Monthly Archives: January 2026

Wedding Wednesday: Priorities and Aesthetics

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Because of the Kind of Person I Am, I had a wedding pinterest board long before I got engaged. I’ve always been super interested in weddings, especially after I worked at a bridal shop for a few years right after I graduated from college. Needless to say…I had a lot of different ideas to wade through when Shane and I started planning.

The most important thing was to figure out, well, the important things. A 100k wedding was not in the budget, so we wanted to make sure we made our decisions really carefully. So we narrowed down the top three things we wanted to make sure were perfect.

#1: The Venue. The venue can make or break a wedding. Too far away, too difficult to navigate, lack of parking, not enough shade or air conditioning (a huge concern in Florida!), no rain plan…we wanted to make sure our venue set us up for success.

#2: The Food. If you’re inviting your guests to celebrate with you, you probably should have good food. I feel like that’s one of the things that guests really remember about a wedding, what they ate and if it was good or not. Plus, Shane was really hoping for barbecue.

#3: Photography. At the end of the day, that’s all you have left. Once the wedding is over, it’s over. That might be the only time you have all those people in one place with you. That might be the hottest you’ve ever looked in your life. This is a huge day- it seems important to have great photos to remember it!

At the end of the day, we felt like everything else- the clothing, the decorations, the invitations- could be DIY or budget friendly. If we were going to spend money on anything, it would be those three things. It really made a difference in wedding planning!

When it came to the aesthetic, though, that’s where Shane let me loose. He was like “you can have all the pink you want, all the girly things you want, make it exactly the way you want…all I ask is that I get to wear a navy suit and I get to eat brisket.” Done. Super reasonable. I still asked his opinion on things, and if he truly didn’t like something then we came up with a compromise, but those were his big things.

I knew that I wanted pink. I wanted shades of pink, and a cottagecore princessy vibe. Very garden-y, old fashioned. I knew that would be a tall order for Florida (where am I going to find a storybook garden in a swamp state??) but that’s another post for another day! The aesthetic kept evolving as we kept going, and it ended up being perfect.

Wedding Wednesday: Our Love Story and Proposal

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Shane and I met all the way back in 2013. I had just started back at Disney as a part time cast member at Star Tours, and he was working at Jedi Training Academy. Sometimes we would chat when we were outside at the same time, and one day I mentioned how jealous I was that the JTA cast got to carry lightstabers.

Shane then said “Oh! Do you want one?”

Turns out he had accidentally accumulated multiple lightsabers, and he offered to let me have one. But then…I cross trained at the Great Movie Ride, and he moved on to Dinosaur and we completely lost touch.

In 2016 he happened to ride the Great Movie Ride and saw me briefly, and then he friended me on Instagram…and then he slid into my DMs and asked me out on a date. I hadn’t been on a date in ages and gave myself an early out by telling him that I had rehearsal for Seussical that night- and I warned him that I’m late for everything and I’d probably be late for our date. He told me he had sisters, he’d never been on time for anything. (And yes, I was late). But we ended up really hitting it off, and he walked me to my car, and he kissed me…and that was it! We dated casually for about two months, made it official, and we’ve been together ever since.

(I also found out much, much later that he had a date lined up with someone else after our first date, and he called her up to cancel and basically said “sorry I have to cancel, but I think I met my wife.”)

We started talking about getting married, and originally had planned on getting engaged in 2020…but, well, you can guess what happened with that. His original plan was incredible. I was directing Tuck Everlasting at my home theater (the same theater where I did Seussical when we first started dating!) and he had planned on filling the audience with friends and family for the last performance and proposing during the curtain call, and then the cast party would be our surprise engagement party. And that filled the only guidelines I really had for a proposal! All I really wanted was:

-to look nice (wearing something cute, and preferably have my nails looking decent)

-have someone there to take photos/videos

-celebrate with friends and family afterwards

That was all I really wanted! Unfortunately, the pandemic had other ideas, so everything got postponed to the spring of 2021, and plans had to change pretty dramatically. I was not dressed the way I wanted (and my nails were…not good) and the pandemic meant that a party was out of the question. Shane also…might’ve panicked a little. He got down on one knee, held out the ring, and blurted out “are you going to say yes or what?” No name, no little speech, no…actual asking. But I did say yes, and the ring was absolutely perfect! (I didn’t have a single clue what kind of ring I wanted, and he nailed it.)

