Marriage - Ashley Zin

Wedding

What I Wish I Knew When Planning My Wedding

March 30, 2017

I don’t think anything stressed me out more in life than planning my wedding. The biggest problem I had was that I had only been to two wedding in my life prior to my own. One was when I was in Kindergarten – so I was five or six; and the other was when I was seven or eight, when I was the flower girl in my aunt’s wedding. This ended up being a major issue because you see, I barely remembered anything from those weddings. Obviously right? So I really didn’t understand how I was supposed to plan my own while not even knowing what happens at a wedding (aside from the obvious things you see on TV).

I also had this idea in my head that everyone else had this grand idea of what happens at weddings and that nobody ever really did anything differently than these ideas that everybody knew about besides me. So as you can imagine this alone caused a ton of stress. I was constantly trying to make sure my wedding met these standards without really knowing what the standards even were. Sounds a little crazy, but I really didn’t want to do anything at the wedding where people were going to think we were cheap or just think that our wedding wasn’t a good one.

Now on the other side of this I can see the flaws in my thinking. For one, there is no such thing as this grand wedding that everyone knows about besides you. There are traditions in weddings, like cake cutting, first dances, and a garter toss; but honestly nobody cares if you participate in them. And the biggest thing is, if you don’t care about something and don’t want to participate in one of these traditions, then just don’t. You don’t owe anyone an explanation as to why you didn’t do something at your wedding. Your response can simply be, “We decided it wasn’t right for us”. And honestly, people are very unlike to ask why you did or didn’t do anything anyway.

What I really wish I knew is that most people don’t care about what you do at your wedding.

It’s honestly so true, most people understand that it’s your wedding and that it’s your choice what you do or don’t do and they will respect that. I know it’s easier said than done but don’t let other people’s opinion stress you out about your own wedding. At the end of the day, you aren’t going to regret the things you didn’t do because you thought so and so was going to be upset if you didn’t. But after the wedding, you might second-guess whether or not you really did need to spend the extra money trying to impress your guests. Your wedding day is about you. Do what makes you and your fiance happy.

The other thing that I wish I knew when planning my wedding is that you are going to be so excited about getting married that you really won’t care about what people are thinking of you and your day.

This one is more helpful for the introverts. The other major source of stress for me prior to my wedding day was me being so fearful of what people were going to be thinking about me throughout the day. I was terrified to have to say my vows in front of everyone – like absolutely scared out of my mind. Public speaking is literally my worst nightmare.

But to be completely honest, I didn’t think twice about the people who were watching me. All that mattered was that I was actually getting to marry my best friend. This was all really happening. The day was finally there. I was actually excited to say my vows in front of everyone and share with them the love we both had for Jesus and for each other.

(If you’re curious what our vows were you can read them in this post: Zinhobls Say I Do: Ceremony Pictures.)

My hope is to encourage you if you are so stressed and nervous about planning your wedding. Everything is going to come out beautifully because you are working so hard. Your guests will be happy because they love the two of you. They will be happy for the two of you and that’s all that matters. Take it from me on the other side of the stress. 😉

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Life, Marriage

Zinhobls Say I Do: Our Honeymoon Recap

March 23, 2017
Today is the last installment of our wedding series! 🙁 While I’m sad to see it go, it’s probably about time haha, I think I’ve been doing these for about two months. Today I’m going to share pictures and tell a little bit about our honeymoon in the Dominican Republic! We were actually really bad about taking pictures, but I will share with you what we did document. 🙂 If you missed any of the other posts in this series, you can check them out below:
New York City + A Mishap

Right at the end of our reception we took a limo from the venue to New York City where we would fly out right to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic! P.S. Let’s not forget though, the pastor who officiated our wedding forgot to sign and have everyone else sign our wedding license, so we technically were not “officially” married at this point! We had to meet him, and have him bring two random “witnesses” to sign our wedding license on the way into the city!!! It was crazy and stressful and definitely not how I pictured this time, haha. But now I guess we have a fun story to tell. 😉

We finally arrived at our hotel in the city at close to midnight, but at least we made it and were now officially married! It was a gorgeous hotel room, which we actually didn’t take any pictures of because we were so overwhelmed with what had just happened and about the fact that we were now married!! This is when it actually hit me, and I still get so excited when I think back on this moment.

Up Bright and Early To Catch A Plane

The plane ride was about 3 hours and wasn’t bad at all. We still were so excited to be married that it really didn’t matter what we did at this point I don’t think, we were just so happy. We stayed at Confresi Palm Beach & Spa Resort, which was all-inclusive.

Arriving at our Resort

We arrived and got settled into our room and were just so thankful to be there. It’s actually killing me to write about this because I am so desperately craving a trip to a tropical beach right now, haha! Up above is the view right outside our hotel room.

Fun in the Sun

We spent our days by first waking up and making the most amazing coffee in our room, and drinking it our on the balcony while reading our Bibles. Then we would head to breakfast at the buffet, and go back to our rooms and change into bathing suits. We would then head to either one of the really nice pools they had or down to the beach.

