I hope you're not sick of these yet, because guess what? We still have three more! Sorry guys. It's gonna happen, so you might as well convince yourselves that you like it.
My brother Jordan and my unofficial brother Nate are currently in New York and Germany serving 2-year missions for our church. I put my dad in charge of making sure they were represented at the wedding, and this was the life-size portrayal I found at the sign-in table.
Receptions are crazy. So much work for one evening? And yet, people keep having them, because it's worth it. To introduce the love of your life to all the important people you've known, and to introduce them to him--that's something to party about.
I designed my wedding gown.
I'd always wanted a patchwork wedding dress (inspired by a book my grandmother gave me when I was 8), but no one seemed to be catching the vision. COME ON. An 8-year-old designed it in her head, and no adult understands this???? It's fine. I'm over it.
What I came up with instead stayed true to the main ideas: simple, unique, classy, off-white.
MaryAnn Wilde, a friend of a friend of my mother, made the masterpiece.
She helped me develop my ideas, took me fabric shopping, let me use all her coupons, and made it amazing.
It took half a dozen fittings, three new bras ("ooh, still not padded enough," she lamented), and came to $275, including fabric costs. I love that woman.
Jared's delicious suit came from Men's Warehouse. I had a roommate who works there, so she got us a sweeeet deal.
We were originally going to go with gray, but when he stepped into the navy blue Calvin Klein, missionary mothers all around the store started singing, I added navy blue to the color scheme, and he bought it on the spot.
We kept gray in the scheme with his vest, and I scoured the mall to find the perfect tie.
Shoe shopping. Let's not talk about that.
Ok, ok--let's. I went to every mall within three counties looking for just the right color, style, and heel height. Type B's turn OCD during engagement.
Finally I gave up and bought some online. They were too blingy and too high, but inexpensive and supes comf! And a girl only gets to wear gold-bling wedding heels once, right? For the win.
Below is my hair. It is nice.
And look--it's my husband! He has intense kissing focus. He is nice.
But please look especially at that perfect fishtail-braid and curly chignon, which is hard to pronounce and took 90 minutes to construct.
That was nice until it made me late.
But the beautiful hairpiece? So nice! Looks like we didn't get it pinned down all the way,
but it's still lovely. My sister-in-law Marie has an Etsy shop of custom wedding hair pieces, and she made it for me.
So that was extremely nice.
We were married in the beautiful Salt Lake LDS temple on July 6.
I forgot to eat breakfast in the craziness of hair appointments and losing Jared's ring for a minute,
so I literally almost passed out during the sealing ceremony.
The cute little old lady helping me get ready was a diabetic, so she had a protein bar on hand.
Protein bars save weddings.
The temple sealing was, obviously, the best part of the day. It was so special!
The rest of the day felt surreal. Perfect, but surreal. Things were the same as always before,
but now Jared wore a wedding ring and I wore a new last name.
Our photographer, as I've mentioned before, was Kate Benson.
We tried to be thrifty with most of our wedding plans (free venue, $275 dress),
but photography and videography were important to me, so we found exactly who we wanted and reserved them first thing.
Kate is instant friends with anyone she talks to, and she has an eye for beautiful places and angles and lighting. Basically, she's great at making people look good. It was so fun taking pictures with her,
and we're so impressed with how they turned out.
After we took pictures around the temple and got just a little sunburned,
it was off to the luncheon.
Jared's parents hosted the most perfect luncheon I've ever attended.
It was at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, and the chicken lafayette was to. die. for.
The flower arrangements that Jared's mom and aunt put together were amazing,
and the slideshow was the best.
It was so great to spend some time with the people who are closest to us before we had to rush off to ready ourselves for the reception.
Ring shopping was good times--it's surreal to know you're about to be engaged. We were so close to choosing the pretty nugget on the left, but in the end I couldn't get my mind off the rose gold beaut on the right.
So when Jared got down on one knee in the middle of a trail run up Dry Canyon, rose gold was what hung upside-down from the top of the little box that he was too nervous to open the right way. My priceless husband.
He wanted a plain sterling silver band. We found his favorite one online and I had it engraved in German at a nearby jewelry store. Oh, priceless German.
He wanted a plain sterling silver band. We found his favorite one online and I had it engraved in German at a nearby jewelry store. Oh, priceless German.
Our announcements turned out better than I could have hoped for. Imagine these on beautiful beautiful beautiful paper, and imagine the "our story" section with alternating colors for each speaker so it's easier to read. It was mostly a design element, but we still get comments on it all the time. Everyone likes a unique invite with the story of your whole entire life on it. The story was on the back of the invite, and the picture and ceremony invite were separate items. Click to enlarge.
