I Gotta Feelin'...

Our photographer from the wedding set up a camera that takes pictures every 15 seconds and captured our entire reception! I tried to post it on here, but it wasn't working so go check it out at the Creative Juice Photography Blog.

Livelihoods and Lollipops

On a recent assessment of my scholastic standing, I have discovered that I am halfway to a degree in Business and halfway through pre-requisites for pharmacy school. Nate's about 1/16 of the way through his pharmacy pre-reqs so I thought, what the heck? I might as well double major in business AND biochemistry while I wait for him to catch up. LoL. It's not as impressive as it sounds, believe me. I'm only taking two to three classes per semester while I'm working, and it will take me three years at that rate, but it's still exciting to know that I'm halfway on my way to doing something useful.

Nate has had a hard time finding a job here in Salt Lake. Today he was going around to see about possibly donating plasma to earn some money and not feel lazy (although, technically it is still lazy to lie down and donate blood for a livelihood, but at least he'll get a cookie and some dough. LoL). Our budget has been pretty tight, but mostly because I refuse to live off of chicken noodle soup, ramen and pancakes. I gotsta have some meat and corn in theres somewheres.

Speaking of food, I have become obsessed with it ever since I entered wedded bliss. For people that are on a tight budget and little time, I HAVE to give my recommendation for KraftFoods.com. Under the "Living on a Budget" section, they have something called 1 bag, 5 dinners. It gives you a shopping list of items that should fit into 1-2 grocery bags and recipes for 5 dinners that can be made using the ingredients you just bought. I love that it does all the planning for me and I only have to go grocery shopping once a week. They even have a Healthy Living section with recipes that are under 400 calories per serving. And, the best part, each of the recipes takes less than 15 minutes of prep time. Seriously, this website was made for me.

Lastly, we finally got our wedding pictures and they look awesome!! Nate and I were laughing and reliving that day all over again. I plan to make them into one of those snazzy coffee table books to match the guestbook and the photobook Kristen made me that are currently on our coffee table. Anyway, if anyone wants to see the pictures and is in town, you're more than welcome to drop by and take a gander at our wedding awesomeness.

Reception Pictures on Creative Juice Photography Blog!

We've all been waiting for it and the time has finally come!! Go to Creative Juice Photography's Blog and check out some of the pics from the reception. I dare you NOT to laugh.

Temple Pics are up on the blog!!

Jessi at Creative Juice Photography has posted up some of our pics at the temple and says some pretty cool things about me, so check it out and get excited for the reception pics!!

In Sickness and In Health

I know in the temple wedding ceremony, they don't say the infamous "in sickness and in health" clause, but I think Nate and I have decided to try it out for size anyway. From day one, it has gone as follows, Nate sick, Ashley sick, Ashley sick, Nate sick, Nate AND Ashley sick, Ashley sick, Nate sick, Ashley sick. I won, though, being the first that had to go see a doctor. I have an infection that requires an antibiotic that makes me nauseous and another med that turns one of my bodily fluids fluorescent orange. (I know, TMI, but when the doctor told us that, Nate and I thought that it was pretty funny).

Enough about that, the wedding was AWESOME!! We didn't have as many people at the temple as we thought we would AND at one point the temple lost our wedding license, but it was a lot of fun. President Fillmore is slightly insane but everyone said that it was one of the most entertaining sealings they'd ever been to.

After the temple we played around with our amazing photographer, Jessi Stafsen of Creative Juice Photography, and then I had to walk around downtown in my wedding dress because my mom took off with my car keys and Nate's car was parked at the church for the luncheon. But that also meant everyone was congratulating us and treating us like we were famous. There was good food at the luncheon and our parents gave us a tribute and Nate and I got teary-eyed and all that good stuff. ALSO, my neice, Marley, sang "I Am a Child of God" and it was soooo cute.