On the beach in the picture above, there were wait staff where they would bring you any food or drink you wanted right to your chair. It was awesome, but a little much for Tommy and I, haha.

Our Fun Rings

We bought these rings from Qalo to use on our honeymoon because we heard of all the horror stories of people losing their rings on their honeymoons. These rings are great, and we still use them to this day if we’re doing anything were we think we could lose them.

Our Evenings

After we were done spending the day at the pool we would go back and shower and get ready for dinner. We either would head back to the buffet (where we would also eat for lunch), or go to one of the restaurants we made reservations for. Our favorite was the Italian restaurant (pictured above).

A Sick Day

We did have one day that was not the greatest. I got sick during the middle of the vacation, and ended up going to the doctors on the resort. They gave me antibiotics and I was okay the next day.

All in all though it was a great first trip to take as husband and wife. We headed back home after six nights there and it was so much fun. Now I am missing it so much and desperately want to go back! 🙁
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Wedding

How To Use Your Wedding Decor as Home Decor

March 22, 2017
As many of you already know, I got married 10 months ago (to the day!). As many of you also know that planning a wedding is no joke. We were only engaged for about 6 months so we had to be very diligent with our planning. There’s just so much that goes into planning a wedding, and when it’s your wedding, you want everything to be perfect. (Or about as close to perfect as you can get!)

One of my favorite parts of planning our special day was picking out, and making our wedding decor. We purposely picked a venue that was very limited on what it provided so that we could plan all the details ourselves. (Also so we could find the cheapest options too!) So since I spent countless hours planning exactly how our wedding was going to look, I was obviously very attached to all of those decor items after the wedding. The idea of getting rid of, or even just storing them in my closet where they were out of sight just didn’t sit well with me. I loved all of our decor and especially wasn’t done with using it since we had only done so for one day!

So what’s a girl to do when she has all of her wedding decor and a new empty, undecorated apartment? Use her wedding decor for home decor, of course! And I loved it so much that even after I put away our winter decor this month, I brought back out our wedding stuff as home decor yet again. I still love it so much, and even more so now because it reminds me of our wedding! I wanted to share some pictures and ideas of how I did this and ways that you can too if maybe you’re about to get married and are wondering – “What in the world am I going to do with all of this stuff?!”

How To Use Your Wedding Decor As Home Decor

1 | Display Any Banners + Wedding Cards
- Use a long string (I used twine), and hole punch each corner of all of your wedding cards and string through and hang as a banner! I would suggest a thick string otherwise the cards may not hold and slide down into each other. The twine worked perfectly. I actually left these cards up all year round because I just love seeing them and being reminded of the people who gave them to us.
- Hang any banner you used at the wedding on your wall! I made this “Love Is Sweet” banner for our dessert table, and I think it looks so cute under the cards.
- If you happened to use Silk Flowers in your bouquet like me, use them as a centerpiece on your dining room table! My mother-in-law actually made me the vase as well (it looks like my wedding dress) so that was perfect to hold them in, but any vase will do.
2 | Hang All Of The Signs
- If you had any signs that would work in your home, hang those as well! We had this cute coffee bar sign at our wedding, and needed more space because we don’t have much counter space, so I bought this cute little coffee cart and hung the sign above.
- Similar to the last tip, that wood sign was also used at our wedding and works perfectly next to our kitchen sink to give the kitchen a little bit more personality. 😉
- One of my favorite signs from the wedding.
- You can even hang the back of your seat signs on the wall!
3 | Hang/Display Your Guest Book (if possible)
- If you haven’t gotten married yet, a suggestion is to opt for a guest book that can be displayed in your home somewhere, rather than a guest book that will sit on a shelf. We bought this one off of Etsy (as we did with most of our decor), and there are so many other variations if this type doesn’t fit what you’re looking for. They also have globes, or my brother and sister-in-law bought a foam pumpkin because they got married in October, and had everyone sign that. This is an awesome option because you can always read everyone’s best wishes so easily in your day-to-day life.
4 | Use Smaller Items On A Bookshelf
- The flowers on the top are bridesmaid flowers. This is obviously only an option if you used silk flowers, and if one of your bridesmaids are willing to let you keep their flowers. 😉
- We used our unity candle as decor on this shelf as well.
- The flowers on the middle shelf were from my “throw” bouquet. (Also the same as the ones our flower girl had.)
- I’m not going to list every item, but everything besides the candy jar on the top shelf, are from tables we had used to decorate from the wedding. If you have a lot of smaller items like this, either buying a bookshelf to decorate or making one like this one (out of stained crates), they are perfect for adding a little bit of wedding to your home.
If you are interested in seeing our wedding pictures, you can check those out below. Many, if not all, of these items and how we used them for the wedding can be found in the last post, Decor Pictures + Details.
\\Did you use your wedding decor as home decor? How did you do it? Am I missing anything?
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Wedding

Zinhobls Say I Do: Decor Pictures + Details

March 16, 2017
Hi friends. Today is the last post on just the wedding. Next week I will be sharing out Honeymoon Recap from the Dominican Republic! Today I just wanted to do one last post and share pictures of mostly just the decor that we used that day. I want to do this for two reasons: one is because I worked very hard on finding and making some of the decor and I really want to remember it well and document it here. And two is because I’m hoping that it may help give ideas to someone who may be planning their own wedding.