The day before the wedding was madness. I did all the flower arranging myself for the reception, and the wholesaler where I planned to get the flowers was closed for the July 4th weekend. So I drove up to Salt Lake with my mother and spent the rest of the day arranging in the basement. Meanwhile, Jared was eating pizza at his bachelor party.
Roundabouts 7:00, my bff Julie came over. I don't know why I didn't call her over sooner--something about thinking I could do it all myself probably. She calmed me down, helped with the flowers, and guided me through the last of the shopping that needed to be done for the centerpieces. Maybe it was good to have the contrast of the pre-wedding insanity so that when I was able to relax and enjoy everything on our wedding day, it was the best thing ever.
I don't know if this song is old news yet (I get little to no radio time these days), but it's been playing nonstop at our cute little apartment for a week straight. I'm a Coldplay addict, and Jared has to listen to every good find for two weeks on repeat before he's ready to move on:
₪ Bacon. He brings home the bacon, and he eats it. Costco-sized bag? Gone in two weeks.
₪ Library movie rentals. Good thing we're old souls, because Roman Holiday is FREE.
₪ Sunflowers. From the construction site. Pick a hundred, put 'em in a vase.
Boom--instant sunshine.
I didn't want to be the girl that swamps her blog in a torrential flood of wedding posts, but today I realized that my children will one day love (or not, but so help me they'll tolerate!) reading all the details, and for some reason I mostly stopped journaling when we got engaged. Which is really terribly timing for an avid journaler to fall behind, but it happened.
I'll try to get it all out over the course of the next week or two so that if this topic isn't really your "scene" we can just leave it behind soon enough. But for now, spandex up and get ready to be swimming in talk of pretty dresses, sparkly cakes, water guns, and a face full of flour and flowers.
I woke up at 5 a.m. this morning to get ready for school, because that's when Jared gets ready for work and I was feeling ambitious.
Of course 20 seconds after he left I collapsed on my bed.
But sleep evaded me--which was kind of the point so I shouldn't even be complaining about that.
In any event, rather than doing homework in bed until the library opens, I decided to stalk. you. all.
Because guess what? I'm all about "knowing the audience," and I hadn't even done that. I learned:
₪ I've been following lots of your blogs all along. I want to be you.
You have beautiful voices and beautiful hair and beautiful writing and beautiful faces.
₪ Some of you are getting ready to be married. I apologize for not posting helpful wedding posts sooner, because it's almost your time! I won't be mad if I don't see any new postings on your blogs for a while. Those times were crazy soup. Shoe shopping, Karli? Impossible. Wound up ordering bling heels online last minute. Glad that's over.
₪ Some of you are getting ready to be married. I apologize for not posting helpful wedding posts sooner, because it's almost your time! I won't be mad if I don't see any new postings on your blogs for a while. Those times were crazy soup. Shoe shopping, Karli? Impossible. Wound up ordering bling heels online last minute. Glad that's over.
₪ Many of you don't have blogs--or at least not that I can see on your profiles.
Which is probably because you don't want to be read by crazies like me, so that's chill.
Which is probably because you don't want to be read by crazies like me, so that's chill.
₪ And some of you have blogs that you haven't posted on for like a year.
I stalked you anyway. You all seem lovely!
Anyway, I like all of you. I just wanted you to know that.
And also to know that our wedding video came in the mail yesterday.
I haven't seen it yet, but neither have you so that makes me feel a little better.
It's a'comin though. And here's a real life wedding picture:
he makes sure not to forget the love notes and candy cigarettes.
Which is nice except that I have to study in one of those individualized library cave-desks
because I feel like this is a sin that should probably be carried out in secret.
Oh, and I made corsages for Lil' Brudda's 5000 high-school friends this weekend (again).
All the cool kids showed up to the Homecoming dance with acorns on their wrists.
Because that's what I could find in the front yard.
*Please let us have cute first-look pictures, please let us have cute first-look pictures . . . *
Double Chin!
Pitchforks for the farmer and his wife, please.
Artsy splash idea via photographer . . .
. . . stubby feet via physics.
And my personal favorite, which I don't understand
and will leave without explanation:
Our photographer is a miracle-worker, considering what she had to work with.
(a non-smiler and a double-chinner)
That these are the only ones we managed to mess up out of 150 shots is astounding.
On any given day, I will be far more concerned about making my face huge enough to fit as much fruit tart into it as humanly possible than I will be about looking nice for the picture. Pin that, home-girls.
