The Wedding Day

Wow, our wedding day absolutely BLEW by!! The whole week before it went by so quickly!! How crazy is it to think that we are FINALLY married! I'm going to try and recap as much as I can so I don't forget! The day went so smoothly, or so it felt like, and turned out better than I could have ever imagined.

The rehearsal the night before went well. We all arrived at the church on time and went to dinner at Branns Steakhouse, John's favorite restaurant, afterwards.
We started the wedding day around 9. I slept in as late as I could and waking up was no different than a usual morning for me. My sisters and I hopped into Emilie's car, stopped at Dunkin Donuts, and went over to Urban Roots, a local hair salon where we each had our hair done. My stylist, Kristin, was phenomenal and my hair looked better than I could have ever imagined and it stayed throughout the phone entire day and into the next! After this, we stopped at home to gather our things and I readied the few bags I still had to move. Emilie, Natalie, and I then drove over to the Lesprit Salon Academy to get our makeup done. My artist, Severin I think it's spelled, was great and had my makeup done in no time. I got airbrush makeup because it's supposed to last longer.. and it sure did. Here, we met up with Allison and Emily who had been dropped off earlier to get their hair and makeup done as well. We had to be home by 1:00 in order to leave and make it to the church, but the makeup artists weren't very fast. We were running out of the building at 1:30 and flying home to leave. John had arrived at my house already and was changing into his tux and waiting for his groomsmen. They blocked him up into our guest bedroom while we quickly got into the Excursion where my mom and dad had packed all of our stuff. Then, my mom, dad, Emilie, Natalie, Emily, Allison, and I all drove together to the church. It was one of the most memorable moments of my day :) I loved having my family and best friends with me together.

When we got to the church a little after 2, our photographer Cathy was already there. Let me say, she was the absolute most amazing photographer and it was truly a blessing to have her!! Down in the parlor, we all changed and got ourselves as ready as possible. One of the setbacks of the day was my dress. We needed sticky body tape to keep some parts of it on and the tape we bought was not sticky enough to hold the dress. Oh well, what are you going to do about it 2 hours before the wedding :)? I just dealt with it the whole night and thankfully didn't have any wardrobe  malfunctions.

Something (robin's egg) blue!

The heirloom. Babi's grandmother wore this and down the line.

My Bouquet

These small, fake flower bundles were at the end of every other pew in the church.

After that, we took pictures with my family and bridal party around the church, inside and out. The groomsmen and John arrived with his family shortly after and they took pictures as well. Our wedding coordinators at the church, Mrs. Dunigan and Mrs. Edwards, kept us on our toes and continued to count down the time until the ceremony. At 15 minutes before, we all made a bathroom run which took an extra 8 minutes.

Our Wildflower bouquets! I didn't want "bowl sheared" roses.

The flipflops I made the girls- $1 Old Navy flipflops and some silk flowers. Voile!

Unfortunately, this is the best picture of my dress I could find!

Emily, Natalie, Myself, Emilie, and Allison

Our Programs

When we hustled up to the church and sat in a little room off the side where we peaked through the door cracks. This is when it got real for me. Up until that point, I hadn't really felt that it was my wedding, it just felt like someone else s. It finally sunk in and I was just so excited and jumpy and nervous and scared... like a landslide. After saying a prayer, my bridesmaids were ushered out and I waited for my dad (Oh my gosh, I'm getting sweaty palms and butterflies just thinking about this!) When he came, I finally got ushered out into the little hallway in the back of the church. I could see John, he was so handsome and just beaming. Walking down the aisle was tricky because, while I felt like I should look at everyone else as they were staring at me, I just wanted to look at John! He had tears in his eyes, and sweat bullets on his forehead when I got up there and the ceremony continued. Pastor Ramthun officiated and it was just so perfect I forgot to hand my bouquet off and no one fixed my dress to make it look nice while I stood up there, but I didn't care or notice any of the slip-ups.

We finally got to walk out, and do a quick 2 person receiving line. After signing all the official documents, we got into our beautiful white limo, driven by the sweetest man, and set out for Hines Park for pictures. One thing we were really looking forward to was taking pictures in Kellogg Park after the ceremony. However, every single route was blocked by construction. We would have had to take Ann Arbor Road into Plymouth and during Friday rush hour, that was not going to happen. So we took pictures in Hines Park and honestly? They turned out even better that the Plymouth ones. We had Cathy and Rachel take our wedding photos. Both were amazing and professional and did such an excellent job! Want to view the ones from Kathy? Just click here and view as a guest. Choose June 2012 as the wedding time.

