I was just looking through my blog and realized that I never did a detailed wedding day overview! Even if you're not interested in reading this long, drawn out post, it'll be nice to just have on record so I can remember all the special parts of my wedding day!
Thursday, May 20, 2010
I decided to go ahead and take off work Thursday so I would have plenty of time to get all my clothes washed and start packing for the honeymoon, as well as run any other errands for the wedding. My morning started out wonderfully and continued to get a little busier as the day went by. FI's (fiancée) mamaw's would be preparing the potato saled & baked beans for our reception so I had to take care of buying everything that they would need to prepare this. I made several trip to local grocery stores around town that had specific things on sale for the week. I was surprised at how little I spent buying all the food! After I took all of the food to mammy's, I went and had a mani & pedi and then headed home. I stopped by Wal-Mart before heading home to grab some fresh strawberries and to pick up the picture of FI and myself to go on the grooms cake. Once I got home, I started some laundry & began making the groom's cake for the rehearsal dinner. The rest of Thursday was filled with folding laundry, packing for the honeymoon, making the icing and putting it on the cake, and sorting through all the wedding things and packing them in the Jeep for Friday.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Today was the beginning of actual wedding festivities. Our morning started out around 8:30-ish as we headed over to the church to begin decorating. The key that we had wasn't the right key to get us in the Sanctuary, so we started unloading & decorating the fellowship hall. We re-arranged tables, made sure each table was clean, put 8 chairs per table, carried chairs up from the basement, put more chairs out, then started placing the tablecloths on the tables. Once we had all the tablecloths on, we started getting out all the centerpieces, assembled them (put the stickers on) and placed them on the tables. By this time it was about 1:30 p.m. and I didn't have long before I had to head home to get ready for the rehearsal. We started working with the tulle poofs, hanging them, fluffing them and making sure there were 7 per window. Once we had these up we had to move the centerpieces off the front 9 tables so they could be used for the rehearsal dinner (FI's mom had centerpieces to use for the rehearsal dinner). After we moved the centerpieces I headed home to get ready so I could be back before the photographers got there. I rushed around at home to get ready, burn a CD of the ceremony music and get back to the church so much so that I forgot the grooms cake & had to turn around to go back and get it. I arrived back at the church somewhere in the 5 o'clock hour. When I arrived back at the church, the men were there grilling and the women were in the fellowship hall decorating for the rehearsal dinner. Everyone began arriving around 5:45/6 p.m. and we began the rehearsal. I was pretty pleased with how the rehearsal went. I didn't think we'd have to go through it the 3/4 times that we did, but everyone was very cooperative and I felt very comfortable with how the ceremony flowed. We headed over to the fellowship hall for the rehearsal dinner around 7:30 p.m. (I think). I was surprised at how many compliments on the strawberry cake I got, it kinda made my head a little big! :P Once our wedding party began to leave, I headed over with my mom, sister, MIL, and some women from our church to start decorating the sanctuary. We assembled the tulle to the pomanders and tied the pomanders around the pews pretty quickly and decided to call it a night. We did have an issue that was handled just perfectly by my wonderful sister (we didn't have long enough strands of lights to line the aisle of the church, so she headed down to Hobby Lobby Friday morning and got two more strands of those, some white duct tape, and short extension cords so we could plug the lights up). I got home around 11:30-ish and went straight to bed because we still had a few more decorating details to handle in the morning.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
My morning started around 9-ish the day of the wedding. I began with a shower and just a calm-ish morning to start with. Once I left the house I was headed to get my nails touched up (I had been a little hard on them baking the strawberry grooms cake Thursday after I had them done), buy some snacks for my girls to munch on while we were getting ready, and then over to the church for the final touches on decorating. I got to the church around 10:30 and my sister and I began placing the lights down the aisle; we fell in love with how much the lights changed to look & the mood of the Sanctuary. After we finished there, we headed over to the fellowship hall for some small decorating details over there (I put out the mad lib & photo-share cards on the tables, filled the centerpieces with water, Kristy [a dear friend that was doing mine & some of my girls' hair] helped put the candles in the centerpieces, and my sister worked on perfecting our card-box). After we finished with all that, a couple of girls headed on over to the church to start getting ready and I made my bouquet. Once I finished the bouquet, I headed