Our Date: August 07, 2010

A few weeks ago Josh & I were able to decide on a date for our wedding! After much contemplating and planning we decided the first weekend in August would be best. The wedding will be one week before my birthday, and if you ask me, a husband is the best birthday present a girl could ask for! It's kind of funny that we are getting married on an odd numbered date because incase you didn't know, I have a weird thing with odd numbers - I always said I'd never get married on an odd numbered day, but here I am getting married on the 7th! But, I am getting married in the year 2010 which is what I always dreamed of because the number of years that we have been married will be easy math - once we get to August 07, 2032, simply subtracting 10 will be the number of married years! Weird, I know.. but I'm the kind of person that thinks about those kinds of things! Numbers aside, I am beyond excited to marry Josh and spend the rest of my life with him. I'm so excited to see what God has for our future together. 222 days to go!
ps - stay tuned for posts about our Christmas!

~~Katie

Priceless Pictures: August 2006

My First Lasagna!

Last Sunday Josh & I were finally going to be able to spend some time together after not seeing each other for a week, so I decided that I was going to make a nice dinner for us. I called my sister and asked her for an idea of what to make and she said lasagna, and then I called my mom and she said they were having lasagna for dinner that night too. So I decided, lasagna it is! My mom makes the best lasagna and I've helped her before, also a few weeks ago my sister & I made lasagna together, but I've never made it by myself so I was slightly worried. Since it was just going to be just the two of us, I made two smaller pans and put one in the freezer for another time! In the end it ended up turning out perfectly and it wasn't 'runny' which my mom says is the key to a good lasagna! I think I've proven to Josh that he will be well fed for the rest of his life :).

(Thanks to my roommate Jessica for taking this picture! Don't mind my apron :) ).

The Countdown

Just about a month ago I received the following e-mail which nearly knocked me off my chair:

Consequently the shock put me in to high-gear and Josh & I were able to make some important decisions regarding our wedding. I really can't believe how fast time is going. This Monday will be 8 months until our day (which is also pretty scary). In the past day we've gotten 12+ inches of snow where I live, so I've taken the opportunity to stay inside and wedding plan (and watch 4+ episodes of Say Yes To The Dress on TLC)! I know the next 246 days are going to be a whirlwind. I'm so excited to marry the man of my dreams but also stressing about planning!

~~Katie

Priceless Pictures: August 2005

Thanksgiving!

First of all, a very Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! We are so thankful for you all. God has blessed us with family, friends, health, education, and eachother! :) Today we were able to spend time with both of our families which was such a blessing (having two Thanksgiving dinners was awesome!!). We can't thank God enough for all He has truly blessed us with and are so thankful for His direction at this point in our lives. It's fun being engaged this Thanksgiving - our first and only engaged Thanksgiving! It's also crazy to think that next Thanksgiving we will be married! Now our favorite holiday is on its way: Christmas! Before we know it, it will be 2010 which is wedding year!

God bless you all!

Our attempt at Thanksgiving pictures: 

~~Katie & Josh

Priceless Pictures: December 2005

Our First Gingerbread House! It's a beach theme :)

Mushy Memories: Two Cards

Something Josh has always does that melts my heart is for our anniversaries and my birthday's (and sometimes other celebrations) he gives me two cards. One of the cards is a funny one and the second card is romantic. I think it just sums up Josh for me, because he is always making me laugh and yet is always making me feel like the most loved woman in the world! I got permission from him to share one of my favorite excerpts from a birthday card:

"When you read this you need to lean over and kiss Josh. THE END"

No Shave November

Josh decided to participate in No Shave November with some of the guys from his work. At first I didn't like the idea but was glad he was getting out the urge to do it before we're married ;). BUT, I was wrong and I think it looks really good! Maybe by the end of the month it'll be a little more out of control, but for now it's working for him. Anyway, thought the people who don't see Josh regularly would enjoy seeing a picture of the progress.

