Wedding Recap #3 - Getting Ready!

Before I recap the getting ready part of our wedding day, I want to say a HUGE thank you to my friend and hairstylist Laci. You have NO idea how much you calmed me down that day and how much you made me feel so much better and more relaxed. And for that, I love you! lol

Laci was seriously, like others were too, a huge help to me! She was so helpful at the rehearsal doing what ever little tasks we needed help with. My getting ready started pretty quickly right after the rehearsal. All of my bridesmaids had their hair appointments at the salon at the same time and my mom and I got our hair done back at the hotel so that it would be a little less chaotic. I could not believe it, but Gracie ended up passing out, on her own, with no coaxing involved lol, and took a nap for over 2 hours!




I cant tell you how happy I was that she took a good nap!

Laci was so sweet to order us some margaritas! We were able to have a a couple hours just hanging out while she did my hair. It was so fun getting a chance to hang out with her, we don't get very many moments to hang out. Even if she was doing my hair at the same time lol.

The bridesmaids hair ended up taking a little bit longer then we had expected. Not only was it our wedding day, but it was also the University's graduation day so all the salons were jam packed with people getting ready for graduation that day. I had hoped we would all be done getting ready in time to get to the train station early to get as many photos done as possible. That didn't quite work out, which wasn't anyone fault, there just wasn't enough time. I'm so grateful for the photos we did get however. Our photographer, Shana Mills Photography, did a FABULOUS job! She got so many great photos of Hubby Holmes and his groomsmen. Even though we didn't have time to get any bridesmaid shots, she was still able to get so many great photos of the getting ready process. Here are my favorite getting ready shots and some of my favorite shots of the groomsmen she was able to get before the wedding :)

Cant live without my phone! ;)



My beautiful cousin





"Waitin on Woman" ;)





I sure love Hubby Holmes :)





I love this one of Hubby Holmes handcuffed to the light pole lol

I could seriously post like 50 more but then that would just be silly. The overall getting ready for our wedding day was so chaotic and just an unorganised mess! I'm just glad that at least the pictures (most of them anyways lol) depict something different. I'm glad they captured the joy that we truly felt in our hearts that day! I learned very quickly that day that I will never (like there will be another chance anyways, I'm going to be with Hubby Holmes forever, Duh! lol) but I will NEVER do that again lol. I wish I would have paid someone to do EVERYTHING! All the set up, all the transporting of stuff from here to there, all the little details, everything. **EDIT!**(I cant say thank you enough to Fancy Cakes Etc. for all that they did! I cant let it go without acknowledging the work that they did! They truly did do so much that day, that without them I would have just been one hot mess and there just may not have been a wedding lol. They did so many things, i.e. the cake, the caterring, helped find music, the set up and take down, etc...that It would take me all day to list what all they did. Thank you Debra, Tegan, and all the Fancy Cakes Etc. crew!!) My day was way to consumed with worrying about 50 million little things to get done that I should have just been able to enjoy it for what it was. All I can say, is that the second my veil was placed over my face and I walked down that aisle towards my best friend, all of the stress of wedding planning and preparing for everything literally lifted off of my back and everything in the world was just as it should be! But that's another recap ;).....

Wedding Recap #2

With all the stress that the day before our wedding brought me, I was NOT about to let the day of our wedding be anything but relaxation, joy, and just filled with love and laughter. Hahahaha, yeah right! That was not what was in store for me that day lol. Well, the love and laughter part ofcorse was! But to think that the day was going to be anything but stress free and full of relaxation was a JOKE! The day started with our wedding rehearsal. We had our rehearsal the morning of our wedding because we had alot of family coming in from out of town and it made it easier for them to not have to miss work/school/etc. on Friday. So bright and early at 8:30 we all headed to the Train Depot to unload 3 cars FULL of wedding crap into the station and try to fit in a wedding rehearsal, breakfast and some set up in only 2 hours that morning. It was rather interesting to say the least! We were so blessed to have so many friends and family there to help us! Everyone found a job and pitched in! I could not have done it without all of them. And not one of them complained about my disorganization and chaotic mind that day lol. Here are some pictures of our family and friends helping out:

My nephew helping out like a stud!

I'm so glad they helped! Look at all the crap they had to carry in, so funny to look back on it now and see how unimportant some of that stuff was! lol

Everyone waiting to be told what to do :)

I feel like this picture is a good representation of the day! Just a pile of stuff everywhere!

This is Debra, our head caterer and wedding planner. The look on her face is priceless! That is exactly how I was feeling this morning lol

Everyone helping set up tables! What great troupers they were :)

"Are you sure you want me to put that there?!"

