Hey friends!! I must say I had the best of intentions of wishing you a very Merry Christmas and am a few days late so I’ll send along my best wishes for a Happy New Year instead. This year has just absolutely flown by. Especially Christmas. I feel like I didn’t have a chance to enjoy all of our traditions. Our entire family has been sick for the last week. We’re hoping that we’re over the worst of it and will ring in the New Year healthy! I wish the same for you. I see lots of Facebook posts about how hard 2016 has been for everyone and it makes me sad.
The New Year is so symbolic of a fresh start but I try to think of each morning as a fresh start. My New Year’s resolution is to try to wake up each morning and set the tone and mindset for my day. Alto often I find myself dwelling on the negative and not focusing on my blessings. It’s so much easier to feel wronged, stressed and lash out than it is to be determined to ride the storm and enjoy the ride. It’s my resolution to be more present in the moment.
I spend so much time focusing on my work and trying to provide for our future and my girls that I forget to stop and make memories with them in the present. We’re going to spend our money making memories instead of on stuff. We’re going to (attempt) put away the phones and turn off the TV and talk, play games and laugh. We’re going to laugh often and long and hard. We’re not going to worry about wrinkles as long as they are laugh lines and not frown lines. We’re going to travel every chance we get and appreciate it and not worry about what our Instagram feeds look like. I’m going to yell less. I feel like I yelled loud and often this year.
As I look back at our year we’ve had some incredible moments but I’ve robbed a lot of moments by not enjoying them when I had the opportunity. I was so focused on everything being perfect at every moment that I’ve forgotten how to go with the flow and see where life leads us. I’ve spent way too much time dwelling on things and have been caught up in the incessant wave of social media. 
As a perfectionist it’s really a hard pill to swallow when things don’t go the way I want them to 100% of the time. I’m really going to try hard to embrace imperfection this year and find the perfection in it. The perfect imperfection is after all what drives creativity right? It’s essentially art. I’m going to strive to see beauty in myself and everything around me. I’m going to do my best to slow down time so that I don’t miss anything and I hope you do the same. You know as a wedding planner I tell my couples all the time to slow down and enjoy the engagement. That you’ll never get it back and it goes by so fast. I tell them to stop planning for their wedding and plan for their marriage. When you plan for your marriage your wedding will fall into place.
For all those couples that are ringing in the New Year with the bling of a new ring I truly hope that you take time to enjoy basking in the glow that getting engaged will bring. Don’t worry about rushing to bridal shows or finding vendors right away. There is time. I encourage you to have a long engagement to savor the anticipation and excitement of getting married. Create your love story and be very deliberate with your plans for your marriage and you just might get through the wedding planning without argument or stress or strife.
My wish for you my friend is to be able to disconnect, let go and start truly living and make 2017 open your eyes to new opportunities because that’s what I wish for myself. It is after all a Wonderful Life.