Nate and I ran some errands that night and the next morning getting ready for the reception. It was nice having so much time to relax and get ready for Saturday. We had a couple of hiccups with broken centerpieces and an hour less of prep time than I thought we had, but other than that, everyone was completely awesome and it turned out looking pretty amazing. We especially need to thank my maid-of-honor, Talisha, for getting 10 round tables and transporting them with little to no notice, and for putting together the guest book that everyone loved. Shannon Williams who purchased a frame and markers so we could decorate the sing-in/gift table. Keeley Clark Jolley for taking command of table arranging and linen coordination on the spur of the moment and for making decisions when Nate was freaking out and couldn't. Our cake was prepared by Barbara "The Cake Lady" Wachs and was delicious, for those of us that got to taste it (I can't wait for our one-year anniversary when we get to eat some more). Although, I did the flower arrangements on it. My bouquets were done by Modern Display and I LOVED them. We got linens and centerpieces from Weddings for Less (wedforlessonline.com) and I havev been telling everyone that they should use them. You have to pick up, set-up, and return stuff yourself, but they are an awesome price and they let you keep the stuff for the entire weekend without extra charge. Not to mention they have a lot more choices than other places I looked at. Wheeler Farm turned out to be an awesome venue with lots of stuff for kids to do and beautiful backdrops for pictures. My brother, Carl, was a stellar DJ. I especially loved the Michael Jackson tribute and my parents dancing. Nate said his favorite part was our first dance together, and just between you and me, that was the closest I've ever seen him to actually crying. One of my favorite parts were when my friends made their way up to the upper balcony and ran around dancing like they were in Mamma Mia! LoL. The whole Fijian community helped with cooking under the direction of my Aunty Beta. And my mom was able to enjoy it, and she did all the post-reception clean-up and returns. Thanks to my dad who purchased food and got us a hotel room for the two nights we were in Salt Lake. Which just goes to show, it takes a village to marry me off.

The honeymoon was a nice relaxing week in Vegas in which we stayed in a nice timeshare apartment arranged by Nate's brother, Thomas, who is now on a ship courtesy of the United States army. It was hot and Nate wasn't feeling well, so most of the time we slept, ate, and watched movies in the nice air conditioned room. We did get out in the evenings to walk around some of the hotels and saw "The Blue Man Group" who I highly recommend seeing. They are hilarious!! Also, Nate got to see the Bellagio Fountains and gardens for the first time. It was awesome to share that with him.

For the 4th of July we were invited down to Newport Beach to hang out with Kristen and Jake, Brent and Christa, and Wendy and David. It was funny to me because Kristen, Wendy, Brent, and I all went to Newport together 2 years ago, and this year we were all able to return with our spouses. Things just seem to change so quickly. Newport was blast. The beach was beautiful, our friends were hilarious, and fireworks on the pier was just about the most romantic thing I could have ever hoped for. I was sad to come home.

But now I am back and Nate and I are putting our life together and it's been pretty awesome. We opened gifts on Wednesday and we got some pretty awesome things. Carissa and Jonathan gave us light sabers WHICH we have already put to some good use. We ended up with 5 rice cookers, 3 blenders, and 2 hand mixers. But, we also got an ice cream maker and crepe maker, so we've got dessert covered for the rest of our lives. When we get everything situated and sorted, I'll post some pics of our place. For now, I must get back to putting away my clothes so it looks like I actually live here. I love you all, and thanks for sharing this part of my life with me. It's been so much fun!

Seashell Bouquets

Ok, so the flowers are fake, but I think they are totally awesome! Vote on your favorite! Found on http://www.etsy.com/ (where Kristen keeps finding all of her crafty stuff). Also where I found this awesome veil...

The plans are going fine...

I know it's been a while since I updated. It's because my brain will explode if one more person bugs me about my wedding plans. Nonetheless, I have made some leaps this week. I bought my wedding dress last week from Mary's Bridal. The website is less than desirable, but there is this one chica there that made my whole experience nice and easy. It's ivory, empire waist with flowing skirt and court train that has flowery embroidery and beading, short sleeves, and square neck. And just so you know, I had to look up all that descriptive stuff because I definitely do not know the wedding dress vocab.