Apparently I was dishing out orders lol

You gotta leave time for playing on your iPhone :)

By this point others joined in on the "setting up the candy bar" lol. I think they just wanted to sneak some tasty treats ;)

Once we got some things put away and the caterer arrived with breakfast for everyone, the morning started to look up. I know now looking back on everything that the disorganization was a result of all the planning and ideas that I had come up with from a year and a half of planning and thinking I needed every little detail to make our wedding day perfect. But in fact it took away from me being able to enjoy the time with family and friends. I will say, and I'm sure I will mention later, that once I walked down the aisle towards marrying my best friend, all that stress lifted away and I was in complete love and joy! Nothing mattered any more and everything was perfect! Everything just fell into place and I was able to enjoy our wedding evening, with a few surprises too! Everyone enjoyed the rehearsal breakfast and we were able to run through the rehearsal in less than 20 min! After the rehearsal, everyone parted ways to get ready for the big event of the day! Gracie and myself headed to the hotel to enjoy a few moments of quite time before getting my hair done and all the bridesmaids headed off to get their hair done at the salon. Kudos to all the girls at Synergy Salon for making them all look FABULOUS! Thank you to everyone who was there at the rehearsal and helped out. I may not have told you thank you but your help was very much appreciated and we could not have done it without each and every one of you! Hubby Holmes and myself love you all and are very grateful for all you did for us that day :) Stay tuned for a recap of getting ready and the ceremony! :)

Wedding Recap #1

Hey everyone! So, as you know me and Hubby Holmes finally tied the knot about a month and a half ago. I have been wanting to do a recap of our wedding weekend but when I sat down and started typing about all of it, I realised that I had WAY to much to say!! lol. So, I decided to break it up into parts. I wanted to start with the day before our wedding. So much happened on that day, both good, bad, crazy and sad. Some of which I wont speak about because its kind of personal and just doesn't really need to be a space that I want to revisit in my heart. No it has nothing to do with Hubby Holmes and me if you are wondering :). Anyways, I really wanted to write all this down because these are memories that I don't want to forget years to come. You might enjoy reading some of it too! Enjoy!


Our wedding weekend was such a great and exciting weekend that just didn't last long enough! My cousin and her boyfriend came down early from out of state on the Thursday evening before our Saturday wedding and stayed with me and Gracie at my moms house. It was so nice to be able to hang out with her a little bit before the chaos of the wedding started. We got up early Friday the next morning and headed to town to have a day of getting mani/pedis done and finishing up any last minute details for the wedding. I had hoped that Friday would have been a stress free day and that I wouldn't have very many "to-do's" to get done, but I don't know what happened, where I went wrong in all my planning, but for some reason that day was CRAZY! My two sisters were also with us that day, and without them I don't think I would have made it through that Friday, there was so much chaos! After getting our nails and toes done that morning, we headed over to the hotel that me and future "Hubby Holmes" would be staying at for our honeymoon night, as well as where the rest of our family would be staying that weekend. I ended up booking my honeymoon room for the night before the wedding also that way I could stay there and get dressed and ready there before the wedding. We went ahead and got checked in and unloaded what ever stuff for the wedding we already had in the car and figured out what our game plan would be for the rest of the day.

The hotel we were staying at was the Embassy Suites. I expected to have extremely good service at that hotel. Its the nicest hotel in the town we were in and just knew we would be happy we stayed there. However, even though I booked my entire families rooms over 6 months early, AND I booked them ALL with 2 queen size beds for each room, that was not what we got. Every room that we were given had only 1 king size bed. Which would have been fine, but the rooms were not booked for just one or two people each. They were booked for families. A family of 4 should not have to sleep in a king size bed, thats just crazy. When we complained to the front desk, we were told that you are not always going to get the room that you book. Then why don't they tell you that on the phone when you are requesting a certain type of room. Also, I requested a room that was not by the elevator. Since it is my honeymoon, I didn't want to hear all the chimes and dings from the elevator while trying to spend some quite time with my new husband. And what do you know, my room is the first room you see when stepping off the elevator. And I couldn't be moved to another room because the entire hotel was booked for the local college graduation AND a track meet competition that was being held locally. There were MANY other things that went very wrong with this hotel, but I will recap on those later.

Anyways, after dealing with the hotel, we decided that it is what it is and I wasn't going to let that ruin the weekend. I was getting married to my best friend the next day after all :). The hotel was having a happy hour down in the lobby just at that moment so we decided to let the kids go play in the kids play area and we headed over to the bar for our free drinks. Now, I don't normally drink around Gracie. In fact, I don't think I have EVER drank around her. But at this very moment of being pretty cranky with the hotel service so far and the fact that they were offering FREE, yes FREE drinks and snacks, I wasn't about to pass it up. And I was good, I only had one glass of wine and then we decided to finish up our day of tasks. We drove back to the city to my moms to get the last load of stuff and made it back to the hotel in time to enjoy pizza with my aunt and cousins who made it in from out of town. It was such a long day that was filled with so many little tasks, a ton of "just a quick drive over here...and there....and back here...". We were all so exhausted! It was 1am before any of us got to sleep. Gracie ofcorse passed out watching movies in the bed around 10 thank goodness! Looking back on that day there are so many things that I think about now that just weren't important. Its so funny what you feel that you HAVE to have while planning a wedding. Certain picture frames/decorations, little things that you feel will just make that day better. Then after getting married you hardly even remember those little details. If I could change anything from that day, and from planning all together, I would do away with all the little stuff. I wouldn't have worried about putting together the little decorations at the moment that weren't done, no one would have noticed if they were missing in the first place. I would have spent the day just relaxing and enjoying more of the company of my family that was with me that I don't see very often. Maybe spent the evening watching movies (like I had originally wanted to do) and just let go of what wasn't done. But if we only knew now what we didn't know then....