Hello, Beautiful, and welcome to the Weddings & Wanderlust blog! My name is Elle, and I’m so glad you’re here!
Weddings
Whether you’re a recently engaged bride-to-be (if so, CONGRATS, WIFEY!!!), a bridesmaid going on the ultimate planning journey with your bestie, or a Southern girl like me who’s completely obsessed with romance and in love with all things “weddings,” I hope this blog brings you inspiration, ideas, advice, & most importantly: leaves you with something meaningful and useful by making your life brighter (and, hopefully, easier!).
Wanderlust
Honestly, I love the word “wanderlust,” which means “a strong desire to travel.” What 20-something human being doesn’t have wanderlust? My heart aches for travel experiences like hiking, exploring new places, trying new foods, seeing new cultures and understanding different ways of living . . . sayings such as Lewis Carroll’s, “Actually, the best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures….” resonate with me and remind me that what’s important in life is feeding your soul through new experiences. I hope this blog can spark creativity (I loooove crafting everything from canvases to cocktails, but more to come on that later), advice (including everything from recipes to travel), and most importantly: speaks to whatever illuminates your happiness by lighting up your daily life.
“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You musn’t lose it.” – Robin Williams
Weddings & Wanderlust, LLC is my creative space, the spark that brings me happiness and makes me come alive. I love creating items for my Weddings & Wanderlust Etsy shop, “WeddingsWanderlustCo,” which goes live one month from today on April 15th! This blog is the counterpart to my Etsy shop, and I can’t wait to use it to share my insight and tips, from my wedding planning journey & the lessons I learned along the way to my favorite travel & lifestyle (and all things in between!).
So, WELCOME, beautiful feyonces, hostesses with the mostest, crafty gals, fare & libation recipe lovers, sight seers and adventure seekers, advice listeners, girl bosses, and definitely my mom (thanks for reading and “liking” every post, Mom!). I hope Weddings & Wanderlust can be a positive and empowering place for you.
ANOTHER BLOG, ANOTHER ETSY. Why me? Why now?
These are fair questions, but I can’t answer them without telling you a little bit “About Me.”
Why Me:
I’m small-town southern girl (best in the world, amiright?) from beautiful East Tennessee. I was born in Johnson City (yes, like the “Wagon Wheel” song) and raised in her neighboring city, Elizabethton. If you’re unfamiliar with these magical little places in the upper right corner of the state, picture this: hiking through lush green portions of the Appalachian trail, waterfalls, camp grounds, and a Blue Hole; spending every Friday night at football games (our little version of “Who What Wear?”); growing up on one-of-a-kind classics like Pal’s Sudden Service, Amigo’s Mexican Restaurant, & Ridgewood Barbeque (pass the bleu cheese, please); hanging out at the Sonic or the Dairy Queen across the street after school; not being able to run into WalMart without seeing a friendly face; driving on backroads for hours, blasting music to kill time; weekend road trips to Dollywood and Neyland Stadium, and; growing up surrounded by pretty much some of the best damn people in the entire world.
How do I know this? Well, I wandered away to attend college at Austin Peay State University near Nashville, Tennessee, where I met my college sweetheart, now husband. Every small town girl livin’ in a lonely world just wants to take the midnight train going anywhere, ya know? But truer words were never said than, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” It sure did. If you’ve never gotten a chance to visit Middle Tennessee, well . . . it’s flat. I missed my mountain home. From there, we wandered on down to Charlotte, North Carolina, where we attended law school together and currently reside. We love our Queen City, and we also love being just a 3 hour drive away from my hometown treasure. We will always wander back to good ole East Tennessee. For the people, for the mountains, for the Frenchie Fries.
Growing up in East Tennessee allowed me to develop a love of hiking, of nature, and of animals. Sure, on some days you could find me in a ballet tutu crushing resin and warming up my joints while sipping a Micky D’s sweet tea (extra ice). On others, I was galloping through fields on my horse, pretending to be a “Lord of the Rings” elf on set in New Zealand. And some days, maybe you couldn’t find me at all (so, so sorry, Mama) because I had hiked away – which isn’t technically quite the same as running away – to camp at my favorite Dennis Cove spot. Oh, Wanderlust.
Whether I was conditioning myself by trail running while listening to music alone, or meeting my friend gang in the Ingles parking lot to pack our coolers, get gas, and make a weekend in the woods out of it, at some point I developed a love for being lost in the woods that became part of who I am today. Now, the woods call to me if I am away for too long, and my heart often longs for time spent hiking or going on adventures. And I am perfectly okay with that. Listening to the heart is so important, ya’ll.
