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I’m a couple weeks behind schedule on the annual reader survey following an epic run of endless snow and endless sickness. I’ve spent way too much time under blankets and guzzling tea, friends, but I am on the mend and feeling human again. Hooray! Without further ado, it’s time for the 2019 reader survey and one lucky person is going to win a $150 Target gift card as a show of my appreciation.

Read More about The 2019 Reader Survey (And Win a $150 Target Gift Card)

Happy New Year, friends! After my requisite slow start to January, I’m working on jumping back into the groove, still trying to sort out where 2018 ran off to so quickly. This year will mark eleven years since I started blogging, founding one of the world’s very first entertaining blogs. Now solidly more than a decade of my life has been spent in front of a computer screen and behind a camera, elbow deep in paint, cheese, booze and flowers crafting content for The Sweetest Occasion. In the last 10+ years I got married, bought a house, got divorced, had a baby, bought a house and got married. Again. Some days those 10 years feel like they’ve passed by in an instant. Other days I struggle to remember who that girl was who started this blog all those years ago.

Read More about Why Everything Feels Different in 2019 + My Future in Blogging

Friends, I don’t know what it is, but January is kicking my ass. Again. This has happened the last couple of years, too, and it is endlessly frustrating. I love the holiday season, both personally and professionally. It’s my favorite content to brainstorm, concept, shoot and share and by the time the new year hits it’s almost like I’ve used up all my creativity stores and it takes a few weeks for that part of my brain to kick back into gear. Add in a horrible cold/stomach bug/persistent fever situation for Emerson last week (the cold part of which is still lingering) and I have just not had a whole lot of luck getting back into a rhythm. It’s an annoying way to start the year, if I’m honest, because everyone else seems to be fired up and ready to take names in 2018 and I’m over here snuggling a sick toddler and spinning my wheels.

Read More about On Being Creatively Stuck in the New Year + My Goals for 2018

Way back at the beginning of the year when I announced that we’re getting married, we had these grand plans for a backyard wedding and a cool brunch reception. Fast forward seven months or so and all of our plans have changed approximately twelve or thirteen times. Now we’re just a little over a week out from making it official over here (!!!) and I wanted to pause and fill you in our plans, how they’ve changed and share with you some of the things I’ve been buying to bring my vision to life on this whole shindig. Some elements haven’t changed at all! We’re still getting married in our backyard, the original color palette has stayed the same, etc. Beyond that we’ve shaken things up quite a bit. In fact, we’re not even having a traditional reception! There are no table numbers, no seating arrangements, no carved beef. We still aren’t really having an official wedding party, we never had bachelorette or bachelor parties and we opted for a casual backyard dinner party with some of our closest friends in lieu of any kind of shower. I am pretty sure we’re going to have one of the coolest weddings ever though, even if I do say so myself. Read on for the details!

Read More about We’re Getting Married! All About Our Plans + What I’ve Been Buying

Nine years ago, I sat down one late summer day in 2008 and signed up for a Blogger account. I’d been “blogging” since before it was referred to as such on Live Journal long before then, but this was different. I’m not sure I knew quite how different it would turn out to be, but on that day I sat and wrote the very first blog post on a little blog I decided to name The Sweetest Occasion, a play on my mother’s maiden name, Sweet. (You can read more about that here.) Fast forward nine years later and I’ve been blogging full-time since May of 2011, less than three years after I’d started my blogging journey. When I started blogging, Twitter wasn’t even a thing. Facebook didn’t have fan pages. Instagram wasn’t even a twinkling in anyone’s eye because phone cameras were still years away from producing decent photos. The concept of Snapchat would have made us all laugh until our sides hurt. Blogging was a way of bringing people together, connecting with readers, forging friendships with people across the country or across the globe. And it was exciting. Today some of my very best friends in the entire world are friends I made through blogging back in those early days. Reading each other’s posts, leaving comments, maybe even exchanging emails and genuinely investing in these relationships was what made blogging special. No one thought we’d be doing this for a career, no one was worried about how many Pinterest shares any particular post would receive (because, you guessed it, Pinterest didn’t exist either), and it was all done for the love of the thing, not for the promise of any reward other than something deep, personal and intangible.

Read More about My Thoughts on Blogging in 2017

A few times of year I sit down and write a post that makes me uncomfortable. In the past I’ve talked about surviving divorce and about how I never wanted to be a mom. Sharing in that way is always liberating, but also really frightening, which I guess is a good segue for admitting that writing this post scares me. Today I am writing a post called, “The Very Real Reason I Don’t Share Photos of Myself Online” and I’m opening that post with a photo of myself. In a word, I am terrified. Over the last nearly ten years I’ve built a brand and a business online, and I’ve done so in a way that puts nearly all of the focus on the work I’m doing and the things I’m creating, and very intentionally not on myself. As much as I cherish my relationships with my readers, I’ve also been completely freaked out by the idea of making myself and my face the center of attention in any way shape or form. And the reason is simple. I don’t look like a lot of bloggers do. I am not perfectly thin, and petite and cute, and no clothing brands are going to want to send me their fall collection to feature on my Instagram feed.

Read More about The Very Real Reason I Don’t Share Photos of Myself Online

Since first announcing way back in February that we’re getting married, I have updated you precisely zero times on the details. In short that’s simply because we changed our minds approximately 427 times over the last several months about what we’re doing, how large our guest list is going to be and how everything is going to play out. Budget is a major factor (since we have a kids who always come first and a house we’re constantly working on), and stress is also a major player, too. Between my time as an event planner and helping friends and family with their weddings, I’ve planned and executed something like 100 weddings. So while I’m certainly no novice at organizing the details, I also know how stressful big lavish affairs can be and I just don’t want any of that excess emotion and pressure clouding the experience for us. So we’re skipping the formal dinner in lieu of an extended cocktail hour followed by a pub crawl. (More details on that soon!) We’re planning a ceremony that will be really, deeply personal and probably a tear jerker. And it all starts with the perfect invitations!

Read More about We’re Getting Married! Choosing Our Wedding Invitations

Happy Valentine’s Day, friends! However you’re celebrating or not celebrating today, and whomever you may spend your day with, I hope you have a day that leaves you feeling loved. Speaking of feeling loved, I’ve been holding out on you guys and today seems like the perfect day to spill the beans – we’re getting married! …

Read More about Happy Valentine’s Day and WE ARE GETTING MARRIED!