Happy first year to the funniest, happiest guy I know! Thank you for being such a sweet and understanding person and for putting up with my craziness. I love you!

(And because I never did, I’m posting some of my favorite wedding photos after the cut. Sorry if the cut doesn’t work in readers!) (more…)

(There needs to be a small disclaimer placed at the beginning of this one because I don’t want anyone to come away with the wrong impression or hurt feelings. I had GREAT bridesmaids who were helpful and kind. The generalities in this post are just that. The specifics are in my situation and in others that I was witness to.)

Know who is standing beside you before you choose them. (This means bridesmaids!)

Remember how I told you that last point was the most important? Scratch that. This may be.

Choosing bridesmaids is probably one of the touchiest things, ever. It can be touchy for the bride, who may be having to make some serious decisions about who to include (while considering a budget, a limit on number of attendants, etc.) and somewhat stressful for those waiting to be chosen (cost, responsibilities, “will she or won’t she choose me?”).

I want to stress to you how important it is that you pick the right people to be in your wedding. I cannot say enough about what a challenge it can be whenever you have uncooperative attendants or people who really have no desire to be in your wedding, nor your best interests at heart. Please exercise your best judgment in this area.

Example #1: You have a dear friend that you met later on in life, perhaps in college. You think it would be appropriate to ask said friend to be in your wedding, but you do know a few things about her and you are on the fence about it. 1) She is never on time. 2) She regularly forgets appointments, plans you have made, to feed her pet iguana, etc. 3) She is jovial and just busting at the seams because you, her dear pal, are getting married.

I am tellin’ ya right now, that is a “sitchy-ashun.” You love this friend and would love for her to be in your wedding. There are a few factors that come into play here. You know that the friend is not going to be one to devote most of the necessary time and energy to helping you put together showers and other tasks associated with the wedding. You know this. But the friend loves you and wants to be there with you, to support you on this very important day. It comes down to your choice. If you can deal with the fact that tasks that may be assigned to her in all likelihood will not be done, then you can go ahead with it. However, you must remember this later on. Things are going to get hectic and you have to keep in mind that you knew from the beginning that this friend was not going to be a very reliable participant.

I think it is important to weigh the following factors:

1. Length of time that you have been friends
2. Reliability
3. How important it is to you that this person is in your wedding
4. Availability
5. The Close Family Conundrum

Not necessarily in that order. For some people, #1 is a really good way to cut your list down. Sometimes #1 and #5 play in to one another and you have choices to make there. What if you have 5 sisters? Do you have all 5 sisters as bridesmaids? This does something really awful to my brain. As someone who does not have a sister I cannot begin to work that one out, so you’re on your own.

Let me just give you a few bad examples from each of those points.

1. Length of time that you have been friends — A young woman includes a couple of girls who were her first best friends — in kindergarten. Nevermind the fact that they weren’t friends once they got to junior high, or high school. And completely forgetting that bit about how they haven’t spoken in years. For some reason, these two agree to be in the wedding. They spend every moment the bride is out of the room criticizing decisions she has made about her wedding, her appearance…you name it.

I understand honoring the friendship that you had, but I think if you haven’t had any major contact with the person in the past 5-10 years, you need to really consider if it is the best idea. Yes, you may love them no matter what, but I’m serious, this can get really ugly, really fast. People can change a lot in that amount of time and if you haven’t remained in some kind of contact then you may be in for a nasty surprise.

2. Reliability – If the person forgets to feed their iguana, chances are they will forget to bring the sorbet for your punch, the date of their dress fitting, and when/if they are supposed to be present at your rehearsal dinner. We’re talking about a dead iguana here, people. If you love them so much that you can deal with them being in your wedding and really taking on no responsibilities…GOOD FOR YOU. Like I said earlier, you have to remember this later in the game when things get crazy and you NEED every spare pair of arms that are available. And then you can’t hold a grudge against the person because you knew from the beginning they weren’t going to be any help. Just keep it in mind

Or maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe they live far away and just won’t be able to participate the way a person who lives in the next town over would. You can’t fault them for that. Just know what they are capable of and be okay with that before asking.