Speaking of matters of the heart, my love of wedding planning developed during my own two-year wedding planning process. To be clear, I, like any other girl with a Pinterest, have always loved weddings. Looking at family friends’ gorgeous wedding photos, seeing glimpses of brides on church doorsteps as my mom drove by, watching “The Wedding Planner” featuring Queen JLo on a regular basis, and dreaming out loud with my best friends about our Someday from an early age all set the stage for my wedding obsession early on. But when my fiancé popped the question one crisp Fall night not so long ago, it finally became my own reality. I realized soon after that pinning every wedding pin on Pinterest giving me heart eyes was NOT “wedding planning.” In fact, not even pinning 3,227 wedding-related pins throughout all of college and law school (yep – count ‘em) prepared me for the journey that is planning your own entire wedding weekend.
Sure, I could’ve technically just hired this arduous task out to wedding planner. Scratch that, I couldn’t have: my hubby and I paid for most of our wedding by ourselves, so a wedding planner wasn’t in the budget for us. Besides, that meant I got to play the role of JLo, I mean, the wedding planner. It was important to me that we took our time saving money for everything we’d (that word is a stretch…) imagined since we were little so that our wedding looked like . . . well, looked like a professional planned it. So, with much excitement (and a whole lot to learn), I took on the full-time job of planning our wedding for two years while juggling law school AND two very REAL full-time jobs.
And I loved it. I should say, I fell in love with it. From researching all things wedding, to contacting and negotiating with vendors, to budgeting (admittedly, more of my husband’s purview), to chatting & strategizing with my mom & girlfriends . . . . . I was smitten with this new project – this new creative outlet – in my life and all its moving pieces. Instead of feeling even more overwhelmed than I already was (okay, on some days, I definitely did feel that way, and I’m sure you will, too), for the most part, wedding planning was my creative outlet, my time for “me.”
Instead of feeling like I was juggling too much, I wondered where this missing piece of my creativity had been for so long (trust me, law school will do that to ya), and I looked forward to spending time being creative weekly. I loved spending my weekends in Hobby Lobby & Michael’s, painting canvases, crafting DIY everything, and imagining or talking about what the day I’d dreamed of my whole life would finally look like. “I think we’ve about collected enough on the décor front, don’t you think?” my mom would ask me periodically during those two years, but I literally couldn’t stop researching, learning, strategizing, planning, and creating. I didn’t have to paint another canvas, I needed to. It was good for my soul to live in a world of romance and creativity. So I’ve decided to stay here, permanently. I hope you’ll find I belong & you won’t hesitate to borrow sugar – or something else helpful & sweet – whenever you’re in need.
Why Now?
You’ve got me there. I still at this very moment do not feel “ready” to launch my side hustle + tackle being a girl boss with what I hope somewhat slightly resembles the know-how and grace of so many others out there whom I admire.
The idea behind Weddings & Wanderlust has been brewing in my heart for several years now, while graduating from law school and becoming an attorney took priority. I’ve complained to my best friends, my mom, my aunt, my husband, and too many others in the past few years about wanting an Etsy shop, but I knew I wouldn’t have the time to fully commit until after checking certain major life boxes: graduating law school, studying for the dreaded bar exam, becoming an attorney, getting a job, and getting married. You know, adulting.
One law license and one marriage license later, we returned from our honeymoon in October 2016 and started getting adjusted to our life together as newlyweds. My husband was still in law school at the time, finishing up his last semester and applying take the February 2017 bar exam. If you don’t know anyone who’s taken a state bar exam to become an attorney, you may be thinking, “Big deal, he filled out something like a job application, how long could that have taken him?” Considering it requires a complete history of every address you’ve ever lived, a complete work history of every job you’ve ever held, a fresh set of fingerprints and a full background check, a certified copy of your birth certificate, a driving record for any state you’ve held a license in the past 3 years, multiple notarized character references, and a lock of Sasquatch’s hair (kidding!), he was actually pretty busy, to say the least.
I, on the other hand, felt . . . free. At first it was the good kind of free: I was working an incredible job I was passionate about all day, and instead of coming home with a trillion things to study, read, or learn, I was just free. Free to check emails, make dinner, enjoy Pinterest, cuddle with my three big puppers, binge watch TV, let my mind wander, make plans with friends. I’ll never forget the moment I came home from work one day and it hit me hard: I could read a book if I wanted to. I haven’t read a book just for myself, just because I’ve wanted to, in years. For the first time in a long time, I realized that I could start thinking a little bit about what else sets my soul on fire. I could do things that made me feel like me again.
