Last Sunday I got fitted for the suit I’m going to wear at my wedding.

This has been a wild year, but it is happily headed toward my wedding day. The plans are coming together, venues and food are all nailed down, invitations are going out soon and I’ll be spending the next couple of months securing housing for us here in Portland.

Since both us have friends and family spread out across the world, I wanted to give a general update. I also wanted to let my friends in Portland and in Kentucky know about receptions we’ll be having after the wedding since we are keeping the wedding small and having it in Boise, ID where Ashley is from.

The Wedding

The wedding itself will be at Kathryn Albertson Park in downtown Boise Idaho on June 21st of this year at 6:30pm, with a reception at 8:00pm in the Basque restaurant Bardenay which is also downtown. Pastor Ryan Mount will be presiding. My dad, Pastor Randy Nation, will be my best man, and my good friend, Pastor Eric Roseberry, will be my only other groomsman. My good friends Keith Doyle and Adam Coffman were also going to be in it, but living in Kentucky and Indiana and being Pastors makes the distance and duties hard to overcome. Ashley’s two lovely sisters will be her bridesmaids. We have only invited 150 people due to travel and venue restraints. Many in my own family won’t be able to attend. If these barriers were not upon us, we have no doubt that we could fill a stadium.

Portland Party

In July or August, we will be having a party in Portland, hosted by our community group from church, the same community group where Ashley and I got to know each other and started dating last year. This will be a more open event, like an open house. I’ll post a Facebook event once the details are nailed down.

Kentucky Reception

This December 29th, at my home church in Versailles, Kentucky, Woodford Community Christian Church, we will be having a reception in the afternoon. Ashley and I will be spending Christmas and New Years in Kentucky with my family and friends, and that will be the first time she will meet many of them. I’m still working out the details of this event, but between holidays with family, attending church and visiting with friends, I’ll have to be satisfied with the amount of catching up I can do with the time we have.

In the meantime…

As I have said, in the next couple of months, I’ll be focused on securing housing. We’re currently looking to live the neighborhood where our community group meets, which is also not too far from where I work. My boss and his wife were the ones who hosted our community group when I joined it last summer, and where I found myself very interested in everything Ashley had to say. I feel a bit attached to this part of town, a quirky and diverse neighborhood, including a Bible College, a ghetto, dive bars, foodie joints, and all the wonders of Portland living. Its called Montavilla. We’ll see.

Ashley will be finishing up her coursework for her Master of Arts in TESOL at Multnomah University, and I’ll continue in my work for GRAYBOX, where I’m doing marketing consulting and project management.

We’ll be doing premarital counseling at our church, most likely starting shortly before we’re married and finishing once we are married due to how the schedule worked out. We are extremely well supported, and I can’t think of a better situation for our relationship and early married years then we are having right now.

Thanks to all my friends and family, and I hope that at some point this year I’ll be able to say hello to everyone in person at least once.