Monday, 12/30/24: Talking about the last Monday before the wedding (!!)

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 time with my mom, time to rest and quiet time Sunday morning. 

TODAY: Today, I’m most excited to see my uncle, aunt and cousins who just arrived in town!

INTENTION: My intention this week is to savor the special moments. 

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

Meaningful Musings: Wedding Week!!!!

Happy last Monday of 2024! Or, as I’m thinking of it… the last Monday before the wedding!

I really cannot believe it. This Friday, Matt and I will be married! So many months of planning and preparation have led to this moment. I cannot wait for guests to start arriving and for our two families and group of friends to be in the same place for a couple of days. Eeek!

One of the things I love most about writing this newsletter is that it captures moments in time. I’m able to document what I’m thinking about, processing, or working through. Some editions are more thought-out and eloquent than others 🙂 … but I love the real-time archiving.

So, if today I sound a bit all over the place / maybe a little stressed / mostly bubbling with excitement, that’s because it’s exactly how I’m feeling.   

I really am feeling good. Actually, better than good. I’m feeling JOYFUL.

I’d love to hear from any of you: what do you remember about the week of your wedding? How were you feeling? Any advice you have for Matt or me?

I keep thinking about a paragraph I read recently in the novel Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. When thinking about her upcoming maiden voyage from Ireland to America, the protagonist Ellis reflects, “[It] gave her a feeling, or more a set of feelings, she thought she might experience in the days before the her wedding, days in which everyone looked at her in the rush of arrangements with light in their eyes, days in which she herself was fizzy with excitement but careful not to think too precisely about what the next few weeks would be like in case she lost her nerve.”

While I don’t have any concerns about losing my nerve, I can relate to needing to only think about what is immediately in front of me. With everything that will happen between now and then, Friday feels like it’s a month away rather than a matter of days!  

Today is my last working day before the wedding, and I have a few more wedding planning tasks to check off my list. In my mind, I’ve already planned my celebratory glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve to toast the end of wedding planning and welcome the beginning of the celebrations.

Even though I’ve really enjoyed wedding planning in general, it does come with its fair amount of stressors and dynamics to navigate. Each day we get closer to January 3, I can feel that weight of planning lifting. Soon there will be nothing to do except enjoy time with family and friends and get married!

And at the risk of sounding cliché, it really is true what they say… while I am so excited for the actual wedding day, what makes me even more excited is thinking about what comes next… the life Matt and I will get to build together, side by side, as a team. Living out the commitments we will publicly promise each other on Friday.

As Matt has been saying since before we were engaged, “let’s get our forever started already!!!”

Sounds good to me!

And I can’t wait to share more here after the wedding. I’ll be taking a few weeks off in January to recharge and enjoy Hawaii with Matt, but I’ll be back with musings and more in 2025.

Hope you all have a very happy New Year! Thank you, as always, for reading!

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