It feels good to be back. I have so much catch-up posting to do!
Wedding Teaser- http://youtu.be/Vgd161gKzMY
TTD Teaser- www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O_zJ7PzfPc
Good
As we were leaving Ohio Saturday morning (a week before the wedding) I asked Ryan, "Can you believe that this time next week it will all be over?" He instantly responds, "This time next week it will just be beginning." Awww.... 
What a great way to look at it from the very start!
The welcome cookout and day after brunch were both really fun. Everyone got along great, had delicious food, and enjoyed the other opportunities to hang out together.
The weather and the smoke both cooperated very nicely for our wedding, even though it was sketchy in the surrounding days. We had a really pretty sunset too. Our photographers were able to capture so many pictures because they just kept shooting to take advantage of the clouds and light. At one point, some guy came out of one of the beach hotels and shouted at our photographers to climb up onto his balcony to take wider angle pictures of us because the view was “just awesome.”
Seeing Ryan as I walked out onto the beach was the best feeling. I don’t really remember seeing anyone else or what the ceremony decorations looked like because all I could see was him. The whole ceremony was sort of surreal. I thought I’d be really weepy, but instead I was just really happy. Ryan had both sets of vows in his pocket and started to read mine first until I pointed out that those were mine. ha! I did get chocked up when I had to say my vows and needed to take a second, but other than that it was a dry event. J When the ceremony was over, everyone on the beach started clapping and shouting congratulations to us.
We decided to trash the dress. Our photographers thought we might be able to do it on our wedding night, but we just ran out of light so they rescheduled for later the next week. We went to a local pier, played around, and I had a lot of fun wearing my wedding dress one last time. DH did need a little coaching on how to PLAYFULLY splash, but I think it makes our pictures that much more fun... if you've watched you know what I mean. 
Bad (or maybe just not as planned) We rented speakers and two microphones for the beach because we wanted everyone to be able to hear over the wind and waves. When Ryan got there just before the ceremony, it hadn’t been set up so he had to run around and do that. Then he discovered that they forgot to deliver the wearable mic and the handheld one wouldn’t work because she couldn’t hold it and our ceremony text. Our officiant tried to be really loud and people said they could hear her anyway. I choked up so much during my vows that I’m probably glad it wasn’t amplified anyway.
More sound issues… our music lyrics were very low compared to the music itself so most of the words couldn’t really be heard. I had a bunch of fun songs for cocktail hour and love songs for the dinner picked out to play in the background that lost their effect. Plus our first dance, dad dance, and mom dance were far less emotional that way, but we just went with it because you won’t be able to tell there weren’t lyrics in the photographs and we still wanted to share those moments. When we called the rental company the next day they refunded us all of our money for the sound system because that happens sometimes when the connection inside the speaker wiggles lose during the transport. I’d still have preferred to have paid for it and have it work, but I guess in the end it helped the budget a little.
We were supposed to have cocktail hour outside on the deck before going inside for dinner. It was sooo hot that we switched it up for inside. As a result, everyone mostly sat at their tables instead of mingling and didn’t really feel like eating so most of our appetizers were wasted. We cut cocktail hour short and had dinner first and then went back outside when it had cooled off for all of our pictures.
Ugly The bar tab… haha!
Oh, and the dry cleaners lost the straps to my dress. I wasn’t planning to wear them, but come on! They totally denied it too and said they couldn’t have lost them because they left my dress in the bag to steam it. WTF?