3. How important it is to you that this person is in your wedding — This is one of the few things that I will pull the “It’s your day” line on (because it’s NOT just your day; this is a family and community celebration of a commitment you are entering into with another human being…it’s not just a big party that’s about you in a fluffy white dress so get over it). I had a few different family members and friends suggest that I include certain individuals in my wedding party. On the surface they may just be helpful suggestions, but the ones I received were so so SO far off the mark I cannot begin to describe them to you.

Please do not let anyone bully you into including herself/someone else in your wedding. You will be unhappy and will likely be resentful of their heavy-handedness.

A big regret I have is not including two very dear people to me in my group of bridesmaids. One is a friend who lives thousands of miles away, the other is my closest first-cousin. Leaving the first off the list was my decision because I thought it would be asking too much of a person who lives so far away. Leaving the cousin out was based on some of the suggestions I was receiving (that if I included that particular cousin it would be wrong for me to not include another; another who does not like me and who I do not have a relationship with and who I would never dream of including because I wouldn’t want to impose on her life). I really wish I had asked both of them.

What I did do was ask a handful people who have meant very much to me over the years to be in my wedding. Most of them said yes. One of them didn’t call, write, email, or reach out to me in anyway for over a year. I have no idea what that was about. Another agreed and then canceled when she found out that I did not vote for Obama. Then after that she acted like nothing. One told me, “I don’t know if I’ll be in town that weekend.”

In the end I think a lot of those things worked out for the best. Now I can see that if some of those people had been present and beside me the entire day of my wedding, I might have been miserable.

I really think this whole thing may call for me finally writing about how, at times, I am the worst person at picking friends and how I end up in these really awful relationships with females. Sad, I know.

Make sure their presence is important to you and that you aren’t making your decisions to please other people.

4. Availability – There is really nothing bad to say about this one, it’s simply a fact of life. Keep in mind where your potential bridesmaids are in their place in life. Do they have a job or schedule that might prevent them from being present for important things leading up to the wedding (fittings, showers, parties, etc.)? Is it possible their schedule might even prevent them from being there on the actual day-of? Are they newly married themselves? New parents?

A lot of cost comes along with accepting the responsibility of being a bridesmaid. Not everyone will be able to afford it and you need to remember that when you are asking and planning various things (dresses, accessories, shoes). If you are not planning on paying for their dress and other expenses yourself, you may need to rethink things a little. There is no need to put any undue stress on a person.

It is a tough spot though, because if you make a judgment call here and decide not to ask someone based on where you think they are, you risk hurting them. One thing I did was ask each person individually, and with those that I knew this might be an issue with I tried to be very understanding and work with them. As it happened, these were the people who didn’t end up in my wedding.

5. The Close Family Conundrum – I was at a wedding this summer where I witnessed a sister-of-the-bride muttering (not so under her breath, I could hear it easily from where I stood) about how her sister was being so “ridiculous” about taking pictures after the wedding because she was “stupid and traditional” and didn’t want to see the groom before the wedding. Well, aren’t you just a ray of sunshine.

Sometimes I’m thankful I was the only girl.

Again, if you have sisters, I don’t know what you do. I think in most cases, unless you have a huge age difference, you have to have them as bridesmaids. Then if you have a ton of friends you want in the wedding, you have a huge wedding party or put your friends somewhere else. All I know is family is family and sometimes #5 trumps #3. And pray that your sister isn’t pulling this kind of stuff behind your back and badmouthing everything you’ve done for your wedding.

. . .

One last piece of advice. Be okay if they say “no.” You never know what is going on in someone’s life. They may have a reason for declining that you will never find out about. Personally, I would rather someone tell me that they can’t be a part of my wedding than be there grudgingly and half-heartedly. Either you’re in or your out on this one, bridesmaids.