I didn’t get a formal wedding band (more on that later), so I’ve told Shane that if he ever wants to get me a new wedding band and re-propose, I wouldn’t be mad about that. But the most important thing was that we formally got engaged after four and a half years of dating!

That’s a very condensed version of our love story- let me know if you want to hear the longer version! What’s your proposal story?

day 1/100 (cycle #40, day 3)

Posted in 100 to Baby Challenge, the metaphor baby by

Today was the first official day for my 100 to Baby Challenge. I fully chickened out of making Tiktoks, though. I intended on making a Tiktok and and even took a few clips, and then it just…fizzled out. Maybe I’m not ready for that step. I might try again later!

The routine went well in the morning- I went for a walk, I ate breakfast, I left for work on time. I didn’t put on any makeup, but that’s okay.

Evening? Not quite as good. I had a whole plan for the afternoon, especially since I got home earlier than usual, but all my plans go thrown out the window. Not only was my husband home (a good thing, but he’s the most chaotic human and I didn’t plan to work around him), but he had A) disassembled our old broken bed frame and thrown it out, B) had all the pieces of the new bed frame scattered across the apartment, and C) had started making a different dinner from the one we’d agreed on the night before. My whole neurodivergent brain went WOOP.

We got it all figured out, but I didn’t end up doing my second workout or cleaning, and I definitely didn’t stick to my healthy eating (the food itself wasn’t unhealthy, but I did eat more than I planned). But I did get back on track with my nighttime skincare routine, and here I am blogging! Tomorrow I close at work, so things will be unpredictable again, but I have a night shift routine planned out and I’m hoping for the best.

Health
-didn’t sleep 7 hours, but did get an 86 sleep score
-ate decently today- I’d give myself a 7/10
-went for a morning walk but didn’t do afternoon workout
-vitamins taken!

Beauty and Style: Work on brows
My brows tend to go crazy. I feel like I have no idea what to do with them. I at least tried to tame them, which is more than I’ve done in months!

Creativity and Self Care: build a playlist for the year
I made myself a quick Spotify playlist with some of my favorite “keep going” songs. My motto for this year is “do it sad,” so I picked a lot of high energy hopeful songs- “Don’t Lose Sight” by Lawrence, “Dog Days are Over” by Florence and the Machine, “Opalite” by Taylor Swift. Things like that.

Connection: make 2026 goals with Shane
This ended up being a really sweet little conversation. He wants us to go to more baseball games together, go out to eat at more restaurants instead of picking up food and bringing it home when we treat ourselves, and going on walks together. I love all those plans. I was just going to say that my goal was for us to have a baby, but I love all of these ideas that he had.

**Journaling Prompt: What are my fears around fertility, and where do they come from?

day zero

Posted in 100 to Baby Challenge, health and fitness, infertility, mental and emotional, the metaphor baby, TTC by

I wanted to start a challenge in the new year, but I didn’t want to start it on January 1st. See, on January 1st I was seven days past ovulation, and I was really hoping that that cycle would work, and that I would finally be pregnant, and I wouldn’t need the challenge at all.

But here I am.

In February of 2023, my husband and I decided we wanted to start our family. I’ve wanted kids for as long as I can remember- when I was nineteen I wanted five children. We’d been together for seven years, we’d just gotten married, we felt ready. We knew that it might take a while, but hoped it wouldn’t take more than a year.

Today is January 9th, 2026. It’s my 40th cycle of trying. We still don’t have a baby. Doctors can’t tell us why.

There’s a lot more to the story, but that’s where we are right now. And it’s awful. It’s soul crushing and demoralizing and, quite frankly, really fucking depressing. The past almost three years have been so sad and so stressful.

I’m sure I’ll get into this more as time goes on, but where I am right now is that I want a full reset. Emotional, physical, mental. I’ve seen a lot of people on TikTok doing the 75 hard challenge, so I’ve decided to create my own version. A hundred day reset for myself, and hopefully by the end of the reset I’ll either be pregnant or in the thick of IVF.