Priceless Pictures: July 2005

The Story of My Wedding Dress

Well, after Josh proposed I started my search for dresses online and got a few ideas of what I liked. One of the first dresses I picked out was from David's Bridal. Life was so busy that I wasn't able to go dress shopping till a few months after getting engaged. I went back online often to look at that dress and one day I noticed it happened to be on sale, so soon after my sister and I decided to go try it on. We went to a store in Grand Rapids and I told them the dress I wanted to try on, but was informed that the reason it was on sale was because it was being discontinued and they no longer had any in their store but they could check other stores in Michigan. So the lady checked on her computer and then said, "Do you know where Novi is? Because they have the dress in white and a size 2 at that store." My jaw almost dropped and I told her that my family lives minutes away from Novi. The only downfall was that their dresses can only be put on hold for 24 hours and I wouldn't be able to get back to the east side until the following weekend and chances are it would be gone. So I decided to try on some dresses and see if there were any others that I liked. I ended up finding three which all had a different characteristics that I liked. So my sister took pictures of the dresses and I pondered over the pictures for the next few days. The original dress then popped back into my mind so I decided to look at it online. As I was reading the description, I realized that the original dress had all three of the characteristics that I had liked from the three that I had tried on. So, needless to say I was determined to at least try the dress on because it seemed so perfect. I called the Novi store on a Tuesday and said I wouldn't be able to be there to try it on until Friday. The lady told me that she couldn't put it on hold for that long but if she were me, she would just call every 24 hours and put it back on hold. I asked her if that was an appropriate thing to do and she said, "you're a bride you can do WHATEVER you want!!!" So I did. I was able to head home Thursday night and then went first thing Friday morning to try the dress on. IT WAS PERFECT - everything I wanted and even more beautiful than the online picture. It fit pretty well (of course I have to get it shortened...) and was white which I wanted (as opposed to ivory)! I loved it so much and so did my family! So the VERY first dress I found back in July ended up being the dress of my dreams!

Priceless Pictures: October 2004

I'm going to start an ongoing, hopefully weekly post, called
Priceless Pictures because when it comes to
pictures, we have TONS!

~~Katie

My Dream Cake

Today when reading a wedding blog called Intimate Weddings, I stumbled upon the cake of my dreams:

(source)

~~Katie

Wedding Planning Weekend

This past weekend I was able to head home to nail down some wedding details. Josh works pretty much every day over the weekend, so he had to entrust the wedding reception venue search to me. I'm realizing it's going to be hard to start planning this wedding while living 2 hours away! The trip home was both successful and unsuccessful. It was successful in that I found my dress :) :) :) :) It's a great story that I will post soon. But it was unsuccessful in that we didn't make any final decisions on our reception location. Our first potential location was the Novi Community Center - they have a huge atrium with beautiful wall length windows and really high ceilings. BUT, the man we toured with (who ironically was my sister's basketball coach from middle school) told us that we cannot be guaranteed our date - for instance, last year a bride had her wedding date picked and payment in, but the mayor decided he was going to have a convection that day, so the bride had to change her wedding day, and all her plans without much of a notice. Needless to say, I don't really want to take a chance and Josh agrees. So onto our next option, the Wixom Community Center - it's definitely pretty and could work (not necessarily with my rustic theme idea tho :( ), but.. (of course there is a but..) they are booked on the day Josh and I were thinking would work best for us and our families. So again, the search continues... But for now, Josh and I are enjoying a relaxing Sunday night:


~~Katie

Mushy Memories: My First Birthday Gift From Josh

To share all of our stories, I'm going to start an ongoing post called, "Mushy Memories." Here's the first one, enjoy!!

About three months into our blossoming relationship my 13th birthday was just around the corner. I remember being really nervous about what Josh would get me for my birthday, but he did great! :) One of our first movies we watched together was A Walk to Remember. I had seen the movie a few times in theaters and had rented it also, but didn't have a copy. So, Josh bought me my very own copy of the movie on VHS! Yes, VHS - and he bought it the day it came out! I still have it today and watch it whenever I can.

Fun Fact: the first movie we watched together in theaters was The Counte of Monte Cristo (which Josh cleverly included in the proposal) and the first movie we watched not in theaters was Brokedown Palace!

