I will find my way, I can go the distance

I love quotes. I think I've shared several here before. When I was thinking of what I was going to post here before I logged in, I had several in mind. And then I saw the quote I have in the corner: "Finding one's own peace is no small task." One of my former professors said that during a lecture, and it stuck with me... just like it's changed the direction of this post.
Not going to lie. Life has been rough lately (although to seem less pessimistic, I will point out that there have been several good moments also), so finding my peace has been next to impossible. We put my 16-year-old dog to sleep almost two months ago (the one I was worried we were going to have to put to sleep a year ago, so at least he had an extra year?) Around the same time, I found out that one of my great-uncles has stage 4 cancer in two places. A week later, my grandfather was taken to the hospital for mini-strokes (and then to a rehabilitation facility). He just returned this week, and it's the first I've seen him since he left town (he was out of town when the strokes happened). While all of this was happening, I was working 6-day weeks (with one exception- the weekend after putting my dog to sleep, I had off). That made it too difficult to go visit him out of state. To top it all off, there have been a few other insane stress situations that have wormed their way into my life (like when my car magically didn't want to start... thankfully it is still under warranty for 1500 more miles or until May, whichever comes first).
It was nice to get a break from everything for a little while. I was in a wedding (#4), and despite knowing only one person other than the bride before the wedding, left the wedding feeling like I'd made lots of friends (even if I won't see them again). Then I left the wedding, skipped returning home to go to the beach with family members. Definitely the best way to get out of the winter doldrums.
Now that I've returned home though, I have to come back to reality and really think through some decisions, which could mean major changes in my life. It's hard to find peace when so many things aren't up to you. [And now to end this with a quote:] However, "I will find my way, I can go the distance. I don't care how far, somehow I'll be strong. I know every mile will be worth my while, I would go most anywhere to find where I belong."

Tales from a Bridesmaid, Part III

Wedding #2 has been over for 4 days... that must mean it's time to start thinking ahead to the next one... right? Right.
Picked up bridesmaid dress #3 today from David's Bridal. The good news: I should have no problems with fitting into this dress in June. The bad news: I kinda hate David's Bridal's dress designers a whole heck of a lot. They create these dresses that I swear have to be differently sized on the top than they are on the bottom.
See, we've got a similar problem with this dress as the last one and how the top will fit but the bottom won't or the bottom will fit and the top won't. I'm not complaining- because this one I could afford to go up in size to get the bottom to fit without fear of ripping or it falling off (thank you thick straps). But it's got to say something when the woman doing alterations made the comment, "Well, you couldn't go down a size and still fit... but you may want to think about taking in the shoulders and the sides." And the price for these alterations? More than the cost of the dress. I do not kid... they'd have to rebuild the body of the dress to fit my torso better. Again- this dress wouldn't fit so well if I went down a size. And as much as it pains me to say, this dress is also 2 sizes bigger than the dress I wore Saturday and last May. Can anyone explain this fact to me? Nicoletta offered to cut the size tag out of the dress for me so that I will stop thinking about that.
So now, my mom is going to be doing the hem and the shoulders herself, and I'll just get a loose dress instead of fitted. I'll be more comfortable anyways! Woohoo for that fact!!!

Wedding Recap

We may not have coordinated a wonderful wedding dance like the famous YouTube video (and as spoofed by The Office), but I think we made everyone chuckle well enough. At the bridesmaids' luncheon on Friday, I asked Lane if she minded if we danced as we walked back down the aisle. At Will & Allison's wedding back in May, I remember how everyone thought Elena's dancing down the aisle was so funny, so I thought it could be fun- and then Lane didn't say no. So at the rehearsal that night, before introducing myself to the best man (Brad), as we're practicing leaving the church, I said, "Oh, by the way, we're dancing as we leave tomorrow." But even he didn't say no! (I did finally introduce myself after the second walk down.) The other bridesmaids enjoyed the idea, but only one other groomsman seemed to enjoy it- Lane's brother, Ben. Bet you can't tell where this is going.
So, as Lane and Bill are walking down the aisle to leave the church, Brandy (the bridesmaid standing next to me) asked if we were still going to dance. I asked if she was, but she said that if I didn't (as the first one leaving after the junior bridesmaid), then no one else would. So as Brad and I met up on our stair, I asked if we were going to dance and he surprised me by saying "Why not?" So we danced going up the aisle and got a few chuckles.
Then Brandy met up with her groomsman and said, "Are we doing this?" and he said, "Doing what?" Jeff hadn't paid much attention to our dancing the night before, so they didn't. And then the next bridesmaid didn't either, nor the one after that (whose groomsman had missed the rehearsal and actually legitimately had no idea). And then came Raven and Ben to finish up the wedding party. They walked about halfway out normally (from what I heard), then stopped and started dancing. We could hear the church burst out laughing when they started dancing.
We were a little better coordinated for the reception- we all danced as we entered. I discovered that being twirled in a strapless dress is not the best idea in the world. In fact, dancing was rather difficult, because if we did anything that lifted our arms up, we all had to quickly grab our dresses. Hard to believe this is the same dress I almost couldn't fit into a few weeks ago!
I dragged Brad out to dance with me twice. He decided during the first dance that he wasn't good enough a dancer so he left me, then the videographer (my old church youth group leader) took my hand and showed him up. The second time was because I'd been turned down by two young boys (about 5 and 10), so I ran over and grabbed Brad and said that I knew he wouldn't say no. The third time, he took me out to dance to the "Tennessee Waltz"- turns out, he was much more comfortable with slow dances than all the fast songs I had attempted.
My speech went great. You know that it's going well when you've barely started and the bride says "Oh my gosh..." not even sure what item I could possibly have found from 7th grade. Speaking of which- that 7th grade English assignment that I wrote about Friday night was for us to write singles ads, like those found in newspapers. No names were listed, but I had gone through and written who I thought fit the ads. And Lane's could not have been anyone else in the grade (seriously- swimming and violin?) So I read 3 (saving hers for last, but finding two others that could possibly have been her). As I got to the third one though, everyone was laughing. They knew it too.

Maid of Honor speech

So, in case the bride-to-be happens to read this tonight, I have to be vague, but I'll clarify on Sunday what my speech is actually about (I'm not even sure if she knows about this blog!). I'm just too excited to completely hold it in.

We met in 7th grade. And in 7th grade, one of our English assignments was completely awesome- and everyone on our team (of 4 homerooms)'s responses were typed up and printed and given to all the students. And guess what I found tonight, as I was frantically trying to come up with some good idea of what I should talk about tomorrow night at the reception.

So- stay tuned for what the crazy assignment was and why it's so absolutely perfect for this wedding. CAN'T WAIT!

Need a photographer?

So, this weekend, I took pictures for my cousin's engagement portraits. It just reminded me how much I love photography and photography sessions. Plus they pointed out that I could do photography as a side job, especially if I had more experience.
SO...
If anyone is interested/ needs pictures done (portraits/ candids/ whatnot)... give me a call. I'll give you an hour, free of charge, with the understanding that I can use the pictures for a portfolio. Other than that, you have full access to them. I'll post them to Shutterfly, so that way you can order what you want. You will also be able to download full-res from there.
The only catch is that if you've got to live near me or visit me.  
If you want to see examples of my work, let me know and I'll send you to my picture website.