It was like a giant family reunion, especially for my dad’s side of my family. His cousins made the trip and I hadn’t seen most of them in decades! We also got to spend time with two of my cousins and their beautiful babies, who we hadn’t gotten a chance to meet  yet. It was wonderful to catch up and see how happy my parents were surrounded by their amazing family and friends. The afternoon was laid-back and fun, just like Ben and Lana.

My mom was the mastermind behind the entire event and she did a beautiful job making everything come together. In addition to making several homemade sweets, she had Kelly’s Bakery and Cafe cater and everyone raved about the delicious spread. My favorite dishes were the bacon-wrapped dates and ham, cheese and apple butter croissants. I plan to recreate them both soon for the blog!

My dad, of course, was in charge of the beer. He made an amazing dry-hopped Saison for the occasion. It was fantastic. Having a dad that brews beer seriously ups his coolness factor — my friends are always asking when he’s coming to Indiana next because they love sampling his creations. Once we move later this summer I think I’ll have to have him come over and teach me how to brew!

After a month of nonstop travel, I’m definitely ready for a relaxing weekend in Bloomington. I need to get back into my cooking/workout routine, which has been seriously thrown off the past two weeks. My body has had way too much sugar and is in need of lots of fruit and veggies. Looking forward to getting back on the meal prep train this weekend!

The post A Wedding Luncheon For Ben + Lana appeared first on The Broadcasting Baker.

The moment I saw James at the end of the aisle all of my worries faded away. I couldn’t stop smiling and I didn’t care whether the flowers looked right or the room was too small. In that moment it felt like just the two of us. Everything was perfect.

The night flew by, ending just as beautifully as it began. The DJ played “Wonderful Tonight” and James sang the words as we danced to the last song. It’s not the details of decor, the color of my lipstick or the taste of cake I remember from that day. It’s those little moments that were just ours.

It’s hard to believe it’s been an entire year since our wedding day. In some ways, it feels like the year flew by. But when I look at everything we’ve done over the past 365 days, I’m amazed.

Here’s a list of superlatives to describe our first year of marriage. I asked James to play along for this one, too and it was so fun to hear what he thought were highlights. If year one is this good, I can’t wait to see what we experience over an entire lifetime.

Biggest Milestone

Babs: Taking our first big trip together! Despite dating for several years before tying the knot, we hadn’t been on a vacation together that was longer than a few days. That changed with our honeymoon. And it was an absolute blast.

James: Starting the process of buying a house was a big milestone. We haven’t bought one yet, but going through all the paperwork and looking at homes together is a big step.

Toughest Challenge

Babs: House hunting — and the search isn’t over yet! What started out as a fun process quickly became stressful after making offers on several houses and those falling through, for a variety of different reasons. We’re still searching for our future home and have learned so much in the process. And it hasn’t been easy! But it’s been great for our relationship. Learning to compromise and putting your spouse’s needs above your own occasionally is an important part of marriage.

James: Buying a home is the worst experience ever. Period. Attempting to buy in Bloomington, Indiana doesn’t help because there are very few options. Just when you think you’ve found “the one,” someone will swoop in with a quarter million dollars in cash and buy it so quick it’ll make your head spin. The constant heartbreak of seeing homes we love suddenly drop off the market really drains all the joy out of the search process for both of us. I would have given up weeks ago if not for Babs’ optimism as the yin to my pessimistic yang.

Most Memorable Meal

Babs: Our first meal in Italy at Sorrento’s Inn Bufalito. We’d been traveling for hours via airplane and train and were so happy to finally be at our destination. And by the time we got there, we were starving. The tasting platter of different mozzarella and the warm focaccia was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I’ll dream about it until we return.

James: Our last meal in Italy was my favorite. We dined at Il Giardino di Albino, a place in Rome we had walked past earlier and tried to get into only to realize it wasn’t open yet. It was worth the wait: the fettuccine al limone was incredible.

Favorite Trip

Babs: Our honeymoon to Italy. It’s a trip I dreamed of taking for years and I was so happy when we landed that I started tearing up. We got to visit places I’d read about for years and each stop was more beautiful than I ever imagined. Sharing the experience with my best friend made it all the more special.

James: Italy. It was a whirlwind of a trip and not one we will soon forget. We had talked about doing it for years so it was incredible to finally be able to go. Being in such a beautiful place with my best friend was amazing.

Most Valuable Lesson

Babs: There will be times when your spouse needs more from you than you need from them and vice versa. Sometimes one of you has a long, stressful day at work and that means you need the other person to step up and cook dinner, do the dishes, clean the house. None of that’s worth keeping score over. Sometimes you’ll need to be the stronger one, and that’s OK. That’s the beauty of marriage — you have someone to help hold you up when you feel like you’re about to fall down.