Upon arriving to our reception site, my house, we were amazed at how beautifully my Aunt Catherine and her friend Colleen has decorated!! Everything looked truly amazing and Colleen was a lifesaver getting things ready during the wedding. I really trusted the two of them and had no fears! Party Max was our tent company,  we rented the tent, dance floor, tables, chairs, lights, and coolers from them. They dropped them off the Wednesday before the wedding and were totally professional and awesome! Carla is the daughter of our neighbors and did a great job getting everything set up. We decorated with tons of wild flowers, chalkboard, and mason jars! I just loved the idea of a rustic, simple, but very elegant wedding. Honestly? We didn't plan much, we just sort of found everything and thought "yeah, that would fit!" The decorating was pretty low stress! Much of the decorations were found from antique shops and thrift stores around my aunt's house. The center pieces were pretty easy to put together, too! With bulk flowers from our florist, wood cuts from a friend, birds from Michael's, and candles from Big Lots it was super easy. Everything really just came together, very little was planned by myself. I did enjoy putting up the mason jar strings of lights in the entrance way with Emily, though, a few days before :) Anyways, my points is it was so low stress, low cost, and actually fun. Everything just fit together so perfectly without much effort, though I know my aunt worked hard to find some of the decorating pieces and I cannot thank her and Colleen ENOUGH for the decorating and putting together the pew flowers for the church!

Jars with the pew bouquets and candles we had lining the entrance-way/

The entrance to our backyard.

Our lovely entrance way and welcome table. We hung mason jars and strung them with Christmas lights. There is also that old ladder we wrapped lightly with twine and hung pictures on it with clothespins.

With Emily's help, I strung 24 mason jars on 2 strings of rope in the entrance-way. Then, we laced them with white Christmas lights. It's hard to see now, but in the dark, they were breathtaking!

Table assignments were written on two large picture frames we painted with chalkboard paint.

On the head table, we had several logs cut out into potters and filled them with plants. We also had the bouquets in mason jars.

Favors were s'more wrapped supplies with a tag that reads "Bring s'more love home with you!" I also made my own seed infused paper, cut it into a heart, and wrote "Plant Me!" on it.

Our cake was out of this world! We opted to go for a birch-themed cake to go with our elegant, rustic, simple theme. I used sugar flowers from my bridal shower cake and they topped it with a little nest and birds.

Our centerpieces were layered fabric, a cut of wood topped with a half gallon mason jar filled with fresh wildflowers, a candle, ivory bird, and of course the number on a mini chalkboard.

John wanted dinosaur cake toppers. I got some Polymere clay (which is really plastic) and made some myself. Similar, but certainly not as cute, dinosaurs were over $80 on etsy, so I think I did well!! They were a bit too big and heavy for the top, so they're cake "siders."

Our menu- Southern Comfort Food themed! It was all sooo delicious!

We had these pie platters hanging around the tent in various locations. This one was my favorite, so I saved it!

Our drink menu, complete with Bride and Groom's signature drinks!

I loved entering our reception... John picked me up and carried me RIGHT through the cluster of tables instead of using the aisles. I got my hair all snaggled on a grapevine-wrapped pole :) It was lots of fun. Uncle Herb gave his best man speech and I asked Emily and Allison to do a toast together and Emilie and Natalie to do a toast together, also. It got a bit lengthy but was worth every word! My dad's speech was also amazing and fantastic and he gave me the sweetest note and special little things. It was heartwarming. While our MC/DJ was not the greatest (I had a whole list of popular music that John and I love and he didn't play a darn thing from the list!) the food was so SO SO SO EXCELLENT! 5 stars to Angel Food Catering owned by the Maynards, some friends from the high school. We had fried chicken, pulled pork, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, beans, cornbread, and the desserts consisted of brownies from Mrs. Hendrick and peach cobbler and pecan pie my grandma made, which were SO EXCELLENT!!! We also had a cake from Heritage Bakery. Now, we got a smaller cake because we had so many other desserts. We expected most people to eat the other desserts first. However, we actually ran out of cake, it was that good!! And the way it was decorated, like a birch tree... ahhhh!!! So cool! I hadn't seen the cake, just given them a rough idea of what we wanted, and also given them sugar flowers from a bridal shower cake from my aunt... awesomeness.

The rings.

My dad and I at the end of our dance.

John and I.

So the food was great and we just loved dancing all night with our friends and family!! We could not have asked for a more PERFECT wedding day! The weather was, yes, warm and humid, but that was the worst part of the day, really. And it wasn't even that bad.
While John and I loved our reception and ceremony more than anything we could have hoped, we were truly just so excited to get married! We waited for so long it seemed. The timing was just so perfect and we are so blessed to have found each other. God's also blessed us with beautifully supportive friends and family to share in our joy! What a whirlwind...

Now married life kind of feels like playing house. Yesterday, we had a whole day of getting all of our legal stuff done and it literally took us ALL DAY to do it! My name is changed and everything connected to it, I'm totally moved out of my house (well, I was before, but now my furniture is gone, too,) and we've got all of our joint stuff in place. We leave for our honeymoon on Friday and we cannot WAIT for a vacation!!! Just looking around at all the boxes and boxes I have to unpack before then, I know I'll need one.