I woke up about 5:00 am on my wedding day. The only reason I got any sleep at all was because my mother gave both me and DH Tylenol PM so we could get at least a little sleep. My parents are insanely early risers (they get up at 4 am most days) so they were already up and moving when I got up. They helped me get some last minute things together, and made me eat breakfast. DH got up, I hopped in the shower, and then suddenly it was like everyone arrived at once.

My DOC and her assistant showed up at the house to load up all of our stuff into her car. All my bridesmaids arrived within five minutes of each other. I wasn’t quite ready to go when they arrived, and I ended up forgetting things because I felt rushed to get out of the house.

I assumed my DOC was heading right to our venue, so we followed about 15 minutes after her. When we got there, she wasn’t there, and the doors were locked. Now I will say we were supposed to have access at 10:30, so we WERE there early, but I was told getting in early wouldn’t be an issue. Well, it was, because the woman working our event (she was there to make sure we didn’t trash the place, she was in no way a coordinator) was anal retentive and didn’t want people going inside if she wasn’t there, even though my caterer has keys to the building and literally works there EVERY.EFFING.WEEKEND.

My DOC and caterer showed up and we had to wait about twenty minutes for the venue woman to arrive. I ended up getting most of my make-up applied in the parking lot. I learned a lesson here, make sure your venue allows at least TWO HOURS set-up time before your wedding. If you’re doing your own set-up or have a complicated set-up, I’d allow at least four! Mine only allowed 90 minutes, which I thought would be fine since we had a small wedding. It wasn’t. If I hadn’t a DOC, I wouldn’t have had any time to get ready!

Once we got in, we went upstairs to the bridal suite and started getting ready. My bridesmaids and mother were there at first, and soon my MIL arrived. My vendors popped in and out as I was getting ready, and once my photographer arrived, she started documenting everything. You’re going to be pulled in a million directions on wedding day, as your vendors, bridal party and guests look to you for direction. Luckily, this made the time before the wedding go by in a flash. It was only the last few minutes before walking down the aisle that seemed to drag!

Here are some of my favorite “getting ready” shots. Our photographer, Jenni of Forever-Yesterday Photography, stood in a chair to get some of the really great ones!

Once the wedding is over, you can’t help but wonder what to do with all those photos. If you’re like me, an album was not included in your photographer’s package. I just couldn’t see the sense in paying for an album from a photographer when I could make one easily and cheaply myself.

But I digress. Once we got the CD of hi-res images, I got to work at shutterfly.com. I created our guest book with them and was pleased with how user friendly their software was. I was so tickled with our album that I ordered Christmas cards (not budget friendly but so, so cute!) and smaller albums for our parents.

We got our wedding album last week and I’m in LOVE with it. I kind of wish I’d added a few more pages in! The book is 12×12 with 20 pages included. I added about 15 more pages in. The cost for the book came to about $70 after significant savings (always check around for coupon codes!) and our parent’s albums came to about $18 each-including shipping.

Lastly, I used shutterfly’s 50 free prints deal to snag some prints of our wedding for scrapbooking purposes. We ordered a few prints from our photographer, but not many. I’m not going to lie, the quality of the prints from our photographer were better than shutterfly’s-but I don’t think that justifies a cost that is significantly higher!

I can’t wait for our parents to see their books at Christmas and to get started on our wedding Scrapbook.

If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you’ll know that I went through some drama to find THE wedding dress. I bought a dress online. Didn’t love it when I got it. Decided I was going to be a short dress bride, then I didn’t love that dress. Bought two dresses online, and both were out of stock. That drove me to David’s Bridal three weeks before my wedding, where I found THE dress, style # 9E8787.

Not every bride is going to have that OMGILOVEIT moment where she tears up. I didn’t think I would, but once I found my dress, I did tear up. This is probably due to the huge amount of relief I felt having finally found the dress. I underestimated how important the dress is to the wedding. I’m not going to say it’s the be all end all, but I do think it’s an important part to feeling beautiful on your wedding day. My parents recently brought my dress to me and I took it out of the garment bag and just stared at it. I have such wonderful memories wearing that dress, and I’m so glad that it was the dress I ended up wearing on one of the happiest days of my life.

Here are some of my favorite shots of the dress! All credited to Forever-Yesterday Photography.

I know I suck at blogging. I will do the recaps soon, even if for my own benefit, before I forget things!

The real reason for this post is to show off the pretty little note we received from the White House yesterday! So yes, send your invitations to the Obamas, they will reply! Or, okay, someone in the greetings office will reply with an auto-penned note, but we were tickled regardless.

The five minutes before I walked down the aisle were pretty damn excruciating. I was upstairs with my bridal party and waiting to be called downstairs. Some of the guests wandered upstairs to use the bathroom, and I have to admit I was kind of annoyed at them seeing in my dress before I walked down the aisle, but I was too frazzled to say so.

