Monday, 2/17/25: Talking about a wedding recap (part 1!)

Happy Monday!

It’s a new week, which means it’s time for your next Monday motivation newsletter.

Read on below for some steps to a happier Monday and some positive thoughts to get your week started.

Three Steps to a Happier Monday

Each newsletter starts with three prompts to inspire gratitude and simple intention setting. Take a moment and jot down answers to these three questions. To give an example, I share my answers below.  

Step 1: What are three things I appreciated from the weekend? 

Step 2: What is one thing I can be excited about today?

Step 3: What is my intention for this week? 

GRATITUDE: From my weekend, I am thankful for a beautiful wedding celebration for Kara and Brenden Saturday, texts with friends and Matt helping me have a positive attitude about a flight delay yesterday.

TODAY: Today, I’m most excited to have the day off work – treating today like my Sunday! 

INTENTION: My intention this week is to focus on prioritizing sleep.

Okay, your turn! And if you want to share your three steps, I am all ears. 🙂

Meaningful Musings: Wedding Recap (Part 1)

One of my favorite things about writing this newsletter is the ability to document different life seasons and experiences. It’s moving to look back at past reflections and see how far I’ve come… and how many things stay the same year after year.

A goal of mine this year is to have fun recapping our wedding. I want to intentionally preserve the memories and special moments by creating things we can look back on in years to come. 

So, I hope you’ll indulge me as I use this newsletter as one of the ways to recap and reflect.

I know this is probably going to get a bit longwinded (this is my choice of entertainment during a 4-hour and counting flight delay..), so I’ve decided I’ll break things up into two parts: Part 1 (today) will focus on pre-wedding day festivities and Part 2 will focus on the wedding day itself. 

Note: this may be a newsletter that is best to “view in browser.” 

Here we go! 

The Wedding Recap… Part 1

When Matt and I picked Friday, Jan. 3, 2025 as our wedding date, we did so for a couple of reasons:

• We both knew we wanted a winter, festive wedding. We initially targeted early December but quickly found out that all December dates were booked at venues we were interested in… so January it was!
• Getting married right around the holidays is definitely a gamble. I’m so appreciative of everyone who adjusted their holiday plans to be with us and I also completely understood anyone who wasn’t able to make it. With New Year’s falling on a Wednesday this year, we hoped that most people would have Jan. 1 off work and would be able to extend that time off to the 2nd and the 3rd as well. From my perspective, it all worked out well and I loved how the wedding felt like an extension of the holiday season!
• We also loved the idea of the somewhat untraditional Friday wedding because of the reasons above and because we liked that it gave our guests their whole weekend. They could either take the time to travel home and get settled or – because we knew many guests were coming from cold places – stay in warm, sunny Florida. It made me so happy that a few stayed in town to soak up the warmth and fun activities Orlando (my hometown) has to offer. 

So, with all of that, the other thing Matt and I were aligned on was “front-loading” most of the celebrating and activities. We wanted the end of the reception to be the END (well, at least in the formal celebration sense – I had hoped people would go out and continue the party after and so glad they did!!). 

I know it’s very common to do the morning-after wedding brunch, and I absolutely love the sentiment behind it (offering a meal to out-of-town guests before they travel home). But for Matt and me, we really wanted to take what we loved about an after-wedding brunch and do it before the wedding. 

Which is why our wedding recap begins a few days before the wedding… on Wednesday, Jan. 1!

Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025

I remember waking up on Wednesday morning feeling excited, but also a little stressed. I felt like I still had so many little things to do on my list and was eager to get them done.

Luckily, my uncle, aunt and cousins came over to my parents for brunch to celebrate my uncle’s birthday and my cousins were amazing helpers. They jumped right in to get all the things done. They helped me cross reference the seating chart and our cards for guests one more time, get all the electronic sparklers ready to go for the grand exit and move everything we were bringing to the reception out to the car. Our plan was to drop all decorations and reception items at the venue the next day, so this really was the final call for all last-minute tweaks and details. 

Welcome Gathering 

That evening, we hosted a very informal welcoming gathering at a sports bar that was located walking distance from the hotels most guests were staying at. My parents went over early to get a bunch of tables on the back patio and I went over to see Matt at his hotel so we could practice our first dance one more time before the big day. 

One of my favorite parts of this day was when Matt and I were walking over to the welcome gathering. The elevators opened to the hotel lobby and the Dunn’s – our family friends who grew up across the street from my mom and feel so much like family – were all standing there checking in. It was so exciting and made everything feel so real – people were arriving!!! 