I hope that helped someone! After this one, I plan on addressing the bridesmaids as well in their role. It is such an important privilege, to stand up with someone on this special day. Once again, let me know if there is anything you’d like me to talk about in this series. I don’t know everything, but I did learn a lot in planning my own wedding. (I’ll be handling the question from last week’s comments soon!)

I’m starting a new series that I think might be beneficial to my readers. I know there are a number of you out there who are getting married soon or plan to at some point in the future. There are so many things that I picked up while planning a wedding and I wish I had known them before. It would have saved me a lot of heartache.

Determine who you want to have the ultimate control/decision-making ability during the entire process.

This may be the most important thing you do while planning your wedding. It was a lesson I learned early on and fast, and one that never really got ironed out in the whole process of planning.

There are usually 2 to 3 options here (maybe more depending on your family dynamic; divorced parents can play a big role here as I have seen in the weddings of friends): you, your parents, or a wedding planner. There are situations where those involved can be on equal footing, but that takes impeccable communication skills. The chances of that being the case are very slim and there needs to be someone who knows that they can act in the interests of the bride and groom, without having to consult them on every tiny decision (unless you have decided that every thing does need to be approved by you, the bride).

Without this decision being made and letting all parties involved know who can act and who has the power to write the checks, you need to be prepared for a lot of phone tag, back-and-forth, “are you sure you’re okay with this?” dealings that take up more time in the end than if you intrust these decisions to someone you know has your best interests at heart.

My advice if you are the picky type like myself and are planning a large wedding (I have no idea what the scale is. We sent out 450ish invitations, 2 blanket church invites at different churches, and ended up with around 350 or so in the church) is to be prepared before. Know what you want, have photos ready, and be prepared to hire someone to do the dirty work. Unless you have an extensive group of devoted friends and family who are willing to give up a month’s worth of weekends to help you make this thing happen, you are going to have to turn it over to someone else. This will spare you a lot of unnecessary stress.

For a smaller wedding (100 or less) I think you could manage it yourself. (Looking back, I wish I could have done that, though I would never want to exclude someone who wanted to attend our weddng from doing so.) And again, if you are very particular this may be the way to go. If your engagement is long enough and the guest list short enough you can do this. It will be less expensive, but there will be work.

There will be more! I learned a lot while planning our wedding. If you have any particular questions you’d like answered, feel free to leave them in the comments or email me at liz @ misswisabus.com

Thanks for the link, boys.

Moments before she devoured the Oklahoma State Capitol.

This weekend was our planned (surprise) trip to Virginia Beach to celebrate Kevin’s Pop-Pop’s 80th birthday. As you know, snowed-in, no school, flight canceled, Dune, all that jazz…we didn’t get to go. Eightieth birthdays don’t happen that often and I know I was sad to miss it, I just know it disappointed my husband so much more. Lucky for us, we still get to go out for spring break to visit a few of Kevin’s family members in March.

Kevin, me, and Pop-Pop at our wedding.

Here’s to you, Pop-Pop, on your 80th birthday! We’ll see you after the spring thaw.

Another driving day. You know how I love those. Only this day was better because it started out bright and sunny, no rain in sight.

Goodbye, red barns…

Red fields…

White steeples…

And hello again, bridge. I was thankful that we could see ahead of us while crossing it this time.

New Brunswick really is beautiful and I was glad that we got to enjoy it while driving back through. There’s something about pouring rain and potholes that makes the scenery, no matter how picturesque, a little less important.

I took a few naps on this trip. Much needed because even though I didn’t want to talk about it at the moment, my hands were getting tingly with a potential panic attack at the though that I would be going back to work in 3 days. Yuck. I used all the time to rest that I could and before you know it, we were almost to the border.

All it took to really wake me up from my nap was seeing this:

“What is that?” I asked Kevin. Neither one of us knew. What I was sure about was that there would be pictures of this thing.