I have a photographer I'd really like to have do my bridals. Her name is Kayleen T. , but I'm putting her on my wish list because she's kind of expensive (because she's worth it!). She did all my friend Lina's pictures and this is the first photographer I've noticed with a lot of pictures of Polynesians! (I'm relatively sure she is also polynesian which makes it super cool).

The invitations are in the drafting process and should be done by next week. Again, special props to Bethany at Glamour Graphics for doing those, too.

The Last Name

I've spent quite a bit of time today looking up my last name because I'm absolutely convinced that it has to have some sort of meaning. There's a couple of theories. Here's the progress I've made so far.

1. My earlier research has led me to believe the name comes from Finland. Mostly because there is a Finnish company that is named Sokkia and a town called Nokia. There is also a cell phone by that name whose company is based in Finland.
2. The town Nokia has a couple of theories of what their name means. One is that it is the plural of "noki" which means "soot" (which is funny because my first name means from the ash tree meadow so by that meaning, I would be Ashy Soot). More likely it comes from an older word "nois" which means sable, a dark furry creature suitable for hunting. Oddly enough they have now come to believe that sables never actually were in Nokia, Finland, but that they gave the wrong name to beavers.
3. Operating under the same deductive reasoning, I tried the words "soki" and "sois" in a Finnish to English dictionary. The closest I came was the word "isoisa" which means grandfather. So, we could be a bunch of grandfathers. Interesting tidbit, in Spanish "sois" is the plural verb for "you are" in formal style. Mixing the two languages our name would mean you are a bunch of grandfathers, making our name an appropriate trash-talking phrase.

On the other hand, my new last name is going to be "Gordon." The meaning of this name is pretty straightforward: a large fortification or a great hill. In French or Spanish it means REALLLLLY fat. And in Gaelic, it means "beloved." However, when you are polynesian, all of these definitions can be pretty much interchangeable.

How's the wedding planning going?

A couple of thoughts. The word wedding is a weird noun. I mean, to wed is a verb, although we don't use it often. "I am going to wed on June twenty-sixth," is a weird, but grammatically correct, sentence. It makes more sense use forms of the verb to marry, but no one asks you how marriage is going when you're going to get married because that would indicate that you are already married and have been trying it out for a while. Which brings me to the question I get asked so often nowadays, "How is the wedding planning going?" Well, wedding would be the present progressive form of the verb "to wed," right? But we can't say, "I am wedding Nathan on June 26th" because even though it follows the rules, it makes no sense. So, when someone asks about wedding planning, I don't know how to respond because my brain goes straight to how odd it is to have two gerunds right next to each other. And when they add going it makes me even more confused. I have less trouble when someone asks how the wedding plans are going because I am, in fact, planning to wed Nathan, although the only thing I have to do to actually wed him is show up at the temple with a marriage license and a temple recommend. I guess the preferred question would be to ask how the wedding reception plans are going. But no one ever asks it like that, do they?

The plans for...whatever...are going well. So far, I've just tried to reserve all the people that I want to do things for the the day that I want them to do them. LoL. Do you like how I just went off about my grammar gripes and then I wrote that sentence. My biggest concern was getting good photographers before anything else and I'm pretty pleased with the ones I've gone with. My wedding pictures are going to be done by Creative Juice Photography which is two of my friends friends, Christi and Jessi. They're from Hawaii (mostly) and they are so much funHopefully we'll be getting my bridal gown and measuring it for alterations tomorrow. My goal is to get a cake person and a flower place in the next week. I'll let you know when I've made some decisions, but I've got a pretty good idea of the places that I want. Then I'll have all of next month to worry about bridesmaids and flower girls and tuxes and decorations.

Speaking of cakes, my mom and I have recently become obesessed with a show called "Ace of Cakes." You can look up their stuff on YouTube. They are AMAZING. But my mom is saddened that I want a boring normal cake instead of a thematic and dramatic one all the way from Baltimore. (Or as the locals call it, B-More).