Not too soon after we returned from our honeymoon, I started experiencing lower back pain. For a girl who had been mostly sedentary for the past 3 years hunched over studying due to law school, I thought that was pretty normal. After all, I had just spent 12 weeks in the same chair for 12-15 hours each day during bar study, studying my little heart out to become an attorney. Why wouldn’t – why shouldn’t – my back hurt?
I’ll cut to the chase: I was dead wrong, and so were a lot of the doctors I visited at first. They prescribed INSAIDS like Ibuprofen and Advil, then Aleve, then Celebrex at increasing strengths. Alternating hot and cold, you know the drill. These medicines helped at first, but by December 2016, I was getting worried because the pain was only increasing instead of decreasing. I was recommended yoga, and though I truly loved learning about it, I could barely bend forward, even halfway. I couldn’t even complete a simple sun Asana (for my non-yogis, “stretching for beginners”). As a former ballerina, volleyball player, horseback rider, marching band member, flag football badass, hiking lover, and overall semi-active gal, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t simply bend forward and touch my toes. That wasn’t helping me stretch out or strengthen whatever the problem was, either.
By January 2017, I was walking with a slight limp but still hopeful that the pain would go away. I was visiting the doctor at least once, if not twice, each week. On the days in between, my doctor and I were in constant contact, either emailing or checking in via phone. I’d heard the term “sciatica” (not actually a diagnosis, but refers to a group of symptoms) so many times I wanted to scream (not at her, she is an AMAZING human). “Sciatica” comes and goes, and I wanted to believe this, too, would pass. It was getting harder to hide/ignore the constant pain I was in by the day.
One weekend in January, our Best Man, John, came to visit us. It was his first time visiting us in Charlotte and we were so excited to see him. The morning he was driving in, my right leg and foot started tingling, and I could barely stand to sit. Later that week on my drive home from work, I realized my right foot couldn’t feel either pedal. My right leg and foot had both somehow gone numb while also exhibiting the sharpest pain I’ve ever experienced. I fell into my apartment sobbing, and my husband called my doctor. She recommended we go to OrthoCarolina Spine Urgent Care immediately.
One X-Ray in Urgent Care, one stat MRI the next morning, one consultation with an incredible spine surgeon the following day (and a whole lot of prayers later), and I was scheduled for spine surgery the following week (the first opening for time at the surgery center happened to be at 5AM on my birthday). I am so thankful for how quickly OrthoCarolina moved through this process, functioning like a well-oiled machine to get everything scheduled as soon as possible. I also truly don’t think I could’ve made it one single day past my surgery day, and I truly believe everything fell into place the way it did for that reason. By the time my surgery rolled around, I was bedridden and could no longer walk. My mom said it best during my post-op recovery: “One more day, and they would’ve had to send the ambulance.”
Sparing you all the gory details, I tell you the highlights of this story to tell you my life as a newlywed did not go how I expected. I thought I’d enjoy taking my newfound free time to explore and daydream about potential creative outlets, not spend months in ever-increasing acute pain. I thought I’d “live the dream” with my hubby while saving up for our first house, not drop the thousands we saved on spine surgery. I thought I’d be the best little wifey there ever was, not on bedrest having to rely on my husband fully. But, as Lisa Bever put it best:
“If you think you’ve blown God’s plan for your life, rest on this: You, my beautiful friend, are not that powerful.”
Things weren’t going according to my plan, but after all, it’s not my plan. Isaiah 14:27.
Can I just stop right here to say thank God for my besties? Best babes truly make the world go ‘round. Pretty much as soon as they stepped off the two-year roller coaster of helping me make all my wedding planning dreams come true and standing beside me on the biggest day of my life, I needed them even more. Even more than those two years of stress and so much laughter, even more than the vendor errands they ran with me and the showers they threw to celebrate me. And they pulled through in a major way. Standing by me while smiling in a sparkly dress (looking gorgeous, I might add!) was one thing emotionally. Seeing me through the scariest time of my life (during some of THHE happiest times of theirs) is a much bigger, darker thing emotionally, and it means so much more. Anyone can be there with you through the good, when it’s easy. But the people who love you even harder through the bad, those are your people. Hold on to them tight, vow to do the same for them, and never let them go.
So, back to the “Why Now?” question. I’ve learned there will truly never be a “good time.” I may never feel ready, or good enough, or like I fully know what I’m doing. What I do feel is this: As unexpected as life can be sometimes, I’m not willing to let another day pass me by. Ready or not.
“Respond to every call that excites your spirit.” –Rumi.
Ya’ll, I am so excited. I’m excited for this new adventure about romance and adventure, and everything in between. I’m so excited to welcome you into my creative space, and I hope something you find here excites your spirit, too.
Until next time, Wild-Hearted Wanderer.
xo
eg