That theme of excitement continued all night. I would get excited every time someone walked onto the patio at the welcome gathering! One of my cousins!! My friends from college!! My mom’s friends from Chicago!! It was just a little taste of what was to come over the next few days, but to have a bar filled with people who have played a role in either Matt or my life was so special. 

It was the best night filled with catching up, watching football and getting even more excited for the days ahead! 

Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025

The day and night before! 

This day was a jam-packed day in the BEST way. We started early with my mom, Cindi (Matt’s mom) and I getting our hair blown out for all the events to come. 

Bridal Luncheon 

Then, my mom and I ran home and quickly got changed before heading over to the bridal luncheon! 

Some context on this luncheon: in August, Cindi and her friend Diane threw me the most beautiful wedding shower in Indianapolis. I wanted to do a shower on my side too, but since my family is a bit spread out distance-wise, I couldn’t decide on a location. Any location I picked would mean traveling, which I knew people would be happy to do, but I didn’t feel great about it since the wedding also would require travel. 

So, through conversations with my mom, we planned to take the elements we liked about a shower (getting together with friends and family!) and do it the morning before the wedding. When my Aunt Stacy heard about the idea, she jumped right in and offered to host it and made it better than I could have imagined. 

It was such a nice way to continue kicking off the celebrations and be able to spend time and talk with those who had traveled and taken time off work to be there. 

It was also hosted at the country club where the reception would be the next day, so we were able to pop over to the ballroom and drop off decorations and see the beginnings of the venue setup, which was surreal!! 

Church Rehearsal 

After the bridal luncheon was another quick turnaround to get ready for the rehearsal at the church! 

The church rehearsal caught me a bit by surprise. It ended up being one of my top 3 favorite moments from the wedding week.

There was something so special about being in our family church, just Matt, me, our parents, our bridesmaids, groomsmen, Ann Marie & Grace who were doing readings and my cousins who were acting as ushers exactly 24 hours before the wedding. 

In the excitement and rush of the past couple of days, the rehearsal felt slow and quiet and deliberate. A reminder of the true reason for all this celebrating: Matt and I making a covenant to each other in a sacred place. I remember taking a couple of deep breaths in the pew as we prayed together before we got started, appreciating the sunlight that was streaming through the stained glass and urging myself to savor the moment. 

After a thorough practice run, we were rehearsed and ready! We all jumped on the party bus and headed to the rehearsal dinner. 

Rehearsal Dinner 

On the way to the rehearsal dinner was the first time I really felt the weight of wedding planning lift. There was nothing left to plan! We were ready as we would ever be! The only thing left to do was enjoy our family and friends, have fun… and get married! And that’s exactly what we did. 

Matt’s mom Cindi planned the rehearsal dinner of our dreams. She found the perfect venue – a historic home called The Capen House, located next to the Albin Polasek Museum in Winter Park, FL, which is the town I went to high school in. 

The Capen House backs up to Lake Killarney, which is the same lakefront Matt and I got engaged on!

To commemorate the evening and say thank you to his parents, Matt and I were able to track down a painting of The Capen House from a local artist (who I ended up meeting and who couldn’t have been nicer!!). We’ll remember this night forever! 

The whole evening was so beautiful. We had cocktail hour outside with a string duet playing instrumental versions of contemporary songs (like Taylor Swift!) before venturing inside to the main room for dinner.

Matt’s dad kicked off the evening with a heartfelt, meaningful toast that ended in an Irish blessing as a nod to my family’s heritage. My Uncle Chip said a few words about how he knew Matt was the one for me as soon as his met him and how Matt has an incredible gift of making anyone feel at ease and like you’ve known him forever (so true!!). Matt appreciated that Uncle Chip also snuck in a live update of the Norte Dame-Georgie score (which was taking place at the same time as the rehearsal). My brother Ryan led us in grace before dinner and then we enjoyed delicious food together! 

There was such a palpable giddiness in the air the whole night. The fact that our wedding was the next day started to feel very, very real and VERY exciting. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to get myself to go to sleep that night!

We had the party bus drop us off at the hotel everyone was staying at and walked in to see so many of my mom’s friends and family members in the lobby bar. So fun!! 

I lasted about an hour chatting with everyone until I started to get tired (yay!) and my mom and I headed home to rest up for the big day…

More to come in a Part 2 soon!! 

Picture of the Week

That’s all for today! I hope you found something in today’s newsletter that sparked motivation, made you smile or inspired a positive Monday thought. Don’t underestimate the power of starting small… a fulfilling week starts with just one fulfilling day. You’ve got this! 

Let’s make it a great Monday!
Megan