So that's how the wedding planning is going.

Glamour Graphics Pictures!!!

Hahahaha!! I am so freaking excited!!! Bethany posted some of our pictures on her blog!!! I love them!! Nate and I are not very exciting people to take pictures of, but she sure made us look good.

Engagement Pictures

This Saturday is Picture Day!! Nate and I will be posing for the lovely Bethany of GlamourGraphics. Check out her blog. I especially love the Romeo and Juliet themed ones. Nate and I went shopping for clothing last week. We found some stuff that was brightly colored and super summery so I'm way excited.

Also, any of you that are my facebook friends have seen the balloons and bubbles pictures that my friend Walt Sorenson took of me (click his name to see his website). It was really fun because we've known each other so long and he could get me to laugh so easily. Anyway, I set up a time for him to do a similar photo shoot for Nate where he gets to bring some ideas and outfits he thinks defines him and have some fun looking all debonaire and awesome. Love it!

I want this song on my playlist

Still Recovering

Went to San Francisco this weekend with my fiance and his brother and his brother's friend. I'm still dead tired from the 17hour drive home because of bad weather and closed canyons (Nate didn't get home until 25hours after we left SF and then STILL had to go to work, poor thing).

Before I left, I made my first venture into the world of wedding dresses. Can I tell you that's been my biggest fear? I went to Mary's Bridal over on Highland Drive and had a gander at their stock. A couple of things I learned:

-I am not as large a size as I thought I was (YES!!)

-A starch white dress is NOT becoming on me, but the Ivory color looks HAWT!

-Lace-ups make your body look AMAZING.

-Lace on an ivory dress will probably not show up very well in pictures so I'll probably want to go with some sort of beading.

-Short sleeves, thumbs up.

-I have to keep in mind that the end of June is going to be blazing hot so pay attention to how heavy the material is.

I did find a pretty awesome dress. I'm going to go shopping some more this weekend because I'm going to need to find a dress soon to have time for alterations or shipping.

I've also started organizing all the junk/stuff/adverts from the bridal shows I went to and will be selecting a cake and flower place. Nate and I still haven't come to terms about him having groomsmen, but I'm pretty set on it. AND I need to make an appointment for engagement pics at the end of this month. I won some packages that I'm going to take advantage of and see how they turn out.

And lastly, I turned in my passport application yesterday. My picture TOTALLY looks like a mug shot, but I thought it would be funny for the next ten years to see it.

Keep Thinking...

I've logged on here three days in a row because I keep thinking of something I want to write on here, but I don't remember it during the daytime, apparently. I'll just babble and see if it eventually pops up.



Nate and I are taking our first trip together EVER tomorrow with a lovely drive to San Fransisco. All right, I admit that SF is NOT my favorite place after a less than pleasant trip there when I was 19. All I gotta say is hills are awful and chinatown scared the bejeebes out of me. Nevertheless, I had to coerce Nate into a road trip somehow before we got married and Wicked tickets in one of his favorite places with 6-month advance notice seemed to be the only way. We're not even married and I've had to change the way I do things. Who needs more than 4 weeks to plan a trip? Geez Louise! Anyway, I'm counting down the hours until 4 days of freedom. We are now at 21 hours and 40 minutes. Hal-le-lu-jah!!



I don't know if I've revealed this to my small blogging community, yet, but I have a personal trainer. Her name's Kim and she's adorable. I haven't lost much weight-wise but I can lift twice as much now as I was able to 4 months ago. To quote myself, " I may not look like a supermodel, but I could easily knock one out." My energy, as you can imagine, is through the roof. I feel like I get no sleep, but I don't even care. The weirdest development in my exercise routine thus far is my knees. I've been concentrating on doing elliptical/arc trainer/bicycle/low-impact stuff because my knees are so bad, but I had a craving to start doing some time on the treadmill this last week. A-MAZ-INGly enough, my knees feel better than they have in a long time. Stupid waste-time physical therapy. It was probably making me worse. Anyway, back on track, I learned how to bench press today and I may become addicted to it because of how cool it looks.