Snap snap snap. I was being quite the paparazzo about this thing.

Then, the man turned. I captured just one shot of this glare before I put my camera down. He continued to glare at us until we had passed him. Dude! I just liked your…your…whatever you were driving.

We crossed the border back into the US and the agent that questioned us had a thicker Canadian accent than anyone we’d met on our trip. This is also the part where I smuggled a seashell back into the country. And not that we would, but I can tell you, it would have been totally easy for us to bring something illegal back into the country. They barely gave us a second look. Surprising, given how threatening we both look.

Back in Maine there was more driving and when we arrived back in Manchester, New Hampshire we were both starving. We had dinner that night at Famous Dave’s Barbecue (one of our favorites that we do not have in OKC) and then slept in The Best Bed. I was so sad that our last night (and an early morning to top it off) were to be spent on the most comfortable bed of the trip.

Out of Manchester we flew and we arrived back in Oklahoma later that next afternoon.

Back in our neighborhood with a car full of birdseed…

Across the threshold…

And home…to this:

Ahh!

Thanks for tuning in for this long, drawn-out series. I’ll try to think of another one that might interest you guys in the future. Question is, what do you want to hear about?

But it’s not over. Oh, no. Sufficiently grossed out? Good

It’s really difficult to go back to real life after 1.5 weeks of no responsibilities and lots of seafood. Tomorrow morning I’ll be bringing you our last day of travel and our arrival back in Norman. You don’t want to miss it. There’s some elderly road rage, smuggling across a border, and maybe some carrying across a threshold.

In case you missed any of the other installments, here’s a complete list:
Day 1 – On a plane, no entry
Day 2 – Portland, Maine
Day 2 – Part 2, Cape Elizabeth & South Portland
Day 3 – Portland to Bar Harbor
Day 4 – Part 1, Acadia National Park
Day 4 – Part 2, Sand Beach
Day 4 – Part 3, Dinner at Geddy’s
Day 5 – Part 1, Cadillac Mountain
Day 5 – Part 2, Bar Harbor
Day 6 – Part 1, Leaving Bar Harbor
Day 6 – Part 2, Arriving on Prince Edward Island
Day 7 – Green Gables
Day 8 – Lighthouses & Charlottetown
Day 9 – Leaving PEI

What a beautiful day this was. I didn’t think that Green Gables could be topped, but the drive around PEI might have done it. We had set aside one day to see as many lighthouses as we could. The fog got a little ridiculous throughout the day, something the locals told us was uncommon. I guess I should be glad that this wasn’t 200 years ago. Because I’m pretty sure if some strange woman (me) wandered onto someone’s island bringing a dark cloud of fog that swept over the entire landscape, she’d soon find herself at the bottom of a lake.

Here we go, our day driving around the island:

These bikers stopped in front of us to wait out the fog.

These folks were drying their Canadian flag in their backyard.

You see that fog? It’s creepin’ on in.

We were kinda up in a lot of people’s driveways. You never knew where you were going on this map.

I took a sea shell from this beach. Shh.

Anne fans, recognize this hotel?

Think back to Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel (or Anne of Avonlea, as it was marketed in the States)…

Certainly not a canonical scene from the books, but beautiful nonetheless.

After driving past Dalvay-by-the-Sea, we went on to Charlottetown to have dinner. I can’t remember the name of the place, but it was a little pub that we stopped by. There were hardly any people there (or anywhere) and I was still having some trouble figuring out the schedule these people live on. This establishment at least had a few people sitting outside enjoying their dinners though. It looked promising. Being that we weren’t locals and it felt ridiculously cold to us outside, we chose to dine indoors.

Kevin started with a crabcake.

And I went with the sashimi, which was pretty, but a mistake. Way, way too warm.

Now, for some reason I didn’t end up with pictures of our dinner, but I had this ENORMOUS bowl of mussels in a tomatoey brine and Kevin had…a burger.

