Friday was wonderful! The deluge of rain did not dampen our plans one bit! The entire day was perfect, and now I have a husband! Whoa. Apologies in advance for the wall of text and tons of pics!
I'll start my recap with the rehearsal dinner. It was BEAUTIFUL. Seriously. Here's some pics FSIL posted:
The food was great, and the drinks were flowing. I stayed stone cold sober, but watching everyone get plastered was so entertaining. After the dinner, my MOH and I went back to the hotel and were about to get ready for bed when one of my older brothers texted me asking where everyone was. I went down to the lobby, ran into a different brother who said he saw a bunch of people heading to my room, so I go back up to the room and find an impromptu party there. Apparently my step-dad told everyone the after party was in my room, but he failed to tell me or my MOH about it. My step-dad showed up with a handle of Tanqueray, and seriously all 3 sides of my family (mom's, dad's, and step-dad's) were partying pretty hard. They were all taking drunken selfies, and it was just chaotic but hilarious. MOH and I kicked everyone out at midnight so we could sleep, but then my step-dad drunk called me and demanded I change the seating chart for him. Cue minor freak out.
OK, so, the wedding day! I woke up early and saw that the rain had already started. I was a little bummed, but I was too excited to really care. I went downstairs to find food and ran into a bunch of family members, so I ate breakfast with them and got to relax quite a bit. Around 9:30 I went back up to the room to let the makeup artist in, and the wedding party arrived from about 10am to 12pm. It was VERY relaxing. We all chatted, listened to music, watched TV, joked around, and played with the flower girls. My photographer posted a couple of really cute sneak peaks on his Instagram yesterday:
By 3pm we were all ready to go, so we headed to the venue. By this point it started to dawn on me that I was about to get married, so my nerves kicked in big time. Getting dressed was so surreal! Immediately after I was dressed, they set up the first look. I cried as soon as I saw H's (!!!) back. I couldn't help it. I'm sure the pics will be interesting lol. He couldn't stop smiling when he saw me, and we just stood there and laughed for a little bit. Seeing him helped me feel so much more relaxed.
After that we did wedding party pics, but all of the formal family and wedding party pics didn't really pan out as planned. One of the flower girls had a little melt down, and the photographers were taking a while to set up one particular picture, so we didn't get a ton of formal pictures of everyone. Plus guests started arriving REALLY early, probably to beat the weather and the traffic, so I was ushered inside pretty quickly. We all sat around in a parlor for about 30 minutes just waiting for the festivities to start. Then, when it was finally time to start, I felt like it flew by.
The ceremony itself was just beautiful. I choked up a few times, but I only cried during our recessional when it hit me that I GOT MARRIED! We got a lot of compliments on the ceremony script, the location, the decor, etc. It was really personalized and sentimental since my brother was the officiant, and we had two really great readings. Plus it was super short. I think we spent all of 15 minutes up there.
After the ceremony, we sat in a room waiting for like 30 minutes for the marriage license. I think all of the venue staff was focusing on getting the buffet set up for the guests. When we finally did get the marriage license, we had to wait for someone to bring us a pen. lol. Then a waiter brought us food so we could eat on our own, but neither of us was very hungry thanks to all the adrenaline. I can tell you that what we did eat was delicious, but we just didn't have large appetites. After we ate, we were ready to go party, but we were told to kill more time because the guests were still going through the buffet. The photographer did some great shots instead, but then he killed too much time, and we were basically told to get in the reception hall ASAP. I think in total we were gone for an hour, so I could see their point lol. We were introduced with our first dance, which was wonderful, and honestly the rest of the night is a blur. We tried to talk to all of our guests, but I know for a fact we overlooked a few people. We kept getting pulled in so many different directions! I feel really guilty for not saying hello to everyone, but we tried our best.
We had a photo booth, and we got some really awesome pictures from that. I'm so glad we got one! The open beer & wine bar helped a lot with the quality of pics we got too. :-P
The rain kept coming down, so guests left fairly early. We were pretty bummed about how many people left so quickly, but we still managed to have a really fun party. I've gotten a lot of compliments on the DJ and the all the glow sticks we bought. We opted to end everything about 30 minutes early, so we were sent off in a vintage Rolls Royce. It was awesome! After we were dropped at the hotel, we changed, went through the drive thru of our favorite fast food spot, and then watched the Food Network and ate our junk food. It was awesome.
Seriously, it was an awesome, perfect, wonderful, amazing day. I can't believe I'm married now! I'm an OMH! Holy crap! We are both so happy with how the day went and so happy that it's over lol. We are really looking forward to our honeymoon, which starts tomorrow. Tonight will be spent with pizza, wedding cake, and Netflix.
Without further ado, here are a few pictures from the night:
Another sneak peek from the photographer--