Bride’s maids

This is why I love these women

{insert awesome caption here}
And… don’t I look great in that chair? And that dress?!

It is my professional opinion that every bride needs to blow bubbles prior to getting hitched.

Lindsey fixing Doug’s.. button?

Meeting our DJ for the first time… about 10 minutes before the ceremony (one of many complaints)

I has a tie!

This looks like an intense conversation, though I have absolutely no idea what it was about.

Groomsmen entertaining themselves. We blew bubbles, they played with toobers and zots.

Ta-da!!! or “YMCA!”

At this point, my bridesmaids were missing, my groom was gone, and the pastor wasn’t there…

Next up… we’re married.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem. However, there was one bridesmaid, all the groomsmen, the groom… they were missing. Like literally, no-one-knew-where-they-were-missing. That’s not what I was looking for at the time.

Fine. Take a breath. Move on. I gathered up the bridesmaids I had and headed over to my parents. Did I mention I forgot to feed them?

DON’T DO THAT!

First, it’s just rude.

But, it also lead to people getting hungry (reasonably so, I’m not daft). Which lead to eating really, really quickly at my parents place before getting ready. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but remember that two needed showers. Plus hair, make up, dresses… Yeah.

Well, we made it upstairs and into the bathroom to begin the process.

Now, this is how you know I’m not a normal bride. Well, I’m sure other brides do this, but you don’t hear of it.

I helped with hair and make up on one of my ‘maids before doing my own. And might I say… she looked hot!

“Now, shake your head like this!”

We also don’t believe in privacy.

While we were upstairs, Chet was downstairs with his groomsmen. I have no idea when they showed up, but they did, and they got ready. They were also at the venue way before we were too.
Cursed make up.

Once all the ladies looked like their glamorous selves, they went in and signed the bottom of my shoes. I loved it!

(Obviously)

Then, it was my turn. By the way, it’s about 1:45 now. Whoops.

I chose to do my own make up and hair out of frugality.
I also wanted something simple. (I looked gorgeous, by the way!)

Close ups of the dress… Our poor photographer had hell with the dress. It’s white, and all he had to work with was a white background, so there aren’t really any great shots of the full dress — until it’s on me, duh!

I’m sure she had said something snarky here.

And into the dress I go.

“Shake your head” and “shower curtain” are credited to Lindsey Speights.
All other credit goes to Thomas Boydston

Part of Chet’s gift was a pocket square that I had bought everything for back in August. However, I never ended up working on it, and found myself at 1:30 a.m., the night before the wedding working on it. So anyway, I nestled my head away and slept until my alarm went off at 7:30.

See, my girls and I were staying in one hotel, but getting ready at the house my parents had rented across town. This created all kinds of logistical nightmares, some of which involved showers, hair, dressing, forgetting stuff… nightmares. I opted to shower at 7:30 as did another bridesmaid. The other two decided to shower at my parent’s place, and the fourth… she just came ready.

Then, my bridesmaids did something fabulous for me… they took me to get my nails done. See, there are a couple of things that make me feel really, really pretty. Part of this is hair and make up, and the other part is having my nails all done up. So, Ashton paid to have that happen.

(I’m the one in the white

After my feet and hands were all pretty we headed over to the hall to finish decorating.

Finishing the seating chart. This was a pain in my side.

Partly because I didn’t want it, thus I didn’t care.

Partly because we forgot a way to tell people where they were to sit.

Partly because I didn’t want to mess with it day of.

It rained. And it was 40 degrees. That’s not the ideal for a wedding that was supposed to be outside. So, everything was moved inside where the dancing was to take place. This kind of became logistically a pain in my ass, but it was what it had to be. My dad looks like he is directing, Doug is doing as he should be, and that blur there was one of the day of coordinators.

Let me pause and tell you this: I would not have been able to make it without those day ofs’. The end.

Even the bride was working. Don’t hate.

Next up: Getting dressed, and how you know I’m not a normal bride.

On Friday, we had our rehearsal, dinner, and then spent 4 hours decorating for the wedding. Phew.

Since our pastor had to back out on us for personal reasons, we had to find a new one. We were directed to Jeff Ganz at Willis UMC. He met with us Thursday to go over the ceremony which I painstakingly wrote, then came down Friday to do the rehearsal.

After our rehearsal, we went to the Stardust Room for dinner. It was one of our favorite hang outs while in school, and one of the first places we decided to have anything at.

The rehearsal dinner was where we handed out gifts to our bridal party and families. The groomsmen all received hand made cuff links from Chet and ties from Toybreaker.

The bridesmaids received earrings, shawls, hand painted knick knack bowls and hand written letters from me.

Our parents each received a photo frame that was engraved and had one of our engagement photos in it.

And Charlotte got a little canvas print.

After the rehearsal, all of the bridal party plus some headed back to the venue and we decorated, decorated, decorated. For some reason, no photos were really taken during this, but man was it fun/intense/crazy/emotional/….

And, my friends are incredible. We had groups putting together our programs, re cutting some of the corks, ironing table runners, decorating table numbers, and helping me re design the down stairs for the ceremony (which had to be moved inside).

Once all the decorating was done (well, that we could do for the night), we left to go our separate ways. Chet and I decided to not stay together the night before because I wanted some alone time with the gals. And that was the perfect decision for us, well for me anyway.

Oh! Story! I lost his wedding band the night before the wedding. I literally had had it in my possession for about 12 hours when I lost it. That was AWESOME! At two in the morning my girls and I are running around town looking for it. Turns out, the box had wedged itself in the trunk…

Next up… day of preparations.

