Our Day actually began the night before at the Rehearsal & Dinner. The Rehearsal wasn't quite as smooth as I had hoped because the rain and flooding kept people from arriving on time. But everyone got there and figured out what they were supposed to do. Afterward we had an awesome Rehearsal Dinner (that had a few kinks in it... like the food was late!) and the Fellowship Hall was beautiful. Blake's ECU Stadium Groom's Cake was absolutely amazing. We went out for a drink after then parted ways until we were to meet at the alter. I last talked to Blake about 12:05am on the day of our wedding and didn't talk to him again until I saw him at the alter... that was amazing.
So I got up early the morning of the wedding (because I definitely couldn't sleep in today!) and my dad made me French Toast and bacon. Daddy knows how much I love my breakfast in the morning and it was a tradition for him to make breakfast every Sunday morning. So I ate my breakfast, checked in for our flight to Hawaii, then momma dropped me off to get my hair done. It was cool to have all the girls together getting their hair done and it was very relaxing because we didn't talk wedding--just girl stuff. We left the salon for the church where we got ready. You would think that getting to church at 12:30 for a 5:00 wedding was plenty of time but I still feel like we didn't have enough time for pictures! Allison Dameron did my makeup (which was awesome!) and my mom's, Blake's mom's, and Julie's. The girls got dressed, took a few pictures, and then it was my turn to get sewn into my dress. It really took about 20 minutes for me to get into the dress. Once that was on it was time for pictures. I didn't have any time to be nervous -- I think all the girls expected me to be crying and nervous but I wasn't. It was amazing.
One of the special parts of the day was my gift from Blake. He gave me a new Bible with my new name on the front. It was incredibly meaningful to me because it will be a tool I will use all throughout our marriage and the raising of our family. My gift to Blake? A trip to the Big Island of Hawaii to tour the volcanoes!
After our pictures, Beth came back and fixed up my hair (thanks so much!) and the girls just hung around. Soon after that my Girl Scouts started arriving and coming back to hang with me. That was really cool too because they have meant so much to me that I wanted to make them feel as much a part of the day as possible. They left to be seated and soon after my bridesmaids left to line up. So here I was, hanging with my daddy, waiting to go down the aisle.
The rest of the day was pretty much a blur. I remember seeing Blake at the alter, I was focused on him and when I first saw him he looked so nervous but as soon as he saw me I could tell he was a lot more comfortable. When we got to the end of the aisle my dad messed up his only words -- instead of saying "Her mother and I do" he said "I do." OHHH!!! I nudged him and made him fix it... everybody laughed which made me laugh and put me at ease. We had a wonderful service. God touched that service so greatly. The beautiful weather, amazing music, wonderful guests... The homily was perfect. (From what I remember of it.) The only snafu was that I got wax on my dress while lighting the unity candle so I picked it off during several of the prayers. Communion went better than I thought and I think everyone thought it was a cool addition to the ceremony. (And for those of you who are wondering--no I didn't dip my bread into the grape juice because I was afraid of spilling on my dress.) This was the only part of the ceremony where I even remotely noticed who was there -- if I didn't see them during communion, I had NO clue who was there or not. (I hate it, but it's the truth.) So we said our vows and were off!
There are so many pictures after the ceremony but you really don't have a lot of time to do them. We went as fast as we could but we've heard we still took forever. I think we got some really amazing shots and I'm excited to see them.
And then we got to the reception. Apparently we were late so there were issues about the food... but I didn't care. Nobody was going to mess up my day! We were introduced, danced, blessed the food, but never really ate. We enjoyed going around and talking with all our family and friends who came to celebrate. I'm sorry if we didn't get a chance to get to your table, but know that we were trying! We planned on 250 people at the reception and ended up having 320. We were so excited to share our day with everybody and are so glad that they wanted to share it with us!
At the end of the night we did a bubble send off and went off. We were both completely exhausted and 3 am was going to come very early...
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