Our Wedding: Getting Ready

We finally received our wedding pictures last week from our amazing photographer, Adam, at Harbour Light Photography. He did such a great job with our pictures, both the day of our wedding and with editing the finished product. All pictures in my recap from this point are from Harbour Light, unless otherwise noted.

Like I mentioned yesterday, I have a ton of pictures and moments to recap, but I'm going to do my best to stick to a schedule to get this recap out to everyone as soon as I can!

For now, let's kick off my recap from the start of our day: getting ready!

Getting Ready: The Girls

October 8 started off fairly early with our hair appointment at 9am. We kept it in the family for our appointment and went to the salon owned by my sister-in-law's parents. They did an amazing job with our hair! I always had trouble keeping my hair in updos for high school dances, but miraculously my hair stayed in place all day - even during the reception when I was dancing all over the place!

Getting teased and looking a little crazy. (Photo from Suzie)

Much better! (Photo from Suzie)

We arrived at the church a while later to eat lunch and change into our dresses.

I don't wear a ton of makeup everyday, so I opted to do my own for the wedding. It only took me about five minutes to get ready, which was excellent!

I'm so glad we were all able to get ready together. I had so much fun catching up with my bridesmaids since all of them live in other states. I hadn't seen Michelle or Emily in at least a couple years!

Of course we ate Jimmy John's for lunch.

Scarfing down a sandwich before putting on your wedding dress and taking photos probably isn't the best idea, but at least it was tasty!

After lunch, I had to change into my dress so we could get started on our pictures, including our "first look" pictures (Drew and I definitely saw each other before the ceremony, and I am SO glad we went with that decision!).

Yes, we had the pregnant lady do up all 3000 or so buttons up the back of my dress. My dress was very fitted, with a flowy bottom and tons of lacy appliques and beading all over it. I felt bad for the woman who did my alterations because there were so many details she had to work around.

My dress was the complete opposite of what I thought I would end up with, but I absolutely loved it and it was so comfortable to wear all day. But more on my dress here.

Getting all buttoned up.

Getting a hug from my mother-in-law.

With my amazing bridesmaids!

I felt a little rushed getting ready since we got to the church a little later than planned and Drew and I wanted to take quite a few pictures before the actual ceremony. I probably had about an hour to eat lunch, do my makeup and get changed, which ended up being plenty of time for me.

Looking back, it's probably better that I didn't have much time to sit around before pictures because I probably would have felt a little more nervous or antsy! There was plenty of antsy-ness before the ceremony, but more on that in another post.


Getting Ready: The Guys

While all of this was going on in the girls' dressing room, here's what was happening with the guys:

After getting ready, I waited for the OK to head out of our makeshift dressing room to go outside and meet Drew for our "first look" pictures. Stay tuned for that post tomorrow!

Thankful Thursday: Better Late Than Never

Time for another installment of Thankful Thursday!

I've been a total stresscase at work lately, so taking the time to think of the good things in my life is a welcome distraction. I am so excited that I only have 9 workdays left before I have a week and a half off for the wedding and honeymoon. October, come quickly!

Also, for the record, I know I missed posting this last week but I have a totally legit excuse: my internet was out. I promise 75% of this was written a week ago. Anyways, on with the show.

I'm thankful I am 16 days away from being part of an awesome family. Don't get me wrong, I love my family and miss living in Illinois near many of my family members, but I am so excited to officially join a new family next month! Since moving to Michigan over a year ago, I have spent almost every weekend with Drew and his family (he lives at home right now) and have gotten to know his parents, brothers and sister-in-law really well. And they're awesome.

When Drew and I were still in the beginning stages of wedding planning we worried that our reception would be one of those no-one-dances-and-it's-awkward-and-boring ones. Not a chance. Both of us have extremely outgoing and uninhibited families (and friends) so we know we won't have a problem getting people out on the dance floor.

But we also have fun on regular ol' weekends too, like at the girls' brunch we had two weekends ago while the guys were all at a church event.

Ladies at family brunch.