James: John Lennon once sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” That is so very true. While we are constantly working towards the future and making plans for it (e.g. buying a house, planning a Fall vacation), it’s important to stop and smell the roses once in a while. Live in the moment. Don’t lose sight of the little things that are happening all around you in the current moment as you focus on the future. Look to the future, but cherish the present.

Biggest Surprise

Babs: Marriage didn’t really change our relationship. And I think that’s a good thing. I didn’t expect anything drastic to happen after we said, “I do,” but I don’t feel much different than before we were married. I was already committed to our relationship, crazy about James and planning my life with him by my side. Several people have asked me what’s changed since getting married and the only thing I can think of is I have a stronger sense of pride. I’ve always been proud of James and who he is as a person, what he’s accomplished — but there’s something about being able to say, “Yeah, that’s my amazing husband” that makes it even better.

James: To somewhat continue from the last prompt, the biggest surprise is how quickly time moves. It doesn’t feel like it’s been a year yet. Wasn’t Christmas just a couple weeks ago? It’s comforting to know we are the constant for each other in the whirl of time that is life.

Favorite Wedding Moment

Babs: This one is a toss up. It’s either when James was rubbing my hands during the ceremony, trying to keep me calm as I fought back happy tears, or when he sang to me as our song played during the last dance of the night. I will carry those moments with me always.

James: It’s hard to pick a single moment. The entire day was such a blur of sensory overload. I focused on hanging onto certain snapshots of the day. To have so many close family members and friends together for a big party was incredible. The entire night felt like it lasted 10 minutes because it was so much fun.

The Best Is Yet To Come

Babs: I can’t pick just one thing that I’m most excited for because everyday is an adventure when we’re together. Whether we’re just sitting around at home binge watching Game Of Thrones, exploring a new route on our bikes or venturing to far off places, we have a blast. Every new experience I have is one I want to share with James and I’m excited for a lifetime of more.

James: I’m excited for this summer. It’s always my favorite season because we are so active. From hikes to bike rides to swimming at the lake to #porching, we have a lot of fun together in the summer.

The post The First Year appeared first on The Broadcasting Baker.

I can’t stop smiling. James and I have spent the past two days constantly looking through our wedding photos, which we got back this week. It’s so much fun to relive the special moments of our big day through pictures.

Our photographer, Stephen Haas, did a great job capturing the mood of the day. We didn’t let Mother Nature rain on our parade!

I’ve had to stop myself from constantly posting picture after picture on Instagram. It’s hard not to! Seeing the smiles on the faces of our family and friends brings me so much joy.

Now that we have all of the photos, I plan to tell you more about the details of our wedding and the days leading up to it. I’ll roll those posts out over the next couple of weeks. I can’t wait to tell you more about how it all came together (lots of wine and craft paint)!

It’s hard to believe we’ve been married three months already. The summer flew by! But, that means our honeymoon is less than two weeks away. We are both so ready for a vacation and some quality time together.

Until then, we’ll just flip through these photos whenever we need an escape.

The post Reliving Our Big Day appeared first on The Broadcasting Baker.

I’ve been home sick for the past two days dealing with a nasty ear and sinus infection. I’m finally starting to feel a little bit better after two days of barely getting out of bed. There’s been a whole lot of ramen consumed and trashy television watched!

I’m hoping to do a full series of wedding weekend recap posts for you soon! We’re just waiting to get all of the photos back from our amazing photographer so you can see all of the details.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share some advice for one of the most difficult parts of the wedding planning process for me — writing the ceremony.

James and I knew early on we didn’t want to have a traditional church wedding. Neither one of us is particularly religious, so it’s just not something that was important to us. What was important was having a ceremony full of love. That’s exactly what we got. It meant so much to us to have my older sister, Brooke, officiating.

I loved every part of our ceremony. But, nailing down the structure and wording was extremely difficult. I had a really hard time finding resources for writing non-traditional ceremonies and I hadn’t been to very many weddings that weren’t centered around religion. With the help of some blogs, I was able to get a good sense of what I wanted to incorporate into our ceremony. We were so happy with how it turned out — writing the ceremony ourselves made it deeply personal and moving for us.

Here are some tips if you decide you want to write your own ceremony, too.

1. Decide what you want your ceremony to be all about.
Your ceremony should reflect your personalities and relationship. Are you deeply spiritual? A constant joker? Hopelessly romantic? Determining what type of mood you want to strike will help you decide how to write your ceremony. James and I love joking around, so we knew we wanted there to be some laughter. We’re also both very sentimental, so we wanted to balance the laughter with language that illustrated just how crazy we were about each other.

