Oh. My. Gosh.

I haven't been great about blogging and have been even WORSE about taking pictures, so bear with this image-less post. But I have to record some of the excitement of these last 10 days since I stopped working full-time.

It's been SUCH a whirwind for me! There were two days last week that I was gone for almost 10 hours - one when I went up to Milwaukee to see my friend, Darcy, who did my hair. Darcy was a stylist in a former life but is now the Director of Catering at a Sheraton outside the city so she took some of my business cards and added me to their preferred vendor list. Darcy and I met many years ago during my stint on Mackinac Island. She knew the old me, pre-marriage and kids and keeps all my secrets for me.

On Wednesday, I had to go to a meeting in the Chicago suburbs with my florist friend, Renee, who is having me work with her on a really large wedding in July. It's at one of the mansions on the lake and is VERY intense so she needs all the help she can get. I came home absolutely EXHAUSTED from that meeting, even though technically I had spent most of that day just sitting in the car.

On Friday, I had my very first wedding consultation. I was sooooo nervous! It was a referral from a girl I know who works at one of the local golf clubs that does a lot of weddings. I had run into her at Walmart the Saturday before my last week of work and told her what I was doing - three days later, she emailed me this gentleman's name. So I met up with him and his wife and his daughter, the bride, on Friday evening. I had thrown together a few printed materials for them to look at and basically just spent an hour doing my best to listen to them. That was my strategy: to listen. Well, it worked because at the end of the consulation, the father of the bride said that he was "extremely impressed" by me and today he called to hire me for my highest priced package. WOW!

I know it's just one booking, but I'm pretty encouraged by the fact that it was my very first consult AND I haven't even been doing this for two weeks! Now I just have to get 15 more to be able to make more money than I even made at my 50+ hour a week job. I know wedding coordination is going to be a lot of work, but at least I'm not sitting in a windowless office for 10 hours a day. The flexibility of being one's own boss is something I think just about everyone longs for and now I have it! Praise to God!

And this week is going to be another crazy one because our families are coming in for our 10 year vow renewal on Thursday. I'm so excited to have everyone in for this visit and also to get some really great photos out of it courtesy of my friend, Matt Mason. He took the family pictures for our anniversary last year, too, and I just love them. I hope the boys behave themselves during the ceremony and for the pictures afterward.

After this weekend, hopefully things will get back to a more "normal" schedule and I'll be able to focus a bit more on growing my business and getting my name out there. But I'm certainly not going to wish away the next few days - it's going to be so fun!