God works in mysterious ways - we are so blessed!

In this moment in time I feel so lucky to have great friends and family. We now have TWO photographers for our wedding. A friend from college, Alicia, is going to be photographing the rehearsal dinner and the ceremony. Derek and I both had classes with her, and we got to see some of her work since she was a photographer for The Flashlight. Her shots are beautiful. Her photography business is just taking off and well, what are friends for?

Danielle Barden is our second photographer. I won a photo contest in April that she held. She holds a different contest each month. My prize for winning was 25 dollars off of a photo shoot with her. We got to see all of the photos ahead of time on her shutterfly account (we will be recieving a CD in the mail today with the pictures) and she did an AMAZING job. We asked her if she would be willing to do our wedding and she was so excited!

Unfortunately we could not afford the deposit right away which would have put us on her schedule for good. Derek's mom offered to loan us the money for the deposit so we can book Danielle asap! I would have been so scared while saving up the money, because Danielle is pretty much booked solid through next year! It only would have been a matter of time before our wedding date was taken by someone else. I feel relieved and happy now that Arloween was able to help us in such a big way.

Two weeks ago while we were at the 147th Gettysburg reenactment, my mom wanted to visit a friend in the sutlers, Cissy. When we got there, Cissy was talking to a couple who were visiting for the weekend. They were talking about how much of a great time they were having. Mom and Dad told them that they were welcome to come up to our units camp, and they were instantly hooked. We now have two new members of the 6th NY artillery unit, Reneau and Mark. They had an absolute fabulous time. Mom and Reneau have been e-mailing each other back and forth since then, and Reneau is a cake decorator and gives classes at Michael's craft store. So not only is she willing to help us out with decorations because she gets a discount, but she is also making our cake! How lucky is that?!

Wow. *knock on wood* Can things get any better?