Back to the resort we went for our last night in that huge room, with the daunting drive ahead of us the following day. Blech.

And since you made it all the way to the end, here’s a fun surprise:

You asked, now I’m answering!

Anonymous asked:
Why do you use the word ‘goddess’?… it sort of comes across as non-Christian. :/
I’m afraid you may be misunderstanding the definitions of “goddess.” While it often means “female deity,” the word also means “a woman whose great charm or beauty arouses adoration.” And if you’ll look, I don’t say I aspire to be a goddess, period, the end. Nope. Domestic goddess. Literally a woman whose prowess in the kitchen and home arouses adoration. I aspire to have the adoration of my husband, family, and future children in those areas.

Where did you get your wedding dress? It’s GORGEOUS!
At a tiny boutique in Oklahoma City called Pomp & Pageantry. I tried prom dresses on there years and years ago. The dress I ended up with was custom made for someone else who decided they didn’t want it. It took a while to figure that one out, but we realized it when we couldn’t find my dress anywhere. It looks like the skirt of one gown with the bodice of another. It’s by San Patrick and is made mostly of lace, crafted in Barcelona.

Becca asked:
What is the biggest surprise to you concerning marriage?
The biggest surprise to me was how quickly everything about being married felt normal. We hadn’t lived together before our wedding so everything literally happened all at once. It was perfect, I won’t lie. We’ve been extremely blessed and I know that we are both thankful for the great pre-marital counseling that we had. So much heartache has been spared by what we learned about communication styles.

Misti (my long-lost, newly found, second cousin) asked:
What was your favorite tv show growing up?
Tough one, but the ones I remember being excited to watch in the evenings were TGIF shows like Full House and Perfect Strangers. ALF, Family Matters, Reading Rainbow, and Mister Rogers were all favorites.

What song reminds you of your husband?
Man, it’s so cheesy, but “Love of a Lifetime” by Firehouse is it. We made it each other’s ringtone when we were dating and, by accident, it was what we were listening to in the reception hall in our first alone moments after the wedding, right before we ran out to the car to leave. With all that birdseed raining down on us.

If you could have a pet of any kind, what would it be?
I would like a goat, but right now I am really happy with my Scoodle (or Scottie Poo, if you like) and brand new guinea pig (who doesn’t have a name yet).

Do you think you chose the right profession in life? What other path might you have chosen or still could choose?
Sometimes I wonder if I should have gone into marketing. I think I have a good head for it. Which is the countrified way of saying that some of it comes naturally to me. I don’t really have a profession. I have had jobs. Writing is my passion and I plan to stay home and raise a family. And maybe sell custom invitations and stationery.

What is your favorite thing about Oklahoma? I’ve only been a few times and it has been beautiful the times I’ve seen it, but I’m not all that familiar with it.
Everything really isn’t an answer, is it? The landscape. We have everything here. The weather. Again, everything. The sense of family that most people in small towns still have. The richness of culture and tradition.

Jennifer (a former teacher at my high school) asked:
What kind of books do you like to read?
Literary fiction. That is my book snob answer. And classics.

What is your favorite book?
I can never answer this. The last book I read to make it onto my favorites list is No Country for Old Men.

If you were to write a book, what would it be about? Or at least what genre would it be? (Of course, you may have already written a book, and I just don’t know it yet.)
I write Southern Gothic. I like to focus on family dynamics, crazy people, secrets, lies, small town culture, and religion. I have written hundreds of short stories, but never finished any of my novels. At least not by my own estimation. Maybe they are all they ever will be. The first novel-length story I made headway on was an 80 (typed) page manuscript that I carried around in black and white composition notebooks in 7th and 8th grade. All I can say is still waters run deep.

Vanessa asked:
If you could meet anyone, from any period of time, who would you choose to meet?
Either Hannah, mother of Samuel or Elisabeth.