Finally, unable to take it anymore, I sent my mother downstairs to tell everyone we were ready, so everyone needed to be seated fer crissakes. The next few minutes were a bit of a blur. When I went downstairs, my groom and groomsmen were no where to be found. I asked where they were. No response. I had my one moment all day where I lost it, and said “WHERE ARE THE GROOMSMEN?!” My DOC’s assistant told me to look out the window, they were all walking outside with the reverend. This was not how I planned it, but I didn’t care, it was nice. And a bit surreal, looking out the mansion’s windows seeing my groom and all our guests assembled.

Then my in-laws went down the aisle, then my mother. She almost face planted, and I saw everyone kind of reach for her, but I couldn’t process that at the time. Finally the girls went and the doors closed. It was time to go. And I started to cry as my music started. It was the one time all day that I actually cried. Then I looked down and saw that my father was stepping on my dress. I told him this, he stepped to the side, and then it was my turn to go.

Unfortunately I’d forgotten my sole-mates to keep me from sinking into the grass, and I was wearing flip-flops, which made the dress a bit too long. And I stepped out and almost face-planted myself. Freaked out, I moved so quickly down the aisle to avoid being the bride that fell down the aisle. We only made it through the first verse of the song before I was there.

During our pictures I kept saying “I CAN’T BELIEVE I ALMOST FELL.” Then my sister told me, “Mom almost bit it too.” And then I laughed. I was the bride who almost fell down the aisle, who had her mother almost fall down the aisle, who is now nick-named Firebutt for how fast I moved down that aisle. I’m honestly amazed I have any photos of me walking down the aisle where I’m not looking down, but here’s one:

I totally missed that one of our wedding photos was featured in Weddingbee’s gallery of the day last week. I need to pay more attention!

I have to admit that I don’t have much desire to think about weddings now that mine is over with. I’ve dropped most of the wedding blogs from my reader, with the exception of Weddingbee (just to see how a few Bees’ weddings turn out) Accordians and Lace (which is more a marriage than a wedding blog now anyway) and the beloved A Practical Wedding, which I have no plans to stop reading anytime soon.

Some brides they feel sadness that their weddings are over. I felt glee. I was SO GLAD to be done with that part of my life, and I guess that includes this blog too. It’s not a feeling that I was expecting. I thought I’d really cherish doing in-depth recaps, but in all honesty? I just can’t be bothered. It was a wonderful day, and I plan on revisiting it, just not in the detail I’ve seen in some wedding blogs.

So, I’m planning on doing a few wrap-up posts with my vendor reviews and a couple re-cap posts. I know it can be annoying to read a wedding blog for months and then have the blogger fall off the face of the earth, so I didn’t want to do that.

I’ll end with another one of my favorite shots from the day!

Credit to Forever-Yesterday Photography

I’m still feeling like a lazy blogger, but thankfully my vendors are picking up the slack. Now our photographer has blogged our wedding! You can check it out here!

I don’t have the energy to blog about the nitty gritty of the wedding yet, so I thought I’d be lazy and link to my wonderful DOC’s blog post here. She shows some of the centerpieces and other details.

Heidi is based out of Delaware but travels to surrounding states. Contact her if you live in the area and need a DOC!

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been married for over a week and I’m now back in the real world. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s depressing! The week of the wedding was pretty stressful, but now that it’s over, things are moving pretty slowly. I don’t miss wedding planning in the least, but I do miss the time it took up! That said, now that it’s over I have time to reflect on the day.

I have to be honest, my wedding day went really well. I had my freak-out on Friday, and I’m glad I got it out of the way because on Saturday? Things went well. Of COURSE there are going to be snags. Here are a few of them:

-I forgot my solemates and ended up wearing flip flops down the aisle as my heels were sinking into the grass. Because of this I almost tripped going down the aisle. Ladies, wear the shoes you wore at your dress fitting or you may faceplant!
-I felt horrible about almost falling until my bridesmaids informed me that my mother almost fell, so I wasn’t the only one!
-The best man dropped the rings. He almost dropped them in a bush. It was pretty damn hilarious.
-The woman working at our venue was annoying. I stood outside with my vendors for about 20 minutes until she arrived. Of course, I was told that the other woman that works weddings is laid back and doesn’t care who goes in the venue before she’s there. Just my luck. She also butted in where it wasn’t necessary, like telling my bridesmaids they were holding their bouquets too low. Ugh.

Honestly? That’s about all that went wrong. It DID rain on my wedding day, but it was like something out of the movies. We had our ceremony and portraits outside. Once we moved inside to eat, it rained. Once we were done eating, it stopped. Once we left the reception, it started again and didn’t stop all night.

We did have people leave early. Some of Jeremy’s family stayed for the ceremony and left, as they came a long way to see us and needed to head back. Our own siblings left early too-but this is okay. We realized long ago that our wedding was never going to be as important to our guests as it was to us. It’s important that people come to your wedding-not how long they stay.

No one really played the board games. But I figured that this would be the case. Everyone thought they were neat, and some people did play cards, but I figured most of our guests would talk-and that’s what they did.

Overall, everyone had a great time and many people told me how unique our wedding was, which is always great to hear! It really makes all those months of planning and all the hours spent on those little details worth it!