I went and took some preliminary photos of Wheeler Farm. That's going to be so much fun. Tyler (my fiance stand-in) came with me and we started looking at a layout for tables and such. There's a big opening in the middle where you can look down on the first floor from the second floor...patio...thing. We thought it would be cool to have bunches of colorful balloons floating up through it for part of the centerpieces. I LOVE balloons. I'm excited to see if we can get it to work.

Invitation Shopping Online

I've decided I really really like the pocket fold wedding invitations. So, I did a little perusing online and found a few ideas. I figure Kini and I can get some do-it-yourself ones and we can put them together...together over Spring Break.

And on a side note, while I was perusing I found these really cute purse and flower idea for bridesmaids...

I got another some more pieces of advice:

You should choose a wedding dress that you feel like yourself in. Don't get something that doesn't fit your personality just because it's "traditional."

If I had to do it over again I would have gotten a wedding dress that I absolutely love. I got one that my mom kinda cried over but I didn't really love.

Reception at WHEELER FARM!!!

Wow. Work was booooooring today. Good thing Mom and Grandpa came to the rescue with WEDDING PLANS. My grandfather had personally taken it upon himself to find me a reception venue for my wedding. He suggested the Lions Club Park (which I thought was an awesome idea), he checked on some of his stake's property (which was also an awesome idea) and yesterday he firmly decided that it was going to be at the pavilion at Wheeler Farm (still an awesome idea). So my mom started doing the legwork and 5 phone calls and negotiations with my fiance, we put in the paperwork for the Activity Barn on June 27th. It's an AMAZING location, I'm totally stoked. The thing is, that is one week later than we were planning on having the Salt Lake reception since we're scheduled to be married on June 19th. I don't want to move the day since we have the temple and my mission president already set. But with so many family members out of town coming in, I want them to be there for the big reception with all the food my Aunties have cooked. So, that's the current predicament. A few more phone calls and some prayers and I'm sure we'll get it figured out.

Things I should probably write down....and then actually do...

I keep thinking that I need to contact people about stuff for the wedding. And then I get caught up in minor things like work and school and my personal health. Ok:

Suzie Hardcastle-Hair
Mandi Williams-Makeup
Colleen Poole-Bridesmaid Dresses (also must go to David's Bridal and Allyse's Bridal)
Carissa Poole-Flowers (also need to find out what those pink lilies were called)
Book the Photographers
Bring myself to actually even think about getting a really white wedding dress that is going to make me look REALLLY big. >whine<
Go completely broke
Lose my mind.

On a side note, there have been suggestions from people that have started "If I had to do it over again..." including:

If I had to do it over again I would have spent more money on the photographer and less money on the bridesmaid dresses

If I had to do it over again I would have paid extra for people to man the carnival games instead of having irresponsible relatives do it.

If I had to do it over again I would have done it on a warmer day.

I'm sure as the day draws closer I'll be recieving even more advice that I will lovingly put up here because that's what blogs are for.

Pink and Green.

And we're talking bright pink and green. My fiance was ok with it, my mom was ok with it. Who cares if my favorite color blue is a far gone casualty? In fact, when I presented it to my mom I said, "You know, like a watermelon." To which she responded, "Watermelon's are RED and green." But that was the best response I've gotten to anything yet.

I vetoed blogs...

...and somehow I'm back here again. But I was always much better at blogging than I was at handwritten stuff. My current dilemma is finding colors for my wedding. Doesn't make much sense to plan the rest of it if I don't really know what color I want it to be unless I plan on coloring it all in with magic markers the day of the wedding. Although, I do like the colors on this layout...I do know that I want dots. Lots of cheerio kind of polka dots (the open ones). I've recently become infatuated with them. It's probably some psychological link the the comfort I find from cereal.