(Source)

Rustic Reception

Of course as soon as I got a spare minute of time after Josh proposed I was doing wedding 'research' as I like to call it. My sister (who you'll see me refer to as CC) introduced me to Wedding Blogs which I subscribe to from Google Reader (If you follow multiple Blogs, Google Reader makes it SO much easier!). I also am a huge fan of theknot.com and have been secretly getting ideas from there since my freshman year of college! Anyway, one of my first major ideas was to have our wedding reception in a barn. Josh hated the idea at first and asked if, "we'd be shooting our dinner out back?" Once I showed him some of these pictures his eyes were open to my vision:

(source)

But much to my dismay and after hours of online research and phone calls, I cannot find a barn that is big enough for the amount of people we are inviting and close enough to where we plan on having our ceremony. After a few weeks of being discouraged and losing excitement for my vision, I started searching again, and that's kind of where we are now. I have found a few potentional places, and am going to check them out this weekend. I still want to use the elegant rustic theme, but I'm just not sure if it'll fit right in our prospective venues. I'm still a little dissapointed but have come to terms that there are no barns perfect for what we need. My family has even joked about building our own barn.. I know there's somewhere perfect for us, but finding it is the hard part!

~~Katie

Our Story: Josh's Version

Once upon a time in the mid 90s, in a little white church, a 5th grade girl and a 6th grade boy sat in sunday school together. The boy had no idea who this stunning new girl was, but he was determined to find out. He leaned back in his chair and and tried his best to pay attention to the lesson... fail. He couldn't take his eyes off of this 4 foot 6 5th grade beauty. As it turns out, however, she was PART of the sunday school lesson. She was the prophetess Deborah from Judges 4. Because she was acting out the part of Deborah, and the Sunday school teacher kept referring to her with that name, that must have been her name. That day this 6th grade boy knew that he was going to marry this 'Deborah' girl. Turns out though, her name wasn't Deborah, it was Katie, Katie Cain; and his name, well, his name was Josh, and thats me. This really is the first memory I have of Katie. We grew up together in that church, moving from elementary school into junior high where we started our relationship together. Somewhere between nervous conversations and impersonal IMs, we fell in love and on May 18th that year in 8th grade, I asked her if she would "be my girlfriend" in the parking lot of that little white church. Needless to say, she said yes, and that marked the day of my first girlfriend. Being junior highers in the late 90s, AIM was the core communicator for the next six months in our relationship. We talked about our feelings on AIM, we planned our first kiss over AIM, and we decided to call it quits because of AIM (and by decided to call it quits I mean Katie broke up with me because we never talked in person). Over the course of the next 2 and a half years, we became the best of friends. Then, after Katie and I began attending the same school, we started dating again. The official date was March 25th of my Junior year and we have been dating ever since. We stayed strong through the distance of college and have grown even stronger together as a whole. This past July we got engaged and now we are looking forward to 'dating' for the rest of our lives. I love you Katie Cain.

Our Story: Katie's Version

(Our First Picture)

Josh & I met back when I was in 5th grade and he was in 6th. Our families went to the same church which we still attend today. My first memory of him was in Mr. Speight's Sunday School Class but he had cooties so I didn't really want much to do with him. But things soon changed when I was now in 6th grade and Josh was in 7th. We expressed an interest in liking each other through our friend Stephanie and before I knew it we were talking on AOL Instant Messenger every day. Josh asked me to be his girlfriend and I said, "of course!" We 'dated' (if middle schoolers can even date..) for 6 months and then I broke up with Josh (Yes, I still hear about it to this day..) Josh and I did still stay friends which I think was all Josh's secret ploy to sweep me off my feet again one day. Fast forwarding to when Josh was a junior in highschool and I was a sophomore, we both knew that we wanted to date again. A few months after transferring to Josh's highschool, Southfield Christian, in the middle of my sophomore year, Josh asked me to be his girlfriend again: March 25, 2005! The rest is pretty much history! So we have officially been dating for a little over 4 and half years. But, Josh likes to forget the break up and say we've beend dating for almost 8 years! I love him!

The Journey Towards Marriage!

This is our blog: the journey towards marriage! I began thinking of all of the memories that Josh & I have had that seem to be slowly fading from my memory bank! I figure this is a way to keep my memories secured and invite you all into our exciting future together! I'm hoping I can even get Josh to write a few posts as we go along :). So, here's to the ups and downs of wedding planning and to our exciting future!

~~Katie