Our wedding day truly was an amazing day!! Not everythnig flowed smoothly but everything we needed done and planned was done (Hair and make up, First Look, bridal party pics, etc) but it definitely did not fit in our original time frame which I came to realize is perfectly normal!!:) All that mattered is that we did get things done even if our ceremony time ran later then expected.
Ceremony Hiccups: I forgot my wedding jewelry, garter, vows and marriage license info at home. Ikr?!! But no biggie we stopped there on our back from pictures and picked it up and headed to the church.Even with leaving those things. I had a back up of all of my vows on my phone. And we had planned it so that even if we forgot the marriage license we would still have a few days after returning from the ceremony to sign it and mail it before our 30 days was up. I didn't have a back up for the garter and jewelry. So I was really glad we went back for them!
The ceremony was apparently awesome! I had fun and really felt like despite the lateness things went well. We talked to guest right after and they just kept complimenting us on our vows and the ceremony. We did our own photo booth at the ceremony. It doubled as our receiving line. We took pictures with any guests that wanted them. It was a lot of fun and it kept the line moving.
*Reception Hiccup: The best man was MIA for the walk in. We waited a while but had to walk in with out him. Other then that it went well and we had a blast!!
Reception: The reception was so fun! Our time frame was a little off with our overall schedule being late but we did all of the important highlights and everyone had a blast. I remembered to eat but was not hungry so I made myself eat. Guests really loved the food and our cupcakes for dessert. We had a girlfriend volunteer to set up the reception decorations and they looked even better then I expected!! I had sent her mock ups of the reception tables *(we had 2 different designs going) and we pre packaged and set up everything in a way so that she either had to just add water to the vases or set the floral arrangement in the prospective vase. She set them up perfectly!!
For me having time to dance was really important. My friends and I love dancing and I was worried about having time with everything running late and with our just meeting our dj that day. The dj we wanted, a friend of ours who worked for the company, bailed a couple of days before the wedding so the company found someone else. Well we had plenty of time to dance and the dj, though not great- kept getting our last name wrong- he played our requests and we had an awesome time!!
Honeymoon: We cruised to Grand Cayman & Cozumel and then stayed in St. Pete Beach for a couple of days. Flights were on time, luggage arrived fine, weather was great!! We had a blast!!
What I learned:
*Don't Worry Be Happy!:The calmer the bride the calmer the bridal party and the more you'll enjoy your big day. Everyone kept commenting on how calm I was. If something did not go as planned I truly did not worry about it. Everyone probably heard me say the following a million times that day: Oh don't worry about it.
*Organize! Even with the hiccups the fact that I was organized paid off! I truly was able to be on autopilot that day because of our planning. The main structure of the day went exactly as we had planned it and what didn't we worked out.
*Refocus: Obviously your attention should be on your man and yourself. But also focus on your bridal party. Your girls and guys are dressed in their best and spent a nice chunk of cash to look great on your special day so compliment them and if you have time, take some candids with them. Our girls looked amazing and thought it was funny that I kept telling them that but they really appreciated it!
*Don't Forget: These are some little things that friends volunteered to do or I had asked friends to do if they wanted to. If you have a DOC or venue event coordinator that will take care of it even better!
-Collect the cardbox from the ceremony and take it to the recepetion site.
-Take pictures at the ceremony and reception and send them to me or add them to FB. (We had a lot of friends doing this anyway and it was really nice to see all of the pics on our cruise. I ended up putting them in an album to bring to work to show co workers).
-Collect things your purse or other misc items from the dressing room/waiting room at the ceremony site. (I forgot my purse in the waiting room and didn't realize I did not have my drivers license until we left for the hotel that night. Thankfully my girls had picked everything up and had dropped it off at our place.)
-Gifts- I talked to three of my BM's the week of about shuttling gifts to the IL's after the wedding. So things went smoothly and we transferred everything in one trip.
Sorry that that was so long. Here are some pics from our day and HM. We haven't received all of our pro pics yet so I'll post those later:
Pro Sneek Peek
Non Pro
Honeymoon
Our ship. I took this as we were on the tender going to Grand Cayman
One of 5 gorgeous sunsets while on the cruise
St. Pete Beach
