Let me start of by saying I apologize for the godawful title. My brain is friend from traveling all day yesterday and having to be back at work this morning. With that out of the way...HI GUYS!!!! I'm back! And married! And TAN.
(Feel free to skip my ramblings and just go straight to pics.)
So the week before, everything went to hell in a hand-basket. My MOH arrived in town with strep and quarantined herself in the house she was staying at and refused to see me for the first few days she was here ("I'll be DAMNED if I'm the one to get you sick before your wedding day"). Another BM's flight was cancelled and she was stuck across the country, trying to find another one. When my cousin and I went to meet with the guitarist to rehearse her solo for the ceremony, he was nowhere to be found and unable to be reached. I woke up on my wedding day and it was raining (we live in California in the middle of the drought, it NEVER rains). When the florist delivered the flowers, I saw she took some creative liberties (I guess telling her our colors were navy blue + wine translated to pale orange?).
But somehow, it all came together. MOH got some antibiotics from Ugent Care. BM found herself a flight. Cousin tracked down the guitarist 30 minutes before the ceremony and had an impromptu rehearsal (and did a beautiful job). The rain stopped. The flowers? I could not give less of a FUCK about flowers by the time I walked down the aisle.
The ceremony was exactly what we both wanted (and we had multiple comments from people about how beautiful and personalized it was), our photographers were wonderful and made everyone look at ease and beautiful (not that they needed much help, my friends and family are gorgeous on their own, if I do say so myself), the dancing, my GOD the dancing! I had been worried that the dance floor might be a little sparse, but EVERYONE was out there, having a GREAT time (even the DJs said they hadn't seen a wedding where so many people were out on the floor so quickly and for so long). My flower girl made it down the aisle (I had given her about 20% chance of actually doing so--she's very young, just under 3, and is recovering from multiple brain surgeries. But baby girl made it down and looked beautiful doing so). Daddy got through his toast he was so nervous to give and we had the most beautiful dance (I was told there was not a dry eye in the audience by the end of it, and every father was giving his daughter an extra hug). At the end of the night, a crowd of the younger folks went to my favorite dive bar downtown and we played beer pong until they shut the place down. And most importantly, I woke up the next morning married to my best friend.
Don't get me wrong. It was not the wedding I had always dreamed about, and of course things went wrong. I didn't get my fantasy of getting married in the woods. I didn't lose as much weight as I had hoped I would by the day. My racist and terrible grandmother was still racist and terrible (the first thing she said upon meeting slothieguy at the rehearsal dinner was, "well, at least [slothiegal] finally ended up with someone the right color!"). But FI is now DH and that's what's up.
I cried about....20 times the next day; I am very, very bad at goodbyes and all our family and friends were dispersing back to their parts of the country. Luckily, I had the next 2 weeks in Fiji to console me. Tons of snorkeling, scuba diving (we did a shark dive!), jet-skiing, chilling on the beach, READING (omg I forgot how much I love having time to read), champagne and sex. Good, married, honeymoon sex.
And now I'm back and HI GUYS, I missed you!!! Have I missed anything big around these parts?
TL; DR: Got married. Partied. Honeymooned. WOO!
Pics:
1) Me and my daddy.
2) AW. Whatever. IT'S (was) MY DAY.
3) The rain cleared up literally, an hour before this. Unreal. The coordinator was asking me if we should move setup in side or if I wanted to risk it. So glad we took the risk.
4) Gettin' hitched.
5) Our beautiful and handsome wedding party. They are the best.
6) I was saying something along the lines of, "HOLY SHIT WE JUST GOT MARRIED, THAT HAPPENED, RIGHT?" The photographers kept laughing at me.
7) Bling bling.
8) Bustling my dress was an adventure. (MAKE SURE SOMEONE KNOWS HOW TO BUSTLE YOUR DRESS THE DAY OF.)
9) So cute. I love that my girls love my guy and vice versa.
10) First dance/venue shot.
11) DH's grandmother cut in during the mother/son dance. It was unplanned, hilarious and adorable. (GM is the mother of DH's first father, who was killed when he was young; DH is all GM really has to remember her son and they have a really beautiful relationship.)
12) We somehow both ended up falling when the dance floor was opened up. (Both sober at this point, I may add.)
13) This happened.