how dapper of you

charlie will have his dancing shoes on!

dress fitting

check one off the list.  i went to get my first dress fitting on saturday!

loving this…

how awesome are our photographers???  here is a post directly from their blog (wearethebloggers.com) and i couldn’t love it more.

“hanging in our bedroom is a poster that says “don’t give up”. our friend becca recently took some wonderful pictures of our family (click here to see her blogpost of the shoot) and happened to capture the poster in some of her images. She asked us what the poster meant, and we thought we would share our answer with you as well.

we were married 8 1/2 years ago. we were young, in love, skinnier, dumber, and thought life and love just couldn’t get any harder or any better. we were so wrong on both accounts. whenever we talk to new couples about shooting their wedding, we always tell them that we care about weddings but only because we are passionate about marriage. their wedding will feel like it lasts about 5 minutes, and although it is so fun to plan beautiful details to celebrate, the real celebration starts when life as an “us” begins. on our wedding day, we had no idea that we would have to comfort each other when we hated our jobs, or when friends disappointed us. we had no idea that we would lose a lot of sleep from staying in the hospital with our sick baby boy. we had no idea that 2 of our 4 parents would be diagnosed with cancer in the same year. life has definitely not gotten easier – we have experienced the complicated, beautiful mess of being friends, lovers, parents, and individuals. But life has gotten so much better. we wake up each day with a renewed sense of awe that we get to do this life together. if there is sorrow, we get to feel it together. if there is disappointment, we get to share it. if there is sickness, we hold each other through it. and the rest of the time, life is just a party – a big, beautiful celebration of the fact that we get to laugh every day and tell meaningful stories with our lives. So, don’t give up means just that. life will not be easy. marriage will not always be a piece of cake. but don’t give up. because going through it all together is one billion times more meaningful than going through it all apart.

for this reason, we have started a fairly new tradition of taking a picture of each of our newlywed couples on their wedding day with the don’t give up sign. we give them the explanation we just gave you, we ask them to look into the camera and remind their future selves that it is worth it to go through it all together, and then we take the picture.

love from us to you,
jeremy and ashley…we are the parsons”

we can’t wait to meet these two and what a beautiful message!

thank you snow

our florist called to let me know that because of the weather this winter, many of the peak flower times are looking like they will be delayed a month.  we may have some of our spring flowers after all!

guest book

there are so many fun guest book options out there – vintage typewriters, photo books, wish tickets – the inspiration is endless.

for my sister caroline’s wedding, allison and i made a photo book of caroline and danny’s childhood photos, and i thought it was such a beautiful idea.  they will forever have a scrapbook merging their lives together in photo and sentiments from guests of the wedding.

my parents have a traditional guestbook that they have carried along with them on their journeys around the world.  starting with guests of their wedding, they now have a collection of signatures from family and friends who attended baptisms, dinner parties, birthdays.  i so admire my parents and their marriage.  they inspire me and while a guest book isn’t the most obvious way to show my sentiments, i figure it can’t hurt to start our life journey looking forward to filling up a guest book with our own friend and family signatures from many events to come – starting with our wedding.

our guest book arrived this weekend.