$40 for flower girl dresses?!?

this weekend, i went with dana to look for bridesmaid dresses and flower girl dresses. although we didn't find any great bridesmaid dresses, we were able to find the flower girl dresses for $29.99 each and the bows to go on them for $10...it was so crazy! we thought they would be more than that. i'm so grateful and that's such a blessing!! it's so cool to see God provide things like this.

The Faith that Jesus speaks of...

As Fatimah mentioned in her blog, it has been a journey of waiting, being tried, and be prompted by the Lord to daily depend upon Him.  For a month we have been looking for a place to have the reception that would fit within our budget.  There were many times when we would have incredible hope and other times when we were in despair, wondering what God was doing in our hearts in the process.  As many of you know, it is easier to reflect afterwards, rather than at the moment of wonder or despair, what the Lord is teaching and saying. 

During these past three weeks, the Lord spoke to me very clearly in three specific instances in Matthew.  Between Matthew 6 and 16 Jesus says "O ye of little faith" three specific times.  In the third instance, Jesus mentions this to the disciples in the context of their forgetfulness and lack of understanding.  Jesus reminded them about all that he had already done, similar to God's constant reminder to Israel to look back at all that He had done, and helped them to elevate their understanding about the Kingdom of God and God's redemptive work being about something beyond simple bread.  God is so faithful to remind us that He has been at work this whole time, eventhough we are prone to forget that at times of pressing and stretching.  What a mighty and gracious God we serve.  

In light of our budget needs and the waiting time, you can imagine how we were feeling when we received a call from the Messiah Too Banquet hall, which is 15-20 minutes from the location of our ceremony and the price seemed right.  After thinking about it, Fatimah and I decided to be spontaneous and look into going to North Carolina that very evening if we could get in touch with Barbara at Messiah Too.  We didn't know if it would work out, but after Fatimah got in touch with her and text messaged me that we were going, I got excited.  

When we showed up to the banquet hall, we were impressed with the hall; after tasting the food, Fatimah turned to me and gave me the look of "I love this place and the food" and it was a wrap from there.  Praise the Lord for His provision and teaching us to endure in faith and openness to His direction and timing in the process of sanctification.  We also were able to visit with some of her family, which is always a blessing.  Thanks for celebrating with us.

To Go...Or Not To Go...To Trust Or Not To Trust

Trying to find a reception place has been a crazy process. Every place that we were seeing were extremely expensive...and extremely out of our budget. It was very disappointing to be hoping for less reasonable and only seeing $35 - $125 per person. It was also hard to try to figure out what location would be the cheapest/most efficient to have the wedding. I was frustrated and didn't know where to look...in NC or Philly. After becoming a little stressed about it, I decided...and it was suggested to take a step back and not work on finding a reception place for a little bit. Tommy and Kiera both started searching for places, but finding one place each that seemed to be more reasonable than what I was finding. The lady from Messiah Too called Tommy back and gave him great quotes! It seemed to be a great deal. Tommy was ready sign up for this place, but we hadn't seen any pictures or tasted the food. So Tommy called me on Friday morning and said that this is probably the only weekend we can go down to view it and taste to food so let's go down to do it. I was hesistant, but open to going down. So I called the lady and she didn't answer. So I started praying that she would call us back (Tommy had already called her) and have availability to see us the next day. I eventually called her again and she answered. She said she could fit us in, so I cancelled my hair appointment [:(] and started planning for our trip down to Greensboro, NC for literally just a day. On my drive home to pack my clothes, I started to realize that if this ended up not being the place that we would be wasting money, time and effort...so this was going to either go really good or really bad. None the less, I decided that I still wanted to go and take the chance.

When we got to the place, we were so excited about what we saw! It was set up for an anniversary party and looked great! Once we tasted the food, it was official!! We are so overjoyed for how God has blessed us with this location...and we should be about $20 shy of our budget for the reception! I am so encouraged by how God is showing Himself strong in all of the planning for the wedding thus far. It has definitely been challenging me to trust Him more for all of these things. And even though some of these things are pure wants and not needs, it is so awesome to know that He enjoys blessing His children with their wants as well as their needs!! And even in the little things, it is just a testament to God support of our marriage and His love for us.

This time is stretching in many ways but I am truly encouraged to see God's hand in the midst of it all.

Fatimah :)