Goin' to the Chapel, Goin' to the Chapel of Love

This past weekend my cousin and her fiancée of 9 years finally tied the knot. They had a beautiful wedding at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC. I was so honored to be a bridesmaid on her special day!

The one thing I wasn't a fan of was all the stress that was put on my cousin, and in return put on anyone trying to help. After watching her plan I've learned one big thing, make sure all prices and costs are dealt with as far ahead before the wedding as possible. You definitely don't want to deal with last minute add ons right before the wedding date. Yes, this is what happened with my cousin. A couple venues tried slamming her with thousands of dollars TWO days before her wedding! Thankfully everything ended up okay and everything turned out beautifully!

Now on to some pictures that I just HAVE to share!

Luckily, my cousin is a huge fashionista so she made sure to make the entire bridal party look fabulous. I loved my dress and shoes! The dress was from Express and the shoes are from Nordstrom, both re-wearable. Except the shoes are 4 inches and were definitely killing my feet by the end of the night, but then again I'm not a huge heel wearer. Learning how to wear high high heels is definitely on my to do list.

Tara, the bride, did a lot of things at home. She bought three picture frames from IKEA and made them into her seating charts. She covered the cardboard with fabric and used ribbon and posted the seating charts. She had twelve tables where she had antique clocks on each hour. Each hour represented the table number that guests were seated at.

On both sides of the seating chart she posted pictures of her and her grooms grandparents. I, once again, loved the frames. These two pictures are our grandparents at their wedding and great-aunts.

I loved the flower arrangements! The top photo is just a table of where the flowers were sitting before being put out. I loved our bouquets but my favorite was the flower girl's "ball" of flowers. The venue didn't allow the flower girl to throw flowers down the aisle so she had a pink ball of flowers with a black ribbon for her to hold it. The bottom picture is the table of flowers at the top of the aisle that were later used on the tables for the reception.

I loved Tara's idea with using a locket. She bought a locket off Etsy.com and tied it wrapped it around the bouquet. Inside she placed a picture of our grandmother on her wedding day. We lost our Teta (grandmother in Arabic) in 2004 and my cousin wanted to have a piece of her with us.

I just loved my cousins wedding dress! She looked absolutely beautiful. And I was so happy that my father had the honor of walking her down the aisle.


I used the word "love" a lot because I truly do love the way the wedding turned out. I can't wait to see the professional pictures that the photographers took. I will try an upload all my pictures online and once the professional ones are out, I will post those also.

I hope my wedding (whenever that may happen) will be as beautiful. And I hope all brides end up with the wedding of their dreams!

The Articles I've Written

n my last post I wrote that I would post my published articles as time goes on, but since I've already had 7 (20-some pages worth) published I don't want to post them all right now. So what I did was I posted them all under the "Articles" page. If you look up and right under the header you will see "Articles" to the right of "Home", just click that and enjoy. I will continue posting any future articles on that page and quite possibly on the main page also. The articles are posted from the first one, onward.

But for now, I'll give a quick run down of the articles:

New 'Piranha' Grabs Audiences - Review of a the play Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha produced through Taking Flight Theater in Loudoun County, VA.

Teen Rebel to Playwright, Falco Talks Back to 'Piranha' Audience - Playwright of Sabbath Night, Ed Falco holds a talk back after a showing of his play.

Life Caught in the Social Net - Me and a fellow writer co-write an article on the communicating and psychological effects of social networking.

Local Gyms, Trainers Offer Trends and Tips for Getting Fit in 2011 - An article about simple and cheap ways of getting fit.

Life is a Balancing Act for NOVA's Working Students - An article on a student who works almost full time and attends school full time.

NOVA Student Juggles Work, School and Family Proudly - A young student works full time, attends school full time and raises a son.

Zesty Zumba Adds Flavor to Loudoun - A Zumba club is added to NOVA's Loudoun Campus

Of course they may not be the funnest articles to read or write about, but writing is writing to me and it's all good practice! I hope you enjoy them, or at least one. ;D

Back in Action

After an, almost, two year hiatus I've decided to come back to blogging. I love it but I would just get way too busy to write and I'd keep telling myself "tomorrow" and obviously, tomorrow turned into 21 months. This time I'm going to be specific with what I post. Since the focus for my major is Journalism I'm going to post any of the articles I write. In addition, I'll be one of the other million bloggers who post reviews. Whenever I go somewhere new, or see a movie, try new food, etc I'll write about it. And of course I'll blog about any random thoughts I have.

I'll start with posting 7 articles I wrote and had published for our school newspaper. This was my last year at community college and was a part of the NOVA Loudoun campus newspaper; The Loudoun Lantern.

After I post my articles I'll probably start with an about me post and then see what happens next.

And I'll have to say, welcome back to me!