Envisioning Our Perfect Day...and Bringing it to Life.

             Cole and I have been together for almost 6 years now, and discussing the possibility of marriage has been a frequent occurrence for the last several years. They have never been serious discussion, more so picking on each other and enjoying day dreaming about our futures together...cause lets face it when you're honestly in love it's fun to day dream about where you will be together in 1, 5, or 10 years. Once we got engaged we realized we had no idea what we really wanted our wedding to be like other than a few aspects. We knew that we would want to have a pretty large wedding. We absolutely love, love, LOVE Lake Murray so it is a huge fantasy for us to have either our wedding or our reception at the lake if at all possible. The last thing we were pretty decided from our day dreaming is having delicious food (that represents us) and an open bar.
            Now that we are actually planning our real wedding there is so much more to think about and so many more aspects of the day we have to plan and detail. Since I am still in school and my last two semesters of school start in August we have jumped head first into planning our wedding. It has already been a whirlwind. One of the first things I wanted to accomplish was to research venues in possible cities, visit  said venues and choose our perfect venue.  Lake Murray is mostly residential, it has a few public parks, one private park and a bunch of restaurants so the possibility of having our wedding or reception on the lake is pretty slim. In fact I actually had given up on finding a venue on the lake, so we looked at a huge house on the beach in North Carolina, a beautiful white barn in Charlotte and several locations in Columbia. The ones I really loved were all really expensive, or way too small for the size wedding we wanted.
           I researched for days, and out of curiosity looked at locations on Lake Murray...after searching for hours I stumbled across Timberlake Country Club, which is a golf course on Lake Murray. The Country Club was seriously a hidden jem, I didn't even know there was a golf course on Lake Murray. Let alone a Country Club that has a large Club House that allows non-members to hold wedding receptions there, and the country club has a lawn right on the lake that can be used for outdoor wedding. I was in shock when I found it. I immediately contacted them and set up an appointment to discuss the location and costs. Cole and I visited the place to see it set up for a wedding that weekend, then my mom went with us to discuss the cost the next day.  Cole and I were overall impressed with the venue, the only concerns we had were the size and the "bridal suit" they have on site.
           After thinking about it for over a month Cole and I officially decided that our dreams of getting married on Lake Murray out weighs any other possible venue. We are going to marry each other with such a beautiful sentimental backdrop behind us and I don't think either of us could be any happier with our decision. In fact we decided on Timberlake without even looking at any other venues!

The One Year Mark...

     I never in a million years would have thought I would have kept this blog up and running for an entire year! Thursday, April 18th, 2013 marked The Poppies, Puppies and Pearls Blog 1 year anniversary. I am so thankful and proud that the blog has seen so much traffic over the past year. The number of views the blog has received in the last year is over 1300 and I am just blown away by the support. If you have been a frequent viewer thank you so much I so appreciative of your support. I really enjoy writing this blog, sharing Dusk's silly stories, my fashion opinions and my life.

A Skunk is A Skunk...

             This past weekend Dusk had Cole's entire family in stitches laughing. You see at our home Dusk only has a few toys. He gets one stuffed animal, and a few balls. At Cole's parents house they basically have a toy chest full of doggie toys. Dusk is basically in doggie heaven. Through out the weekend I had to follow behind Dusk and pick up the toys that Dusk had joyfully strewn throughout the house. Sunday Cole and I noticed Dusk kept pulling out and playing with the same toy, a skunk with two squeakers. There were several other toys that were exactly like that one, just different animals...and Dusk wanted no part of that. All he wanted was the skunk. So, Cole decided he was gonna put to toys back up. Directly after he did Dusk pranced right over to the toy box and pulled "his" skunk out...right away. Cole promptly took the toy back and put it up, but this time he buried it under a couple toys in the box. Dusk went back over to the box a second later, pulled out a few toys and swiftly dragged "his" skunk back out...without a second thought about the other toys. By this point the whole family was standing around, all eyes on Dusk. Out of curiosity Cole dumped the whole toy box, which was at least 20 toys, put the skunk on the bottom, and piled all the other toys back in the toy box. To our surprise, Dusk waltzed right on over to the toy box, shoved his little nose in the box and dragged "his" skunk right out of the box, no other toys were pulled out during his last hunt for "his" skunk. His determination to have that toy was quite the entertainment that night!