over to the church to hang out/relax with the girls and get ready for our pictures that started @ 4. While I was sitting in the basement of the church, I realized I hadn't made a boutonnière for FI so I ran back over to the fellowship hall and made him one very quickly, and delivered it to the old sanctuary were the men would be getting ready, along with the gift I got for FI. It was close to 2 p.m. at this point and all of our men were supposed to be arriving around 3/3:30 p.m. to get ready for their pictures @ 4 p.m. I don't think any of the men made it on time :P (FI, his dad, brother, and uncle went to get haircuts, to Hickory to get shoes, had lunch at Texas Roadhouse while they were down there, and then headed back to Lenoir) but I know that the girls' pictures did start on time at 4:30 p.m. I started getting my hair done @ 3 p.m. and around 4 p.m. the photographer came down ready to take pics of my getting into my dress. My mom and sister helped me get into my dress and then all my girls got into their dresses. Once everyone got into their dress it was time for us to go up and start with our pictures. Our pictures were finished around 5-ish, which was exactly how I hoped it would be, so we headed back downstairs to hang out before the wedding started. I had my attendants head upstairs at 5:30 p.m. to start greeting anyone that came early and somewhere between when they left and 5:45 p.m., FI sent over 2 dozen roses and the sweetest card I've ever read. I did good at the beginning, but then as I continued to read I began to cry (and have the pictures to prove it). I'm not sure what time the cake lady brought the cake by, but I do remember one of my BM's coming in to ask me which table the cake should go on and I told her and she told the cake lady. Well, at some point the BM that asked about the cake went over to the fellowship hall because the cake lady had put the cake on the wrong table. It was no biggie, they just left it on the table it was on and put the topper in it (the topper didn't go all the way down into the cake, which I was disappointed with, but it wasn't the end of the world). Once the ordeal with the cake was settled, it was time to start the ceremony. I remember someone coming down to tell me how full the church was! I didn't really care about how full the church was although I was happy to have a church full of close family & friends to share with us the special moment in our lives. All the girls lined up the stairs waiting to walk out and once my sister (MOH) was gone, I stood alone in the stairwell. I remember praying, thanking God for bringing me to this point in my life, saving my soon-to-be husband, and allowing me to marry this man who I adore. I honestly lost it standing there alone; I seen the director signal for me to come on up when they ushers shut the back doors, so I quickly tried to pull myself together for the walk down the aisle. I stood there with my arm in my daddy's. waiting for the bridal march to begin playing; once it did, the two doors were swung open, and everyone was standing there STARING at me...I just needed to see my FI and everything would be fine...so as I walked down the aisle I just kept looking for him through the crowd and once I fixed my eyes on him, I kept them there so all the guests looking at me wouldn't make me nervous/start crying again! Once my daddy gave me away, FI and I walked up the stairs and I honestly don't know once thing that went on outside of what FI, myself and the Preacher were doing/talking about. The song we had sung during our Unity Candle ceremony was "Only God Could Love You More" and FI's cousin Melanie couldn't have performed it any more perfect than she did! It was just beautiful and perfect for our ceremony. We exchanged rings & vows, and then THE KISS! We had talked about how we would kiss each other on our wedding day, not knowing how we would feel in the moment, but our kiss was perfect and our photographers captured it perfectly. Once we were being pronounced man & wife we had a guest yell something at us (a little embarrassing) but kinda funny too and we headed out of the church for the receiving line! Once the receiving line was completed, we had some pictures then headed over to the reception ourselves. We didn't have anyone announce that we were coming in (we're low key and didn't really want to make a big deal of it) but once people seen us entering the fellowship hall they began cheering for us and that was special to me! We got some food and sit down to enjoy it, but guests were coming up to talk to us as we were eating, but we did get to eat! :) We cut the cake, enjoyed feeding it to one another, shared our toasts, then finished our meal. We were very excited to leave and start our journey to TN for our honeymoon. Once we decided to leave, we climbed up on the firetruck for a few pictures and then crawled in to head off! I absolutely LOVED the fact that we decided to leave in the firetruck, it was just something special for us! Once we got to the house, changed clothes, headed back by the church to get a few things we forgot (my pillows, phone charger, and a few other things) we headed off to Pigeon Forge. We made it to our hotel about 1:30 Sunday a.m., grabbed a quick snack, and hit the sack!
I've been wanting to document everything so that I wouldn't forget all the little details of our wedding adventure!