HEY! I didn't even get any groomal pictures on here. FAIL.
So here you go. I'll get you some blooper photos in tomorrow's post.
The ones that turned out embarrassing, but you like 'em like that. I know you do.
I'm really glad we took groomals. I learned things--like that Jared needed a different tie.
And quite honestly, these almost turned out better than the wedding pics.
Mostly because I was smiling insanely huge in the wedding pics. Ridiculously so.
And Jared was smiling so nervous on our wedding day. Oh so so nervous.
And I wore my newly dyed hair up because it was a thousand degrees.
These groomals are just a touch more designer-esque. And I like my natural hair color.
First look happened at Kneaders, where I changed into my wedding dress in a public restroom. The classiest.
Our photographer is Kate Benson. She's a superstar.
So here you go. I'll get you some blooper photos in tomorrow's post.
The ones that turned out embarrassing, but you like 'em like that. I know you do.
I'm really glad we took groomals. I learned things--like that Jared needed a different tie.
And quite honestly, these almost turned out better than the wedding pics.
Mostly because I was smiling insanely huge in the wedding pics. Ridiculously so.
And Jared was smiling so nervous on our wedding day. Oh so so nervous.
And I wore my newly dyed hair up because it was a thousand degrees.
These groomals are just a touch more designer-esque. And I like my natural hair color.
First look happened at Kneaders, where I changed into my wedding dress in a public restroom. The classiest.
Our photographer is Kate Benson. She's a superstar.
Hello friends!
(Speaking of friends, I made a friend in class today! I feel like, as a recently married person, this is a pathetically huge milestone.)
This post will only apply to you if you've struggled with blogger's dynamic layouts, but still like how they look.
I switched my blog layout for like a day back to the classic version that most of all y'all use.
Then I started missing the simplicity of my dynamic layout (the one I have now).
Unfortunately, dynamic view layouts have been struggling lately to load correctly and to allow comments.
This was annoying to me, so I started doing some research, and found this post:
http://www.2globalnomads.info/2013/06/blogger-dynamic-views-css-fail-bug-custom-reload.html
It shows you how to fix the issue and get comment capabilities back, and it only takes like 5 seconds!
So now you can leave me love notes again. And sassy remarks.
Ok that's all. Go eat some hummus.
(Speaking of friends, I made a friend in class today! I feel like, as a recently married person, this is a pathetically huge milestone.)
This post will only apply to you if you've struggled with blogger's dynamic layouts, but still like how they look.
I switched my blog layout for like a day back to the classic version that most of all y'all use.
Then I started missing the simplicity of my dynamic layout (the one I have now).
Unfortunately, dynamic view layouts have been struggling lately to load correctly and to allow comments.
This was annoying to me, so I started doing some research, and found this post:
http://www.2globalnomads.info/2013/06/blogger-dynamic-views-css-fail-bug-custom-reload.html
It shows you how to fix the issue and get comment capabilities back, and it only takes like 5 seconds!
So now you can leave me love notes again. And sassy remarks.
Ok that's all. Go eat some hummus.
1) Obtain stings from two bees who got all discombobulated up in the nether regions of my skirt
2) Get hit on by a stranger whilst walking towards the library. That became real awkward real fast when he looked at my ring finger in the middle of acquiring about my housing location and realized that I'm a diamond packer.
3) Invent the phrase "diamond packer."
4) Reacquaint myself with my first ever stalker. He avoided eye-contact, but it seems like he's nicened out over the past two years. So I added him as a friend on Facebook.
5)Accidentally moon a library room full of people. Triple digits amounts of people. In the Snack Zone.
6) Realize that I really should stop wearing skirts on campus. This brings the "accidental mooning" count to 4 now.
2) Get hit on by a stranger whilst walking towards the library. That became real awkward real fast when he looked at my ring finger in the middle of acquiring about my housing location and realized that I'm a diamond packer.
3) Invent the phrase "diamond packer."
4) Reacquaint myself with my first ever stalker. He avoided eye-contact, but it seems like he's nicened out over the past two years. So I added him as a friend on Facebook.
5)Accidentally moon a library room full of people. Triple digits amounts of people. In the Snack Zone.
6) Realize that I really should stop wearing skirts on campus. This brings the "accidental mooning" count to 4 now.
On a somewhat (ok, completely) unrelated note, husband got accepted to medical school!
I hope they don't have bees in Grenada.
And I hope Family Night this week is as awe-inspiring as Family Night last week.
Chocolate cigars and hot chocolate shots.
Along with Scrabble cards and the Book of Mormon.
And some truffles.
We're fatties and stuff.
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