Which, incidentally is 22 days away. [insert panic attack.... here]

Let me tell you, they picked such lovely amazing dresses. And that I feel so unbelievably confident in my decision of letting them do that. I’m not going to lie to you, dear readers, for a while there I was a bit nervous. Especially when we were a couple of months out and no one had purchased their dresses.

Each of them are probably going to quite happily kill me when they see these up, but I don’t particularly care. I’m the damn bride.

Pros to letting them buy their own dresses:

1. Without sounding too 27 Dresses-esqe it is legitimately something they can wear again because they picked out something that they felt flattered their bodies.
2. It’s a great little party black dress, and every girl needs one of those.
3. They bought within their price range.

Cons

1. My inner control freak died a bit letting them pick out their own dresses.
2. I didn’t get to help anyone pick out a dress, which was something I had really looked forward to.
3. There isn’t a lot of uniformity, outside of the black tea length (or is it cocktail?) dress.

Take what you want from that list. I am so pleased with how it has turned out. I know they will all be stunning when it comes, just as they are on a regular basis.

Now, I need to find my dress…

Oh…

Oh dear…

This is lovely. And that color is fabulous.

I wish I had found this before I told my bridal brigade to pick their own dresses.

Sigh.

From: JCrew

See, it all started when I saw this image from Julie Ke and Jonny’s wedding:

Tell me, is this not beautiful? I fell in love with her dress… and then I saw the bridesmaids dresses.

All pictures can be found here (including pictures of her gorgeous wedding!)

Okay, seriously. Aren’t these gorgeous? I love them. But there are two issues:
1.) I do not have bridesmaids that I can tell to purchase these dresses thank-you-very-much
2.) I can’t find them anywhere! Seriously. I have looked and looked and looked. Which is what has created my problem.

So, I thought that I would share with you pictures of dresses I like and would probably order my ‘maids to where, if I had had formal ones.

Enjoy!

This is nothing like the ones above, but it’s still purrrty.

Now we’re talking. Isn’t this and this gorgeous?And all for less than $100!

Here

This one is my favorite. I would love to have all of my girls dressed in it…
(all dresses [and more!] can be found at: Nordstroms)

See, here’s my problem with telling my girls that they have to wear certain things. One reason is because I can’t justify asking my wonderful college friends to spend about $100 on a dress they may or may not wear again. The second is because I don’t know if they will be hanging out with us during the ceremony. And if they aren’t.. well, why tell them they have to wear something?

But, my inner control freak is screaming “tell them what to wear! you must be in control! this is not right!!” But, I tell her to shut up, drink a martini and let go.

Because in the end, Chet and I will be married, and that is what really matters.

(Sidenote: I am telling them to all wear black cocktail dresses though. hehe. My justification is the fact that they can choose something that they , and as a bonus, they will wear it again.)

*please note: as a counselor to be, I am not mocking any type of AA, NA or Al-Anon traditions.

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You, too? Thought I was the only one.”
–C.S. Lewis

So! Chet and I now have someone to marry us — which is really good, obviously. But, as with everything there is a great story behind this. However, we’re not going to make it privy to the internet world. But, if you ask us, we’ll tell you!!

Instead, I am going to tell you a bit about our history with Sam, the wonderful man who will be presiding over our ceremony.

Chet and I first found Sam over the internet. It was summer 2007… this is sounding terribly cheesy already. Anyway, we were trying to find a church, and I happened upon one that also did podcasts of their sermons. Thus, we found Sam. When we finally made our way to the church in person, we hit it off with him. He and Chet share a common love of music, even if I have no idea what’s going on.

We met with him yesterday, and the meeting was golden. He is totally what we want in an officiant. We walked into his office, sat down, and he says, “So, any ideas on how you want to do this ceremony?”

Chet and I just looked at each other and smiled. We showed him the ceremony we have created. Sam looked at it and said that he loved it. He told us that the most important thing about a wedding is that it represents us.

We asked him if we needed to add scriptures or if there was anything that he wanted to see from it. He said that it was all up to us. He did say he would like to say a prayer over our life, but ultimately what matters is us.

We were also concerned about premarital counseling. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to do it, we just didn’t know where we would make the time. We have a lot going on this summer and our officiant being based 3 hours from us did not make it convenient for us to go through counseling with him. But, we knew we would do what we had to. Toward the end of the meeting, we asked if there was anything that we needed to do, specifically imagining the counseling. You know what he said?

“I’m not a marriage counselor, and I don’t pretend to be”.

Love it! He preceeded to give us some advice from his own life, and that was it. The meeting last about 30 minutes and it was wonderful.

I’m so glad we have decided to go with Sam. His spirit is much like mine and Chet’s, and I think that it is going to be marvelous.

207 days.

I actually got a lot, but I really liked this tidbit:

When you have those moments that you can’t stand the other person, and it’s all you can do to just be in the room with them… just smile. Smile and think about the fact that you choose to be with this person. Smile and remind yourself that times like these come and go. Smile, because you love them and you don’t know how long you will get to be with them.

I love it. I think it is so terribly important through this wedding planning process, to remember that I love Chet. And that this is just a wedding.

It is just a wedding.

No matter the fights, the headaches, the joys or the sorrow, this is just a wedding.

The marriage is what we should focus on.

They are such wonderful people and Chet and I couldn’t be happier that they are tying the knot!

They’re doing the Vegas wedding (which I am jealous of on my not so good days). It’s going to be streamed on the interweb, so we’re gonna sit down and watch it at 4:45.

Then, in May, they’re having their reception outside of Austin.

Congratulations you two!!!!

Edit:

They’re officialy married! I hope that I look as beautiful as Krystle did on my wedding day. Gorgeous!