Friday, June 29, 2012

Wedding Day - Getting Ready

I have almost 1,000 pictures from our wedding - don't worry, I won't post them all here. But if the following posts are a little picture heavy its because I had a hard time narrowing down pictures because I LOVE them all so much. Anyways...

I'm not really sure what the goings on of my groom and his men were on the day of the wedding. The only jobs I gave them were to make sure people's cars were at the hotel so they'd have a ride home on Sunday morning and be ready to go by 12:30. They were in capable hands, I knew my mother in law and Kaitlin would have things under control and crack the whip when necessary.
My handsome groom :)
His uniform hat
The groomsmen, ready and waiting to head to the church
I think Kenny is explaining his medals
Jay, telling a story.
The First Limo of the Day
Kenny and his boys
A lot of my bridesmaids stayed over at my parent's house with me on Friday night, as well as some of my girl cousins. My dad, knowing there was too much estrogen for him to handle, decided to stay at the hotel (where our reception was) for the night. We all got up around 7 on Saturday morning, people took showers, my mom made us all breakfast and we ate, drank coffee and chatted for awhile.

The girls who didn't stay the night showed up a little before 8 and the make up lady arrived 8 along with her assistant. Once they got all their stuff set-up, they started doing make-up.

The hair people got there around 9, set up and then started on people's hair.

Getting my eye makeup done
Heather, getting her makeup done.

Kim, getting her make up done.
Trying not to get sick from my nerves...
Susan, getting her make up done.
All the stuff needed to get your makeup done.
As the time drew closer and closer, I got more and more nervous. I wasn't nervous about marrying Kenny or even that anything would go wrong (I was pretty confident in my planning and knowing that Susan, Christy and my bridesmaids could handle anything that happened). I was nervous about people looking at me for a prolong period of time. I don't like to be the center of attention, and thinking about  what was about to happen had me in a state of panic and I almost threw up multiple times (sorry for that graphic).

I was the last person to get my makeup done, so while I was doing that the girls were getting ready. And secretly freaking out that our departure time was fast approaching and I was nowhere near ready. But they never let me see them sweat, and I barely knew what time it was until I was done with everything and had to go get into my dress.
Heather and Susan, putting their jewelry on.

Love this picture of Ashley & Kimberly

Christy, making sure her jewelry looks good

My cousins, Meagan and Malainie (the flower girl)

My pretty cousins :)
Once I was done getting my hair and makeup done, I rushed upstairs to make sure I had all the appropriate undergarments on before stepping into my dress. I came downstairs to put on my dress (and accidentally flashed my girls to all those who could see - whoops).

Susan (my maid of honor) and Christy (my matron of honor) helped me get into the dress and zipped me up. While Susan put on my garter, which of course was Virginia Tech :)
Getting zipped up in my dress, making sure everything stays where it's supposed to.
Susan and Christy, zipping up the dress.
Susan, helping to put my garter on.
After I was all in my dress, my mom put on my necklace and Susan and Christy each put on an earring. My Mom surprised me with a Swarovski bracelet for the big day, and you can see in the pictures, I'm trying not to cry. I was a big ball of emotion that day - when my mom turned the corner to show me her final look, I started crying cause she looked so pretty and made her go away.
The audience watching me get into my dress.
My mom putting my necklace on
Christy and Susan, putting my earrings on.
My mom surprising me...
Trying not to cry, hence the mid-fan with my hands.
Mom, putting the bracelet on.
After all my jewelry was on, Heather helped put my veil in. Christy, Susan and my mom all turned down the job cause they were afraid of messing up my hair (I think). But Heather was the brave one and helped me out.
Heather, putting my veil on.

First look at myself all put together. I LOVE this picture.
Getting ready to walk out the door.
After the veil was on, we made sure we had everything collected and then headed towards the (HOT!) limo. And we were only 20 minutes late...

Ready to go get Married!!


Thursday, June 28, 2012

Planning for the Big Day

So for anyone that knows me, which I'm guessing the 5 people who read this blog do...they know that I have been planning the wedding of my dreams since, well, forever. I used to dress up in my Mom's veil and a white dress and pretend to marry just about anyone I could think of. Back then it was the likes of Big Bird and Robin (the one from Batman & Robin).  My vision of my wedding has definitely changed over the years, and when it came time to plan my actual wedding, I went with a color scheme I hadn't previously thought of. *Author's note, I realize I'm ending a lot of sentences with prepositions, but I really just don't care.*

Colors
- Green & Pink - lovely colors, but they were so lovely that most of the weddings I have been in have had Green has a main color (Hi Natalie & Kim!) so while I agree that it would've made for a pretty color scheme, I kind of wanted to go a different direction than other peoople.
- Navy Blue & Coral - I LOVED this color scheme, but in a moment of honesty, my Virginia Tech Hokie alumni self could not use colors that were so close to UVA colors. Wow, that sounds really stupid when it's written out. But...it's true.
- Peacock colors - Green, Purple, Turquoise - I really loved this one, but it felt a bit to "wintery" to me, and I knew we would be having a Spring or Summer wedding

What I went with:
Yellow & Gray, with an accent of Eggplant Purple. My thoughts on choosing this? I liked the way Yellow & Gray look together (I've actually decorated or plan to decorate our master bedroom in these colors, so I really LOVE them). I wanted an accent color and I like dark purple, so I rolled that into the mix.

The Date:
I originally wanted an early May wedding. But Kenny's older brother and his fiance (who got engaged a year before us), were nice enough to wait to have their wedding when Kenny was back from deployment. So because of that, they got first dibs on a date. And they chose April 27. I didn't think it was fair to ask friends/family that would be attending both weddings to go back to back like that, so I wanted a date farther out.

I wanted June 2, 2012. But our reception venue already had that date booked and I wanted the reception venue more than I wanted the date. So I pushed it back to the next available date, which happened to be June 9. This also happens to be the day after my Aunt & Uncle's anniversary and the day before my parent's anniversary. They've been married for 34 years...so I figured it was good luck :)

So, that's the back story on those things. I promise tomorrow I will have pictures!

Monday, June 25, 2012

Home Sweet Home

Even though I promised to post more regularly than on the last blog, I haven't really been keeping up with my promises. But to give you an idea of the timeline I've been working with lately:

June 9 - Wedding!
June 11 - Left for Honeymoon in Antigua (don't worry post/pictures coming soon)
June 18 - Get back from Antigua around midnight
June 19 - POD (our moving device) gets delievered at 7AM
June 19-22 - Pack up all the stuff I've acquired over the past 26 years into a POD
June 23 - POD is picked up and makes it way to Jacksonville
June 24 - Kenny and I drive from Fairfax Station, VA to Jacksonville, FL (10.5 hour drive, if you were wondering).

So I've been busy packing up, with the distraction of crying my eyes out every now and again, and getting ready to move.

So now that we're here, I'll have some time to update. You know, in between opening our wedding gifts, writing thank you notes and trying not to get the hives cause my OCD cannot stand not having everything in it's place....

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

New Blog

OK - so I think I'm going to try to get back into this blogging thing again.

Clearly the other blog didn't become much a routine for me (I think it's been a year since I wrote on it). But I thought since I just got married and am getting ready to head down to Jacksonville - I'd give it another try. AKA, I want to keep my friends and family (the 4 that read this blog) up to date. And I don't want to be one of "those people" on facebook. You know, updating my status every 20 minutes about something new and exciting I did. Hopefully I didn't just offend my 4 followers...

So here goes nothing...