2. Determine the structure.
Figuring out how you want to structure the ceremony will give you a loose outline to work from. We knew we wanted to have someone from each of our families do a reading, so we decided on those readings before writing anything else. We chose the fun poem “How Falling in Love is Like Owning a Dog” by Taylor Mali and an excerpt from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres. Think about whether you want to incorporate any special songs or rituals, such as a unity candle (or something more unique!). You should also decide if you’ll write your own vows or repeat phrases said by the officiant. Here’s how we structured our ceremony:

• Introduction
• Processional
• Greeting
• Words of advice for couple written by officiant
• Taylor Mali reading
• Hand-holding ritual
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin reading
• Vows and ring exchange
• Pronouncement of marriage
• Recessional

3. Do some research.
Once you have an idea of what type of ceremony you want to have, start Googling! I found the Internet was the best place to go for guidance — many wedding magazines and planning books seemed to focus more on traditional weddings. I found this guide by the Offbeat Bride to be extremely helpful. If you’re going for a certain theme, look for wedding ceremonies online that incorporate that theme. I found reading as many sample ceremonies as possible gave me a better idea of what I wanted to include in ours.

4. Put it on paper.
I was so nervous about writing the ceremony that I kept putting it off. I forced myself to finally sit down on a Sunday afternoon and just spit out what I was thinking. It was rough, but once I had the first draft done the writing process got so much easier. Give yourself plenty of time to write and tweak the script — I finished our ceremony about three months before our big day and was still perfecting the wording up until the week of the wedding.

5. Enlist an editor — or two.
After James and I were happy with the ceremony script, I sent a copy to my mom, my sister and my two maids of honor to get their input. They all loved what I had written, but had great suggestions for making the ceremony shorter or more conversational. They told me what worked and what was a little too cheesy. It helped make the final product so much better!

The post Wedding Wednesday: Writing Your Own Ceremony appeared first on The Broadcasting Baker.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for the big day to get here. James and I have been engaged for about a year and a half. It’s been great because we’ve been able to spread the planning process out and really enjoy every moment. But, it also feels like we’ve been engaged for an eternity at this point. We’re beyond ready to celebrate with our family and friends!

With that said, I’m also getting to the point where I’m ready for the planning process to be over. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so glad we’re having a DIY wedding that will feature so much of our personalities. We’ve worked hard on little details that we hope our guests will appreciate. But, it’s crunch time and it seems like we still have several projects to complete.

At this point, we just have to let some plans go and accept that they’re not going to happen before the big day. That’s really hard for me to do because I’m a perfectionist and a total people pleaser. But, when it comes down to it, our guests won’t care whether or not there’s a custom photo backdrop for them to Instagram or personalized favors for them to take home.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the details of the wedding rather than the reason behind it. Over these next two weeks, I’m trying to take some time to breathe and remind myself that no matter what happens on our big day and no matter what projects do or do not get finished, it’s about the love James and I have for one another and the people who are supporting us along the way.

Friends, family and each other — that’s all we need for a perfect wedding day.

The post Wedding Wednesday: Letting It Go appeared first on The Broadcasting Baker.

But, I want them to feel good when they’re at the wedding, too.

One of the many things I love about these girls is how unique all of their personalities are — including their styles.

That’s one of the reasons I’m letting them choose their own bridesmaid dresses.

The only stipulation?  The dresses have to be navy. Other than that, they can be any style, fabric and length that they want.

Some women look at me like I’m nuts when I tell them this. But, here’s the deal — being in several weddings gives you lots of perspective when planning your own. I know what it’s like to have to spend more money than you’d like on a bridesmaid dress or to buy a dress that you don’t feel comfortable wearing. It blows. Yes, being part of the bridal party is an honor and a lot of fun. But, it can also cause emotional and financial stress. I don’t want that for my bridesmaids.

I want the girls to pay as much as they want for  a dress and to buy one that they’ll hopefully wear again at some point. They’ve sent me pictures of what they plan to wear and I have no doubt they’ll look gorgeous, as always. And, having them in different dresses will fit in well with our rustic theme.

Now, I know there are lots of brides who prefer to pick out dresses for their bridesmaids. That’s completely understandable — your wedding day is all about what you’ve been dreaming up. It should reflect your personality and style. Even if they aren’t fans of the dresses, your bridesmaids will happily wear whatever you choose.

If you decide to go this more traditional route, I suggest taking some of the girls shopping so they can try on dresses before you settle on one. That will give you the opportunity to see what the dresses will look like on different body types. You can also get their opinions, which will make them feel like part of the process.

And, what’s better than a day spent shopping with your best girls?

The post Wedding Wednesday: Picking Out Bridesmaid Dresses appeared first on The Broadcasting Baker.