Not Enough Time

(Source)

This little update might get on the long side so get comfy!

I feel like I'm falling behind in my wedding planning blogging (and planning itself) and I don't like it one bit! I realize that the wedding is 11 months away. Some of you I'm sure are saying why in the world are you worried? 11 months is a long ways a way. Unless you've planned a wedding before you have NO idea what all it involves. And when you're planning on doing as much as humanly possible DIY (as I am) that complicates things so much more complicated and time consuming. Not to mention that the 11 months till the wedding will FLY BY and will be here in the blink of an eye. Wedding planning is a full time job (I already have one so I'm now I'm working two).

I have been uber busy...with non wedding related stuff. As mush as I'd like for it to, life goes on while you're in the middle of planning the most important day of your life. Laundry still needs to be done, dishes still need to be washed, the house still needs to be cleaned, the dogs still need to be walked.bathed.given hair cuts.fed, I still have to show up at work 5 days a week for 8 hours, church is still every Sunday morning, and the list goes on and on and on! Now, thankfully I'm still living at home with my mom and we share all these responsibilities, so that makes it a bit easier.

For weeks I've been needing to take pictures of our toasting flutes, cake serving set, the guys socks, and the gifts for the flower girls. And yet they still haven't been taken. I just haven't had the time. I was hoping to already have the save-the-dates e-mailed by now and that hasn't even happened. Today was the first day I was even able to begin working on a rough draft guest list. And that list is only for my side of the family and my friends. Charles and I haven't been able to sit down to work on his part of the list yet. And we won't be able to do so for at least two more weeks because he's getting ready to go out of town! Ugh.

We have so much we need to work on together (example: getting ideas for our registries...more on that another time, guest list, invitation wording ideas, etc). But we have literally NO time to do it. I feel like I'm planning our wedding without him and I don't like that feeling at all. I've tried to include him in the decision making process up to this point but when you have less than 8 hours a week (yes...LESS THAN EIGHT HOURS A WEEK) with your fiance that makes it nearly impossible.

I feel it's time to share one of my big stress factors with you all....
Charles is a Police Communications Officer (Dispatch Officer) for one of the local police departments. He works second shift (1:45pm - 10:15pm). Doesn't sound so bad does it now? Well, factor in this stuff:
1) he works that schedule every week from Thursday - Monday (he has Tuesday and Wednesday off)
2) I work Monday - Friday 8:30am - 5:00pm (and have Saturday and Sunday off)
3) both our schedules are set and never change.
4) Wednesday nights he attends the evening service at his long time church (Sunday he attends with me...well he will be within the next few weeks)
What does that all equal:
1) Tuesday is our date night.
2) I get to his house at around 5:30pm on Tuesday evenings and leave that night at various times depending on how tired he is/I am. (It's probably an average of 5 hours we have together.)
3) Wednesdays I get to his house at 5:30pm and leave at 6:30 so he can get to church on time. (That's just one hour together.)
4) Sunday's for church I won't really count. While we are together and we are learning, worshiping and growing in the Lord (the most important things we could be doing), it's just not the same.

So that gives us a grand total of roughly 6-7 hours together a WEEK! Adding church on to that would still only bring us to 8-9 hours together tops.

I'm sorry but that's just not enough! This fact of us having so little time together is really wearing on us both. In the very beginning of our relationship, we both agreed that the limited time was a blessing in disguise (yeah it totally sucked but we felt it was a good thing). Having limited time in the beginning allowed things to move at a slow and steady pace, it kept us from moving too fast, kept us from getting too physical, etc. However now, it is killing us. I suppose it could be worse than this but it's just so hard.

He is the man I want to have children with, grow old with, have grandbabies with, I want to go to sleep next to him and wake next to him and so on. I want to be with him as much as I possibly can. But because of our schedules, that is oh so limited. Sometimes I seriously toy with the idea of going down to the court house to get married so we can really be together. See, we are what is now considered old fashioned in the thinking that we should not sleep together let alone live together before we are married.

Anyways, I think I'll wrap this up now and stop boring you with all my whining. Needless to say, it's extremely hard not to have more time with my love, not to have more time to plan our wedding together and so on.

Is the time you have with your fiance limited and out of your control? How does it play in to your wedding planning?

How We Met

(Source: yours truly)

So now that you know about the proposal and how I got my ring it's only fitting to share the details of how we met....

Myspace. Yes, it's true...we met because of myspace and the Lord of course! He does work in very mysterious ways you know. :)

My first contact with him was on July 9th, 2008. I received a message that said:
" You have no clue who i am, and i have no clue who u are. I just want to tell you i'm astounded that you acknowledge Jesus on your profile. I don't even know you and it is comforting.
btw my name's charles"

I didn't respond. I had previously gotten messages along those same lines and when I would reply with a thank you I would then be sent a message saying something to the effect of "wanna hang out?", "wanna hookup?", "wanna meet me at ____?". So I decided not to reply because of that. The next morning when I got to work and got on myspace I was greeted with another message from him. For some reason I opened the message (I normally would have just deleted it because it was from some random guy I didn't know). But I opened it and this is what it said:
"hey ur friends with Lindsey? I think the world of her.
i just happened to notice her on ur profile"

Now to most people that wouldn't be significant at all. However to me it was. Lindsey is my best friend and has been for about ten years now. At the time she was my number 1 on my friends list. What made what he said significant? Lindsey's profile is private and her profile name wasn't her real name. So he HAD to know her in real life to know who she was. I decided to go take a look at his page and realized that he was listed as being right here in ______, TN. I then began looking at his pictures. He had some pictures from his house that I recognized but I couldn't figure out why. I later put two and two together and realized the pics looked familiar because I pass his house everyday on my way to and from work! lol What are the chances of that!? I couldn't believe it. We also had several mutual friends.

So from there we began messaging back and forth about anything and everything. Then myspace messaging turned into text messaging and then into long phone calls. I couldn't believe how much we had in common, how similar our morals were, how our religious beliefs were the same, etc. Eventually we both decided it was time to meet in person to see if we would get along as well as we had been on the phone.

The first time we went out was on July 26th. I met him at his house since it was centrally located to mine and to town. Then we went to dinner at Olive Garden, went bowling at the community center and then headed to Gatlinburg to walk around a bit and made our way to the new Wax Museum. It was an awesome night and I had a blast. After that night I had this feeling I couldn't shake that I would someday marry him. However, I kept that to myself. I wanted to make absolutely sure that it wasn't just my wanting to get married but was coming from the Lord before I shared it with anyone. Not to mention the fact that we had only been on one date so far! lol

August 5th was our second date and the first time we held hands. It was an amazing night. And then after we parted ways and we were texting we decided that we would now consider ourselves to be in a relationship. The next day we had our first kiss in his driveway. And the rest you could say is history. :)

Did you meet your love through myspace?

Up next...our wedding date, photographer and location!