If you’re interested in seeing the other wedding picture posts, you can check those out below:
The Ceremony Decor

The Reception Decor

This was the sweetheart table and I used that vase that my MIL made me to put my flowers in.

The banner says “Love is Sweet”.

The Smaller Details

Going through these and finally getting to the end feels so sad. I miss this day so much. Really wishing I could go back now!
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Wedding

Zinhobls Say I Do: Reception Pictures

March 9, 2017

Today I’m going to be sharing my Reception Pictures from our wedding. We chose not to have a DJ for the reception, and instead have the best man make the announcements. We chose to do this in hopes to have our reception feel more intimate since we only had close friends and family there. Our reception went so quickly but was so much fun. I think you can tell by the pictures!

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Faith, Marriage

How My Relationship With God Changed After Getting Married: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

March 7, 2017
I have been married just over 9 months now and it’s been a journey to say the least. You can read hundreds of articles about getting married, and still be utterly unprepared for just how much your world is going to change. It changes in all different ways, some good and others… well I wouldn’t say bad, but definitely in some ways that you never expected that take some time getting used to. This is definitely how I feel about my relationship with God since getting married. I want to share with you all the ways it has changed: the good, the bad, and the ugly. (PS. This is a vulnerable post, please be kind.)

The Good

I know that the intro probably made it sound as if my relationship with God changed for the worst after getting married, but there are definitely still some good aspects to the changes as well.
- I now have someone to pray with me all the time. My husband and I are still learning to be comfortable praying with each other, but it’s an awesome thing to be struggling with something and be able to ask Tommy to pray for me.
- I have someone to remind me of God’s goodness when I can’t see it. Sometimes when you’re walking through something hard, it’s really hard to see God in the midst of it. Having someone walking through life so closely with you gives them the ability to encourage you and show you that God is right there with you even when you can’t see it.
- Being married has caused me to grow my trust in God. I’m still learning to do this but I now have to learn to trust God with my husband. It’s not only my life that matters to me so greatly, but my husband’s as well. I had to learn to first trust my life in God’s hands and I am not (slowly) learning to trust Tommy’s life in God’s hands as well.
The Bad

Even though I am labeling these things as bad, I still know that God can and will bring goodness out of them.
- I don’t spend as much quality time with God. I’m still working on the answer as to why this is. It’s very frustrating but I just don’t feel as close with God now as I did before. Maybe I just need to make more time for God so that there can be a better relationship, I’m not sure, but I am still working through this because I want to be closer with God again.
- I don’t push myself outside of my comfort zone as much as I did when I was single. This is embarrassing but I subconsciously believed (and probably still do a little bit) that God would answer my prayers if I was being a “good Christian” and trying my absolute best to follow him. And while I know that this is not true, I realize now that when I was single I wasn’t quite as comfortable with my life and would push myself outside of my comfort zone more because I knew that was what God wanted. Now it’s much easier to stay in my own cozy life because I am much more content with it. I really want to start challenging myself more though because it is very important for my walk with God.
The Ugly

I just want to start this section off by asking that you please do not judge me for this. I realize that it is not good and am working my way through fixing it, which is why it is under the section labeled: The Ugly.
- I don’t feel like I need God as much as I used to. Like I said I hate this about myself, but I’m writing it because it’s true and it’s been a struggle since getting married. Before I got married I felt like I very much needed God because I felt alone. Now that I have a loving husband to come home to it can be easy to turn to him for fulfillment or for him to solve my problems instead of God. I desire a closer relationship with God and to turn to him first though and I will keep confessing and fighting against this until I feel that I am no longer struggling with it.
- I sometimes forget that God gave me my marriage and don’t trust him with it. While most of the time I am overwhelmed with thanksgiving to God for answering the biggest desire of my heart, sometimes I forget that he cares about this dream I have as much as I do. This is when I have to learn to trust him more, like I mentioned earlier, because I need to trust that he will protect my marriage. I guess because it is such a joy and such a big desire of my heart to be married, I am afraid of losing this dream, but I know I don’t have to be afraid and that I need to trust God more.
Getting married completely flops your world upside down and I think that that is the reason why my relationship with God has also changed completely. I think it’s okay to admit that you aren’t where you want to be when it comes to your relationship with God, which is why I do not feel any shame for admitting these things. I do want to work on growing in my relationship with God, and my hopes with sharing this is to maybe help someone else who has felt like their relationship with God is different after getting married. Or at least encourage others to take a look at their relationship with God honestly and try their best to improve it.

I’d love to hear from you! If you’re married, has your relationship changed from when you were single? Do you have any tips for me? If you’re single, do you think your relationship with God will change after you get married? How so?
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