Can't believe our wedding anniversary is this month! Remembering with wedding ABC's

I saw the "Wedding ABC's" over on Joyful Rambling's Blog and thought it was super cute and a fun way to remember my wedding day which I can't believe was almost a year ago already! This time last year I thought our wedding day would never get here, now almost a year has passed. Craziness!

Attendance
~We invited over 150 and ended up having about 110 guests. It was so amazing to look around and see all of our loved ones in one room.

Bridesmaids

Champagne with strawberries before getting dressed

My younger cousins were my Flower Girl and Jr. Bridesmaid. My maid of honor was my best friend from college who introduced me to my H and my other 5 bridesmaids were friends I've made over the years spanning from middle school, high school, college to the present including my sister in law. 

Catering

Catering was included at our venue and we chose to do stations instead of a sit down dinner. H and I are always hungry after we attend weddings with a sit down dinner so we wanted our guests to have more variety and the ability to go back for more. We had 4 stations.. a carving station with prime rib, ham, and turkey, a summer grille station, a tuscan station, and a pasta station. It was displayed beautifully and was delicious!

Our cake was also included with the reception package. It came out beautifully, but wasn't what we had requested. It was supposed to be 4 tiers and have gold ribbon at the base of each layer to add some color. I was disappointed, but what can you do at that point?

Dress


I wore Maggie Sottero's Adelaide gown. I loved the beading details on it and the lace up back and how it hugged me in all the right places. I didn't want to get "lost" in my dress from it being too big and I didn't want an overly trendy gown which would outdate our photos in a few years.

Coming down the aisle with my dad

Engagement

We got engaged on February 13th, 2009 and had a 16 month engagement. If we could go back and do it again, we would have had a shorter engagement. It felt way too long, but it was a necessary evil since the outdoor venue we wanted on the water is in high demand in CT since it's only nice out enough for outdoor weddings for a few months a year.

This picture is from our engagement party on April 4th, 2009

Flowers

Our flowers were done by Jane at Just for You and she did an amazing job of bringing my visions to life. I wanted a lot of roses in our wedding colors which were gold, light pink, and cream mixed with candlelight for a romantic glow. There aren't any gold flowers, but she did a great job of finding roses that looked champagne. 

I asked for all roses, but since the wedding I have fallen in love with peonies! If I could go back and do it again, I would have asked for a lot of peonies.

Roses and dahlias decorated the garden gazebo we got married in

Groomsmen

H had his younger cousin as our Ring Bearer, 6 of our closest friends including my brother (2 were my close friends that H became close too as well) and his cousin as his Best Man.

Honeymoon

We flew out the day after the wedding to Las Vegas and stayed at The Mirage for 2 nights, then we rented a car and drove to LA and flew out to Fiji for another week. It was the best of both worlds.. we got to celebrate in Vegas and then relax at an intimate resort in paradise.

Infinity Pool at Bare in Vegas

Our Honeymoon Bure in Fiji

Dinner on the beach in Fiji

Invitations

I looked everywhere for invitations and couldn't find anything remotely close to what I was envisioning unless I was willing to spend an obscene amount of money (which wasn't happening!). So after seeing a lot of the girls on my local knot chat board make their own using supplies from Cards and Pockets. I ordered a few samples and worked with Bonnie in their customer service department (who is awesome BTW..) and ended up with my perfect vision which was a pocketfold in our wedding colors with tiny butterflies and our monogram square closing the invite. I designed everything and sent up my designs and had them do my printing and then I assembled everything with double sided tape.

Justice of the Peace

An old friend of the family who is also an elder at the church that H and I were attending before moving to FL officiated for us. He also led the marriage study we participated in leading up to the wedding.

Keepsakes

Instead of a traditional guest book, we did a guest book frame that had one of our engagement pictures in the center that we now hang up on the wall in our home.

and for the guest's favors we had a candy buffet which was a huge hit!

Ladies Night

For my bachelorette we had a joint party bus up to Mohegan Sun and once we arrived we split from the guys and went to Margaritaville and Ultra 88 while H went with his guys to some other bars and to hit the tables.

Music

I would have loved to have had a string quartet for the ceremony, but it was much more cost effective to have our dj also do the music for the ceremony and cocktail hour as well as the reception.

Our DJ did an amazing job and kept the dance floor packed the whole night, and there was even a surprise performance by H and one of his GM's.

Newlyweds

Can't believe we're only newlyweds for another few weeks!

Old, New, Borrowed, Blue...

Something Old: My earrings

Something New: My dress, bracelet, necklace, garter, etc..

Something Borrowed: My mom let me borrow my nana's pin that we pinned to the stem to my bouquet.

Something Blue: My new married initials on the bottom of my shoes

Question Popping

H was so sweet.. he met with my dad over breakfast and asked for my parent's blessing before popping the question to me. He originally wanted to wait and pop the question on the beach in Cape Cod, then he moved it up to our weekend trip to MGM Grand at Foxwoods and then once he had the ring in his possession he ended up popping the question that night in my room before going to dinner where we had our first date. 

Reception

We had our reception at the same venue we had our ceremony and cocktail hour at Waters Edge. 

Shoes

I wore gold heels from Online Bridal

Trash the Dress

No, I didn't trash the dress.. actually I haven't even gotten it cleaned yet.. yipes!

Unique

We had a lot of unique things at our wedding. We didn't have table numbers and did table names instead of places we've been together. The guest's escort cards were post cards of the destination their table was named after. If you picked up a post card from Aruba, you were sitting at Table Aruba and there was a picture of us in Aruba at the table. 

Table Yankee Stadium

Our sweetheart table was "Table Fiji" in honor of our honeymoon destination

Our candy buffet, flip flop basket, out of town guests welcome boxes were all things our guests had never seen before.

Vows

We did traditional vows, but we also wrote our own vows that caused me to cry halfway through saying mine. 

Wedding Woes

I apparently didn't eat or drink enough fluids because I felt really sick while we were taking pictures before the ceremony. I ran off thinking I would be sick (thankfully I didn't) and my mom had to unlace my dress a bit (which was laced up too tight) and put a cool washcloth on my neck and back and my amazing wedding coordinator got me crackers with peanut butter and gingerale. My mom and MOH said as soon as I started eating the color rushed back into my face. So ladies, remember to eat on your wedding day amidst all the excitement! 

X-rated

I'm not sure I know how to answer this... haha

Young Kids

Our flower girl was 10 and our ring bearer was 8 and they were the youngest kids at our wedding.

Zzz's

Our venue was also a resort so we had complimentary accommodations which was really nice to just retreat upstairs after the reception. Our servers even brought up 2 fresh pieces of our cake and had our toasting flutes out with a fresh bottle of champagne. Perfect. 

Wow.. this was long, but it was great to share our amazing wedding day and I can't wait to celebrate our anniversary in a few weeks!