Monthly Archives

August 2020

Wedding

The Story of Us & Our Enneagram Types

August 28, 2020

Hello hello, welcome back to my blog! I hope you have an awesome Labor Day weekend planned! Today’s wedding post is gonna be a fun one. We’re talking all about how Connor and I met, started dating, AND I’m even diving into our love languages and enneagram types so if you’re into that, this post is for you. Let’s get started!

Connor and I first met during our Freshman year of high school. We didn’t go to high school together but we both played at the same tennis club so we met that way. I wouldn’t say we were immediate best friends but over time, with being at the tennis club together a few times a week and traveling together to tennis tournaments in the summer, we became pretty close. He was such a cutie! Flash forward all the way to Freshman year of college and we were both off to different schools. Connor went to Messiah College in Pennsylvania and I went to James Madison University in Virginia – about a four hour drive from each other. During our first Fall semester, we started talking to each other more and more. I guess it took being away from one another to realize how much we missed the other one. At the start of Spring semester, we made pretty spontaneous plans for Connor to come and visit me at JMU. I was thinking he had a car on campus but little did I know that him visiting would entail him catching a ride to a train station, taking a train from PA to VA, catching a cab from the nearest train station (which is 30 minutes away) to JMU, and then a trek all the way across a huge campus he didn’t know at all to find my dorm. All in about 20 degree winter weather! It was so expensive, especially for a college student. Another funny part of the story is that when he finally did get to my dorm after a whole day of traveling, his phone died as he was walking up so he couldn’t even let me know that he was there. Poor guy!

But it was all worth it. We officially started dating that weekend and never looked back! We were long-distance all throughout college because even when we were home during breaks, we still lived about an hour from each other. I ended up graduating college a semester early so I moved back to a town very close to where I grew up and started my first corporate job and Connor finished college the following semester and moved back to a town very close to where he grew up and started his first job! About a year into that and over 4 years of being together, we finally moved in together and it’s been the best time ever. In my opinion, being able to live together before getting engaged or married is super helpful for a relationship. You get to see how someone lives and know if you’re compatible in that way before you take that next step. Last December, we got engaged and you guys know the rest! I can’t believe the wedding is NEXT MONTH… it’s so crazy!

Something fun and different for my blog that I also wanted to dive into is Connor and I’s love languages and enneagram types. He’s a type 7 (the Enthusiast) with his top love language being acts of service and I’m a type 3 (the Achiever) with my top love language being physical touch. Overall, our personality types are super complementary in a relationship. Both of us are very logical thinkers and luckily, we balance each other out in the ways we differ! For example, I’m super into planning and thinking about the future and Connor is very into living in the moment and appreciating each experience for what it is. Both of those things, being in the moment and thinking about the future, are super important so it’s awesome for our relationship that we help each other out in that way! With my personality type, I’m extremely goal oriented and focused on accomplishing things so I bring a lot of structure and drive to our relationship. Connor on the other hand is very adventurous and spontaneous so he brings a ton of fun and optimism into our life together. We’re a perfect match and I can’t wait to marry him!

That wraps up today’s blog post – I hope you enjoyed getting a little peek into Connor and I’s life together so far. I’ve been dying to write a post like this and I thought with us getting married soon it was the perfect time! I’ve left links to a few of my recent posts down below in case you missed those but my wedding series will continue in just a few weeks with a blog post all about our top honeymoon destinations… where do you think we’re headed? Talk to you then!

Click HERE for my post all about our wedding venue hunt!

Click HERE for my post on how to find the right wedding photographer!

Click HERE for my wedding registry post!

Wedding

Wedding Registry: How to Create One and What You Should Have On It

August 7, 2020

Hey hey hey everyone, happy August! The big questions of today’s wedding post are how the heck do I build my wedding registry and what do I need to have on it? There are so many options out there for where to have your registry and then once you decide, what are you supposed to include? I’m here to round everything up for you! Let’s get started…

When the topic of a wedding registry came up with my fiancé and I, our first question was should we even have one? We aren’t buying a house right after we get married so we didn’t really know what we’d put on it even if we did decide to do one. If you’re in the same boat, a couple other ideas you could do instead are ask your guests to donate to a charity or cause of your choice or make it honeymoon-related! Things like a massage at your honeymoon hotel or dinner at a local restaurant would be perfect experience-type gifts!

We eventually decided that we would create a traditional registry and put a handful of things that we really do need on there so our next question was where should we have it? Once you start looking into it, it seems like the options are endless which can be a little overwhelming. My advice would be to choose somewhere that you love to shop (or would love to shop) and choose the type of store that’s appropriate for the items you’re looking for. For example, if you’re asking for mostly decorative household things, you might want to choose somewhere like Bed Bath & Beyond, Pottery Barn, or Wayfair that specializes in home items. If you’re asking for lots of tech-related items, a Best Buy registry might be for you. Did you know even Amazon has a wedding registry?

My fiancé and I fell somewhere in the middle as we’re asking for a variety of items so we decided to go with a registry at Target! I felt at Target, we could get kitchen items, decorative items, and other fun things all at the same place. Target also partners with a company called Honeyfund where you can ask for things for your honeymoon! Everything from money to put towards your travel or hotel to cooking lessons in the city you’re traveling to can be purchased through there. I think that’s pretty cool!

Now to get into what to have on your registry once it’s created. Our registry is pretty small because we’re having a micro-wedding so since we’ll have under 30 guests, we didn’t need to pick out a ton of stuff. A few key things we did include are a magic bullet, vacuum, and steamer! Not the most exciting things but definitely things you need around the house. I also included some things like new towels and baking sheets because you can never have enough of those!

It’s important to also think about the budget of your guests and the fact that they’re probably spending at least a couple hundred dollars even just coming to your wedding with maybe having to get a new outfit and spending the night in a hotel if it’s far from home. We have a range of prices for our registry gifts that goes from as low as $5 to as high as $300 with most of the items being around $30. Not that I think someone should get us a $300 gift but one of the things I love about the Target registry is that someone can put money towards a certain item without purchasing the whole thing. So 10 people could put $30 towards that item and it’s paid for. Pretty neat, I think!

That brings us to the end of today’s post! I feel like the world of wedding registries is a little bit hectic so I hope my experience with creating ours helped you. I am so excited for the next blog post in my wedding series! It’ll be coming out in just a few weeks and will be all about how my fiancé and I met, starting dating, and just our whole story of us. Stay tuned for that and in the meantime, the second post in my wedding series with The Styled Bride Blog went up a few weeks ago. Click here to read the rest of the Q&A!