I landed in Virginia yesterday and it is so good to be home.

I'll be spending the week with my family before Rob lands on Friday and his family gets in on Saturday for a little engagement dinner and celebration before we head to Williamsburg for another week. Until then, I have friends to catch up with, morning workouts and a Tuesday spa date with my mom, a wedding dress to try on, and a really sweet old dog to snuggle and go on walks with every day.

I have some posts scheduled to go live while I'm away, but feel free to follow along with me in real-time on Instagram.

Wishing you a warm and happy Monday wherever you may be!

Wedding days are definitely special occasions to look forward to. As you prepare your way to this exceptional day, you want to make sure that every single detail is as perfect as possible, and this includes choosing the right dress for your bridesmaids. So to make it a little easier, here are some ideas to help you pick the perfect bridesmaid dresses for your wedding day.

1. Make preparations ahead of time – get organized. Make use of the available resources you have such as the latest fashion magazines and wedding websites.

2. Make a specific budget for their dresses. You don’t have to necessarily spend more just to give them a gorgeous dress. In fact, you can find low-priced vintage bridesmaid dresses and they look just as fabulous as the pricey dresses you might find in the mall.

3. Ask for your bridesmaids' opinion – you want your girls to play a part in the selection since they are the ones who are going to wear them! Make sure that they’ll be comfortable with the dress they are going to wear. Have them pitch in their ideas. You can pick the fabric or the color of the dresses and let them decide on the other details so that everybody’s happy. Do they like lace? Will some be more comfortable with sleeves?

We hope you can make use of the ideas we have shared with you today. Choosing dresses for your bridesmaids doesn’t need to be stressful. You just have to come up with a plan to make all your wedding preparations hassle-free and maintain your positive aura ‘til the big day comes. Good luck!

This post was provided by Kevin at The Green Guide.

Sometimes I forget that we've shared three apartments.

The first one was in Roanoke, where I found anxiety and started graduate school. I felt like such an adult, grinding my coffee beans fresh every morning and parking in my garage. Rob lived there over the summer, and then Christmas break, and then moved in for another summer after his graduation from Hampden-Sydney, but it felt less like our apartment than it felt like it was mine, even if it didn't fit.

The second one was in Charlottesville, with weird green carpet and a tiny kitchen, but a little office/guest room that made us feel like we had a home. We spent hours in libraries and computer labs, at bars with cheap drinks and cornhole set up under a string of outdoor lights, and were constantly with friends. I felt like less of an adult, with a part-time job as a barista and afternoons full of research, and I loved it.

Now we're in Minneapolis, in the high-rise apartment with a balcony and a pool we never use. It's big enough and everything is new and we finally have that bookcase from IKEA that I've always wanted. This is the apartment we have as an engaged couple, and it's the first place we'll live as newlyweds. What other defining moments (other than that impending Minnesota winter) will occur while we live under this roof, I don't know yet. But I'll look back one day and see it from the future, and I'll tell you what this place was like and what it means to us because of that.

After a year apart, I forgot that living together is something Rob and I have done before--the norm, really. We've left little parts of ourselves places and picked up and taken things with us, and now we're here, together (again).