The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Matthews

Soo.. surprise!! I got married. I guess it's not a secret to most people, but a lot haven't seen pictures or anything so... this post is dedicated to the wedding day and some of the things I would like to work on now that I'm unemployed!! WOOOOOooooooooo!!! SO PSYCHED to not be teaching anymore! In response to the most common question: do I miss my students? Yes, but.... I'm too excited about the future to be dwelling in the past. 😂

I left out the names of my friends because I'm not sure how much personal information I actually want to share on here... My main intention for this blog was to document my creations - but now that I have so many adventures coming up, I'll probably document some of that too. Today, my creations actually tie into some of the wedding stuff. 😊

Nolan and I had a lovely, weird and small COVID wedding in the desert with our closest friends in southern Utah just outside of St. George on December 5th, 2020. After visiting his family in Maryland for Thanksgiving, Nolan flew out to Tucson, AZ to observe at the telescopes at the F. L. Whipple Observatory. (where we currently are right now) Unfortunately this also meant he would be staying up all night every night for the week before our wedding. I took work off on Friday and picked Nolan up from the airport around 10am. We drove home, packed up the car, packed up our pup Moose, and left for St. George around 1pm. Moose and Nolan slept in the back of the car for the five hour drive it took us to get to our Airbnb.

After getting our much needed beauty sleep at the Airbnb, (Nolan especially, considering he had just gotten back from observing and getting zero sleep the night before) we talked with our friends with plans to meet at a pin sent to me by our roommate. While I was putting my bouquet together and getting ready, a couple of my girl friends went to the pin and found a freakin' awesome location close by that had cell service. Two of my roommates, our friend, Nolan, Moose and I packed up the Subaru and headed out around 1pm. Needless to say it was a pretty tight squeeze in the car. 😂

Make up done, awkwardly waiting for the ceremony...

This is the part where you get to hear about how freaking awesome all of my friends are. I had no idea what to expect when they sent us the location pin. We drove for about 45 minutes and arrived at this beautiful little canyon off of a dirt road in the middle of the desert. Somehow we got lucky with a beautiful sunny day in DECEMBER - I didn't even have to wear a cover over my dress! When we first got there, we will still waiting for some people to arrive so we had a bit of time to hang out and chill for a bit before everything got going.

The view from the ceremony location.

Once our minister arrived, things got wayyy more hectic than I expected. My friends had planned more than I could have imagined and got to work, setting up tents, tables, a freaking archway and aisle, flowers, a wedding cake, snacks, and of course - a full bar. It was beautiful! I honestly don't even know how all of this went down as smoothly as it seemed. (Or maybe it wasn't actually that smooth.... Everything was kind of a blur for me from this point up until the ceremony. I was having some pre wedding jitters and was unsure how to help... again, my friends are awesome!)

Freaking gorgeous arch!!! Still can't get over this.

After the wedding arch was set up, everyone got dressed, we hooked up a hair straightener to the power generator and I was lucky enough to get my hair done by one of my girl friends. I fixed up my make up and put my dress on in a tent and my friends fed me beverages while we waited on the go ahead to walk down the aisle. My friend managed to find a place with cell service and connected with our parents so they could watch the ceremony virtually.

A photo of the whole wedding crew after the ceremony.

We were married by one of our good friends around sunset. Our ceremony was short and sweet. We signed our wedding papers, ate cake, drank by the fire and danced the night away. It was amazing. My friends are AWESOME for putting everything together!! Of course Nolan and I wished our families could have been there, but we figured we can have a reception with everyone once COVID is less of a concern. I couldn't have imagined a better wedding given the circumstances.

The cake and the view!!! Beautiful :)

To everyone who helped out with the wedding - thank you SO much. I can't even tell you how much it means to me. I kind of went into it with zero expectations and ended up having a beautiful dream wedding.

Nolan and I are currently kind of... homeless. When I first started this web site, I had hoped to focus on baking, documenting my creations until I got to a point where I felt confident in creating my own recipes and maybe even selling some of my treats. Well... it's kind of difficult to be a baker when you don't really have a kitchen to work in. Plus, I've been wanting to get into graphic design and graphic art a little bit more, so that's what I've been working on lately. 😊

Something I was weirdly excited about for my wedding was making my own bouquet. I don't even know why, but I was SO proud of it and wanted it in almost all of my pictures. (Looking back at some of the pictures... I probably should have let it go for a while 😂) I guess I just enjoyed making something beautiful. Apparently I just really like creating things.

I liked it so much that I even re-created it in digital form.

I wanted to do something nice and personal for my friends, so I had the idea of sending them each thank you cards that I created with some pictures of them from the wedding.

Unfortunately, by the time I had finished the layout for these thank you cards, I was already in Houston with my family and we were facing a freaking ARCTIC FREEZE. So, I didn't end up getting to have these printed with a personal note in each in time, so I bought some cards from the store and received the pictures SO late - literally the day before we left for Tucson... Maybe it's the thought that counts?????

In doing this, I learned that I enjoy drawing on my iPad as well.. so while I am in transition in moving to France and am unable to bake what I want when I want - I will continue to create digitally.

Here's the latest from a picture of my friend from the wedding. 😊

Not too bad for my first time dabbling with drawing and ProCreate!

We leave Tucson on Tuesday, will be in Maryland for about two weeks, and are hoping to leave for France by mid March. Since I won't have my own kitchen to work in until then... stay tuned for more digital creations. Thanks for reading, if you made it this far!!