…SCARY

I’m sure there are a ton of things that I’m leaving out and so many pictures and stories to go with all of these experiences, and one day I’ll hopefully get them all up here on the blog.

It’s been an AMAZING year so far and I’m hoping 2012 will be even better!

Hope your 2011 has been as great as mine!

I’ve not been very active on the blog and its mostly because I’ve been spending my free time thinking about wedding details and making wedding plans.

The love of my life and I will get married on Saturday, June 23, 2012 (the day after our 6 year anniversary) at the beautiful Clifton Inn in Charlottesville, Virginia.  The Clifton will provide much of the wedding party and out of town guests with rooms for the weekend, as well as catering, linens, and tableware.  I think having a venue that is a one-stop-shop for everything from the cake to the tents is going to make my life alot easier.

The only other official plans I have made for the wedding are arranging for a very talented, local photographer to be there to capture the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, getting ready for the wedding, the ceremony, and the reception.  Aaron Watson takes beautiful photos that succeed completely at capturing the mood and emotion of the moment.  He took family pictures for some good friends of mine and did a beautiful job at portraying the personality of their young family!

I still have LOTS to do…look for a dress, pick out the menu, find someone to make the bride’s cake (that’s right, I’m starting my own tradition:  a bride’s cake instead of a groom’s cake), officially ask my bridesmaids to be in my bridal party, register for gifts, etc.  The list goes on and on and it is quite overwhelming!  So if you wonder where I am or where I’ve been, hopefully June 23, 2012 will be able to show everyone where my time and effort has been going!