My goals for the 100 days are:

-a daily journal prompt: unpacking my feelings about infertility, about trying to conceive, about my future as a mother

-something beauty and style related: I’ve neglected myself a lot in the past few years, just because it’s hard to feel anything positive about your body when it repeatedly betrays you

-something creative: I used to be so invested in writing and theatre and reading and sewing, and I’ve lost all of that.

-something connecting: I’m very lucky to have such a healthy, supportive, loving relationship with my husband, but it’s something that deserves to be cared for and nurtured while we’re dealing with this. And I’ve pulled away a lot from my friends, and it would be so helpful to nurture those relationships too.

In addition I want to focus on:

-improving my sleep

-eating consistently and staying hydrated

-moving regularly, at least 10k steps per day and incorporating workouts

-committing to EMDR therapy (just had my first session on the 2nd, and already a huge improvement from the disastrous attempt at talk therapy that I tried last year)

-getting myself onto a regular routine to manage my anxiety, improve my well-being, and keep my home clean

I’ve also taken a big step and finally started ballet classes, which is something I’ve wanted to do my entire life. I signed up for an absolute beginner ballet course with the Orlando Ballet; I had my first class on the 5th and loved it even though I was scared shitless.

Basically, I want to get myself into the healthiest place I can possibly be, physically and emotionally, before having a baby. I hope that that’s something that happens naturally- and maybe dealing with the extensive trauma I’ve been swallowing down for decades and allowing myself the grace to heal is just what I need. But our plan is to pursue IVF this year, and I want to give myself the best possible chance of success.

I’m not always great with following through on challenges. I’m hoping that through making myself keep up with blogging I’ll feel just enough pressure to maintain it. I might end up making a TikTok series as well- Shane has been encouraging me to do that, he thinks that would be good for me. But in the meantime, I’ll blog my way through the next hundred days and see where I’ll be by April 20th.

Please feel free to leave comments or questions- I’d love to connect with other people who might be going through the same things, or might want to try a reset for themselves too.

Reading Challenge 2026

Posted in 2026 reading challenge, books by

I have so many books. Like, way too many books.

I can’t help it. I’ve always loved to read, ever since I was a little kid. I used to read multiple books a day. Hell, I read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire twice in one day when I was in eighth grade. So now as an adult I have three bookshelves crammed with books. (Technically four, but the fourth is my nonfiction section). That might sound like a lot, but it’s a decent amount for a two bedroom apartment.

A lot of these books I haven’t read in years. Some of them I’ve never read at all. (I have a good reason for some of those). And I’d love to get back into reading.

So instead of setting a goal for myself of reading a certain number of books or a certain number of pages, I’ve decided to read all the physical books I own. Is this insane? Possibly. Especially since it’s a week into the new year and I haven’t started yet.

But I’ll start tomorrow! Or maybe the day after! I’ve created a selector wheel so I can work my way through my collection and stay surprised about my next choice. So we’ll see how it goes!

Wedding Wednesday

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When I was in college, I got obsessed with a website called Weddingbee. And I mean obsessed. The site featured real brides who blogged about their wedding planning process and then followed up with recaps of their wedding day. They all had cutesy themed names and icons like Mrs. Mouse and Mrs. Candy Corn and I devoured those recaps. Like the planning process was fun to see, but my favorite part was the minute-by-minute breakdown of the actual wedding itself.

So when I got married in 2022, what did I want to do? Apply for Weddingbee!

They don’t do that anymore.

When I tell you I was crushed. So so crushed. What do you mean, I couldn’t apply for the chance to be something cute like Miss Creme Brulee and post all about my wedding? And what do you mean, there weren’t any current blogs to read about wedding planning? The site still exists, but just as an ordinary wedding planning site.

So what’s a girl to do? Clearly, I need to blog about my own wedding in my own space!

I don’t have a cute name or icon (I’ll totally take suggestions, though). But in the meantime, I’ll post a blog per week this year recapping my wedding. Is that extra? Yeah, it is. But it’s my blog, and also I loved my wedding, and I want to document it! So I’m gonna!

(Photo by Gabby Darling Photography)