We enjoyed some delicious food and some wonderful time catching up with each other at our brunch, without any male interruption, which pretty much never happens. I think we'll need to make this a regular event! And I need to look through the family cookbook I received at my wedding shower to recreate the delicious egg casserole and sticky buns we had to eat.

I'm thankful my dress is finally altered. I wasn't exactly on top of things when it came to finding someone to make alterations to my wedding dress. But luckily a woman in my Rotary club is pretty handy with a sewing machine and offered to alter my dress for me (and for significantly less than the boutique where I purchased my dress would have charged). I went to her house last week for a fitting and got a message from her tonight that it's all finished! Woohoo! Knowing my dress isn't going to fall off of me in the middle of the ceremony is definitely a relief.

I'm thankful for coffee. Because I'm overworked and tired. Caffeine is a wonderful thing.

I'm thankful for excellent customer service. Without giving away any spoilers for my bridesmaids' gifts, I'll just say that an online order I placed with Anthropologie a few weeks ago got a little messed up, resulting in me spending nearly 30 minutes on the phone with a customer service rep to fix my order. The woman I spoke to was absolutely wonderful and extremely helpful in making sure the correct items were shipped to me ASAP. Phew!

I'm thankful the wait is almost over. Seriously, can the next 16 days just fly by? I don't know how Drew and I have been so patient with waiting for our wedding day to arrive, because all I want right now is to get married. I feel like a little kid excited for Christmas - the anticipation is almost too much to handle!

I'm thankful our wedding checklist is thisclose to being completed. Our wedding planning checklist  has seriously stressed me out over the past few months, but Drew and I have totally been dominating it in the last couple of weeks. We're pretty much down to the finishing touches, which feels so amazing. Don't let anyone tell you wedding planning is easy, because it's so much work. I'm thankful Drew has been so helpful with planning instead of expecting me to do everything by myself because I wouldn't have been able to handle it all. If we can handle planning a wedding together, then we can handle anything.

I'm thankful fall-scented candles are now seasonally appropriate. Not much smells better than a pumpkin-scented candle in my opinion, and now that fall is officially here I can burn them in my apartment without feeling any shame. I already cheated the scented candle system by burning an apple-scented one all summer long, but I can't break the unwritten candle rules by burning my pumpkin ones early. Since I've already baked pumpkin bread, the only step remaining in my fall pumpkin trifecta is to get a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks. I think I just figured out my weekend goal!

What are you thankful for this week? Does anyone else have a pumpkin-themed to-do list this fall?

An Open Letter to my Wedding Dress

Dear wedding dress,

Or should that read "Wedding Dress?" Because you are supposedly all-important and the single most significant and meaningful article of clothing I will ever own.

Whatever.

You're just a dress, albeit one I will wear on a day that is significant and meaningful, but a dress all the same. You may be fancy and expensive, but that doesn't give you the right to send me into a panic over things like shoes and underwear and alterations. After all, I'm only going to wear you once and hide you in a box until... I don't know. What do people do with their wedding dresses after the wedding besides store them in the closet?

Wedding Dress, you are kind of a bully. After all, you are dictating my wedding day hairstyle. Who even does that? You're so petty sometimes.

I know you feel special and entitled because I chose you, but that doesn't give you free reign to send me into a panic over not fitting into you. Or give me nightmares about you somehow becoming ripped or dirtied on "our" big day.

Wedding Dress, here's the thing: you are nothing but an accessory. Your only purpose is to cover me up. Just like regular clothes. You don't have any magical powers or special abilities. You think you're so cool because you get to play a big role in my wedding pictures and society tells me to love you so much that I should preserve you and keep you forever. Just like "Psycho." That's messed up. You're just a dress.

So here's the deal, Dress. Stop bothering me for the next month, and I promise I'll take good care of you on October 8. I'll let you be the center of attention in our professional pictures (except for when the rings get their turn), and I'll even take you to be mummified or whatever so that you can stay young and pretty forever, although forgotten and ignored in the back of my closet.

I think this is a fair deal. And since you can't talk I have no choice but to assume you agree with these terms. I'm glad we've finally settled this.

Sincerely,
Kristy