the wedding par-tay

Here's Ryan & I by our lonesomes:


Here are some of our favorite pictures of the whole wedding party. After the ceremony:
Before the ceremony in the neat box pews:
In front of the big red door:

let's make a deal

Another task I completed last weekend was the gift buying & wrapping for my side of the wedding party. I love buying gifts for people! Shopping for these gifts was so much fun. So just because I love games & teasing...let's play Guess-What-the-Presents-Are!! If this were really Survivor, you could think of this as a Reward Challenge! I can't wait to reveal what they are after the wedding!

Hint #1: These boxes are for the bridesmaids, and they are all identical except for Holly's. They were handcrafted by a coworker.

Hint #2: These gifts are identical, and they are going to our parents. Wrapping paper from Hallmark (love that store!)

Hint #3: The green bags are gifts for my reception hosts, and the pink bags are gifts for the bridesmaids. They are all the same gift, just the hosts have reversed color scheme from the bridesmaids. Also not pictured are 2 smaller pink bags with the flowergirls gifts, which are different from all the gifts I've already mentioned. Confused yet?

Here is the monogrammed stationery I'm using to write all my final notes as a Navarro. A very good friend from college, Erika, gave this stationery to me as a gift our freshman year from a super cute gift store in Baxley. I've only used the stationery a couple times through the years, and I rediscovered it when I was putting the gifts together. It's perfect and I'll be sad when I've used it all up!

website updated & prayer request

So, a lot of exciting wedding events went down last weekend in Augusta. I will try my very best to have a post uploaded about that in the next day or so :) (the problem is that I have 2 laptops and I get caught in a lot of back & forth between the two). To tide you over til then though, our wedding website has been updated, specifically the wedding party page. If you visited when our site first went live, you may have noticed that only my wedding party had pictures. Apparently boys don't keep track of pictures as well as girls do, so it took Ryan a while to get me pics of his wedding party, hehe ;) But they are all there now, with the exception of Matt Ward, Jaden West and our flowergirls, Emily & Catherine.

In other news, I have a prayer request. My Uncle Bub is in the hospital tonight. He couldn't breathe and has been concerned about a lump in his chest. So, he'll be there overnight and getting a CAT scan as well...just pray that everything will be alright! This has been a very trying year for both our families, it seems amazing if we make it to the altar at all. Who knew we would have to take the "survivor" theme so seriously. But, we are going to survive this, and we'll continue to trust God every step of the way. He's not going to let us down!

a personal note

So about 2 months after we got engaged, Ryan got layed off from his job. It was a shocking & difficult day, but we have total faith in God that everything will work according to His plan. And His plan is the best plan! Far better than anything we could come up with. Of course, planning a wedding, you're always wondering about the unexpected, and this certainly through us for a loop. I give thanks that God has blessed us with two sets of incredibly supportive parents, and we are moving right along to August 29th.

Which brings me to the reason for this post. We just wanted to throw Ryan's job situation out there and ask for your prayers & thoughts during this time. Ryan is going to Charlotte today for a job interview! Pray for his safety on the road and for a good experience up there tomorrow.

Another request - Ryan's grandma is coming home from Warm Springs Rehab center tomorrow! Praise the Lord! Keep her & the Duckworth family in your prayers :)

an exciting day!

I just listened to my voicemail and guess what?? My wedding dress has arrived in Augusta! :) :) :) Yippee!!! I can't wait to go home & try it on! It came so much earlier than I expected...we were estimating 5 months from when we ordered. I guess we ordered it early Feb? So definitely wasn't expecting it to arrive this month!

Wanna see it? Haha! Just kidding! You'll have to wait til August 29th.

I have to say it's been so great working with Elegant Bridals. They make you feel like family. Our first visit, I was confused because you don't see any of the dresses. They keep them all hidden, and your consultant talks to you about your dream dress. Then she pulls dresses and you try them on in rounds. It was a different process from any of the other bridal salons I went to, but I really enjoyed it. Our consultant, Sara, was also so sweet and fun. The dressing rooms are private and large, and there's also a big stage area outside the rooms where you can try on your favorite dresses in a big, big mirror. I hope the rest of the process (alterations!) goes just as smoothly and fun-ly (is that a word?) as finding the dress! I wasn't planning on having bridal portraits done before the wedding, but now that my dress is here so early, maybe I will!

What an exciting day :)

Moving right along...

So far this has been a fun, exciting, and interesting experience. It's funny how you feel that everything is moving at just the right pace, and a lot of stuff "seems" done, but I have a feeling that things will surprise us along the way.

As you can see in Corrie's last post, a lot of stuff is in fact done. I even have a place for all of the groomsmen and myself to stay, across the river in South Carolina. It's a golf cabin, and is pretty much amazing, and we get free range balls... so...yeah...

Other than that, I just have to work on tuxes and the honeymoon... which of course is very, very difficult to plan when you're unemployed... but I've got my hopes up!

Thanks for readin'!