One Year Down!

I really can’t believe an entire year has gone by since Mr. Rucksack and I tied the knot. It seems like just yesterday that we were celebrating our wedding with the best little dance party by the beach ever.

We celebrated our anniversary by going back to the place where our marriage began: The Madison Surf Club. We reminisced about the past year while drinking champagne on the beach before heading out to a fabulous dinner.

For gifts, we decided to stick to the traditional anniversary gift of paper. I knew that I wanted to make my gift to Mr. R and he decided to do the same. I'm so excited to have these hang in our home!

I created our silhouettes and inserted the lyrics to the song that we constantly sing to each other: "Home." Mr. R wrote out e.e. cummings' poem "i carry your hear" not only because I love e.e. cummings, but because that's what I used for our Rucksack recap titles! I love that it ties in with the bee! 

So what’s been going on with the Rucksacks over the last year? Well, Mr. R started a new job in March that allows him to work from home and hang out with The Beez all day long. I’m pretty jealous that they get to have lunchtime dates together, but it is nice to be greeted with kisses and wine when I get home now!

We’re still renovating and decorating that fixer-upper house of ours, but it’s finally starting to come together and be something we’re proud of! 

We traveled to Florida for my 30^th(!!) birthday and to attend my cousin’s wedding. Weddings are a lot more fun now that we can sit back and relax instead of taking mental notes of ideas to steal.

Mr. Rucksack continues to coach youth Lacrosse and has added summer and fall travel teams to his yearly coaching efforts. Luckily he has an amazing wife/team manager to deal with uniform orders and player boo-boos.  

I finally quit my waitressing job and now spend my free time eating bonbons on the couch while watching Netflix. (Just kidding, bonbons aren’t Paleo.) In actuality, I got pretty sick and needed to take some time to just sleep and watch movies for awhile. Now that I finally have some energy back, I’ve been throwing it into DIY projects and house decorating which I’ve been sharing on my new blog Damsel in this Nest.

I can’t honestly say that I miss the hive, but that’s only because I don’t feel like I ever really left! I still read the posts every day and keep in touch with the bees as much as possible. I’m so grateful for the sisterhood of the bees that I joined when I was accepted to Weddingbee and I’ll consider myself a honeybee for life. If you’re on the fence about applying, know that it’s so much more than a place to show off your wedding. The support and love that I received has far outweighed the hard work and any negative snark that came from being a blogger.

If you’d like to follow my new blog and see what’s going on in my life these days, I now reside at Damsel in this Nest. I’d love to see you around there and I promise to keep on reading here. You’re all a part of my life forever!

Peace out for now,

The Rucksacks

Time to Pack Away the Memories

I can't believe the time has come to say goodbye to the hive. When I started this journey, I had no idea how integral Weddingbee would become to not only my wedding, but to my life. Sharing our wedding with you has been so special and I'm thankful that I'll have these posts to look back on, but what's touched me the most is all of your support, advice and love. I feel so lucky to have been part of this community and to have you all in my life.

 

Before we part ways, I'd like to share some of the best advice and my favorite memories from the day, along with some of my favorite outtakes that didn't make it into my recap posts.

Guest Photo via Instagram

Best Planning Advice: I cannot stress enough how helpful "Eff it" was in planning for our wedding. It's easy to get carried away with DIY projects and plans, so keep yourself sane by narrowing down your lists to essentials and screw the rest if you have to!

Best Wedding Advice: Mr. Rucksack passed on this sage advice from his boss who told him to "Make sure you look out at your guests when you get to the end of the aisle and spend a moment  taking it all in." Before we said our vows, I turned and looked at each and every person that was there to support us. It's one of those mental pictures I'll have forever and it was such a wonderful and overwhelming feeling to see all of our loved ones surrounding us.

Best Marriage Advice: This gem comes from my Auntie K who told me at the rehearsal dinner "My only marriage advice is 'Don't kill him.'" When I laughed and said that that shouldn't be too hard she responded very seriously "You'd be surprised." I'll keep this in mind as Mr. Rucksack and I go through this crazy journey together, for when I do reach the point when I want to kill him.

Favorite Moment: Remember that non-father-daughter dance I was so worried about? That, along with my private last dance with Mr. Rucksack, ended up being one of my favorite moments of the night.

What We Did Right: I stressed pretty hard about the kind of wedding we would have, from who we should include to where and how we wanted to celebrate. In the end, I think our wedding was pretty wonderful and that it was perfect in the ways that mattered. Most notably, I'm happy with the overall feeling of the wedding from the venue to the guest list. We had to stick to our guns to keep our wedding under 100 people, but I'm so glad we did. It was really special knowing every one of our guests as well as we did.

I'm still seriously pissed we missed this game of flip cup.

What I Wish We'd Done Differently: My biggest complaint was that there just wasn't enough time for everything and unfortunately there's not much to do about that. The day just went by too fast! I might have added some festivities onto the rehearsal dinner evening or requested a morning after brunch so that we could have spent more time with our guests. But during planning I really didn't know how fast 6 hours can go by. (I mean, it seems to drag on at work, doesn't it?)

What's we've done since the wedding: After an amazing wedding, the best honeymoon ever, and a trip to Minnesota to visit Mr. Rucksack's family, we've been happy to just relax over the past few months. Since we bought our house about a year before our wedding, not too much has changed with the exception of officially combining our finances. I'd be lying if I said that finance combining road was without some bumps, but we're mostly still in our happy honeymoon phase of marriage. It's pretty great.

Personal Photo

Coming up for the Rucksacks: We're currently gearing up for the next phase of our home renovations, including finishing the cabinet-less kitchen we've been living with for the past year! I'll also be finally changing my name after putting it off until the last possible minute before I lose the right to a free new passport. We're also looking forward to the season two premiere of House of Cards to celebrate our first Valentine's Day together, because you know, we lead an exciting life.
 

Personal Photo

And with that, folks, the Rucksack wedding has come to an end. Thank you to each and every one of you for reading, commenting and sharing the love. And don't think you've seen the last of me. I plan on hanging out here for a long time to come, reading the other lovely bees' posts and visiting on the boards.

Personal Photo

Cheers from the Rucksacks! 

(All photos by Abigail Scott unless otherwise noted)