Dream.

I know that it has been a very long time since my last post, but I am back from my pre and post-wedding hiatus. The wedding has come and gone and now I am settling into being a married woman. It still is so crazy to me that you spend so long planning for your wedding day and thinking it is never going to arrive and then it comes and goes so quickly! I just want to go back and relive it all again. Just once. Okay, maybe more than once. In between all of the transitions that have been happening I have started feeling that draw back towards writing here. I think today of all day's seems very fitting to get back into the swing of things.

Today, well what's left of it, is my Momma's birthday. I use present tense because even though she is gone, her life should still be celebrated in the present. We didn't make her a cake and celebrate but we also didn't spend the day lying in bed. I think we were somewhere in between. It has been two birthdays that we have had to spend without her. Today as I was reflecting on her birthday and the many birthdays that we did get to share, I started really realizing what all has been happening in this crazy life. There are so many blessings all around, and I know that they started with my Momma. And my Poppa. Yesterday was also Father's Day, and I think I feel about it the same way that I do about birthdays. Since Mom has been gone, I  have never really gotten too choked up on those days. As cheesy as it sounds, every day in our house was Mother's Day or Father's Day. I have no regrets with either of my parents and I know that both of them felt my overflowing love. So on days like yesterday, it's just another day to miss them. Missing someone never goes away but it also doesn't increase or decrease depending on how many Hallmark cards are purchased. But I am getting away from my point.

Thinking about the past year of wedding planning and the culmination of our wedding, naturally, leads me to think about my Mom. I've written a bit about planning a wedding without her, and that's also not what I want this post to be about. I am so proud of the way we honored both of my parents at the wedding. There were tears but there was also laughter. And that's exactly what I wanted. Maybe not the tears, but I wanted laughter. I wanted simplicity. Elegance. I didn't want to be confined to a banquet hall. In my mind, I deconstructed a traditional wedding reception and rebuilt my own. I always have to find a way to be difficult! I could write for hours about the beauty of our wedding, but I'll save that for anyone who wants to talk in person. My point, and what I've been reflecting a great deal on, is that I never settled. Throughout the whole wedding planning process, I refused to settle. I think that refusal came from my Mom. There was never a dream too big or a goal too great for her. I really think she would have wanted chandeliers or something even more glitzy at the reception. She taught me to refuse to settle. She taught me to run towards my dreams. If I could give advice to any future brides it would be that. Refuse to settle. I'm not saying have an extravagant wedding that will break the bank (I also can provide great DIY wedding tips, but that's also for another day) but what I am saying is have the wedding of your dreams. Don't let anyone tell you that something isn't doable. There were some parts of my wedding that seemed tricky to execute. I had an amazing day-of wedding coordinator in my brother and his band of friends, but I wasn't willing to settle on the vision that I had for our wedding. I wasn't stressed very much during wedding planning. I was planning a day centered around joy and love, so what is there to stress about? However, I would sometimes get frustrated when I thought that being practical was going to overrule dreaming. That frustration was also magnified by the fact that I didn't have my Mom by my side daring me to dream. My mom would have said, "Yes, go for it! We'll figure it out and make it work." That mentality is one of the biggest traits I've taken from my Mom. I am a dreamer. And that is another piece of advice that I would give. Don't let the fear of dreaming stand in the way of seeing that dream come to reality. I am proof of that. I had a vision for my wedding last year and I knew what it would take to see it through. And I don't regret one thing. I wish I could plan a wedding every year. It gets a little hectic the weeks leading up to the wedding, but what a wonderful "problem" to have. I wish there were more hours in the day to plan my wedding!

Learning to never settle is something that I have carried with me and will continue to do so in my life. When I graduated in December, I really struggled with being unemployed. Here I was with this advanced degree, all polished and ready to go, with no job. I had a few promising interviews, but nothing fruitful. I think I was hardest on myself. Throughout that time, my Dad was the driving force in not letting me settle. He wouldn't let me apply for random jobs not in my field because he knew that the right job would present itself. I was not very patient, but he constantly remind me that whatever job I ended up with would be worth the wait. Just like my Mom, my Dad had faith in my dreams. Some parents think that you need to stand on your own two feet and figure out how to survive on your own, but my parents weren't like that. Not in the traditional ways. I never doubted that I could move home after college. Or graduate school. My parents knew my dreams and knew what I was working towards. They knew I wasn't coming home to sleep the day away and eat all their food. They let me come home so that I could chase my dreams in a place surrounded by love. It wasn't always rainbows and butterflies. I had bills and knew I needed to pay for things, but my parents knew that what I was waiting for and working towards would be worth it The right job is worth the wait. The right person is worth the wait. The perfect wedding is worth the work. Dreaming is worth it.

My husband (I could write Anthony, but it was way more fun to type "husband"!) started out as my first real boyfriend. There were one or two boys before him, but none of them really count. Not when you look at what he was as my boyfriend. Or if you look at the fact that he almost wasn't my anything. Now he's my everything. Funny how life is. I'll spare the story (and Anthony's dramatic rendition that we broke up even when we weren't technically dating) but the main point is that it was my mom who made me give him a chance. She had just found out that her cancer was back, and I was trying to let her think about something other than what the road ahead looked like. I told her about this boy I liked, but life was too crazy to date him. She then proceeded to yell at me and tell me that this could be what I was waiting for and I shouldn't blow it! My mom knew even then that it had the potential to be something really special. She wanted me to wait for someone exactly like him. And when she saw me getting in my own way, she stepped in and told me to see what and who was right in front of me.

I know that this post has been all over the place. I blame the million things going on in my head and in my life and that I'm a little rusty with my writing. I started out today thinking about my Mom and how she taught me to dream. She taught me to refuse to settle. That's how I approached wedding planning without her by my side. She would have wanted me to have the perfect wedding and I did. It wasn't too hard to dream because I do have amazing people surrounding me and who helped to create my dream, but I was prepared to do it on my own. She knew that Anthony is who I was waiting for, and man was she right. My Dad knew that there was a job out there worth waiting for and I'm working on that one too. If you take anything from my rambling it's this: "Never settle for anything less than butterflies." Have the wedding you've dreamed of your whole life. Wait for the boy who gives you butterflies. See the life you want, be genuine to people along the way, and go after it. My parents did and I think I will too.