June 8th, 2014

A year ago today, I put on my most favorite pair of sparkly shoes in the world! (In my book, they top Dorothy's ruby red slippers any day! ;) )

I walked down the cobblestone streets of Downtown Richmond with some of the best friends, cousins and sister anyone could ask for.

I walked down the aisle with my dad (and stepped on my dress a couple times) past all of our friends and family.

And I walked back down the aisle with my new husband!

I may have only spent a few hours in those shoes (because we all know I was waiting and waiting to put on flip flops!!--and my mom had bought me a fantastic pair of cushioned black Reefs with silver glitter straps---you don't think she knows I love glitter and sparkles, do you?!), but those few hours were some of the best hours of my life!

This past year has gone by so quickly, but I wouldn't change a thing about it! It has been a fantastic year and I look forward to many more!!

Last year on June 8th, I posted a quick little note to Matt about how our wedding day was finally here, so it only seemed fitting to write him another note, this year.

Matt Matt,

The day we planned and planned and planned for came and went so fast, and here we are a year later--me being all sentimental looking back on all of the fun and special moments.

Although the past year has gone by so quickly, it has definitely been one to remember! You've pushed me to reach my goals, you never leave me behind when we're running, and together, we've caught our fair share of mice in the house! haha. But hey, that will always be a fun 4:00 am story to tell.

Thanks for always being by my side, making most of the decisions, and knowing when I'm too stressed out to do anything. On a different note, thank you for always being comforting and taking care of me during the days/hours when I can't get rid of my headaches and I'm no fun to be around.

You are the absolute best friend I could ever ask for and I really am lucky to be in love with my best friend. You for sure make things easier when life gets hard. In the mornings, every time we say good bye (when you wake me up before you leave for work), I wish we had one more kiss.

You make me smile whenever I'm sad. We've grown another year older together and I can't wait to continue growing old with you.

That's our love story. I'll forever be glad I said "yes."

Happy 1st Anniversary!!

I love you!

June 7th

A year ago today, we finally saw the floor of the bonus room (upstairs den) in the house I grew up in. Why? Because for about a year, it housed boxes of vases and anything and everything wedding related! Mom and I scanned the room for any more boxes, and saw that we had labeled everything, and I mean really labeled everything, and carried everything down and out already.

A year ago today, our parents were generously all meeting at the Science Museum unloading boxes and boxes of decorations to store in the back room overnight.

A year ago today, Matt and I were upstairs in our newly purchased house, gifts for our wedding attendants surrounding us, finalizing things, and making sure everyone's cards were signed and in the proper bag.

Matt and I drove to meet everyone at the Science Museum for our rehearsal, me stressing out, of course, because we were coming from The Berkeley and didn't take into account the VCU graduation traffic that would be around us! When we got there and I saw everyone standing inside (waiting out the rain) and waiting to get started, I couldn't believe it was finally our wedding weekend!

We finally had to head downstairs and outside to our ceremony site rehearse, obviously, only to find out that because of the rain that week, we had to change a lot about the set up. (Tropical Storm Andrea came through the week before our wedding, so you can imagine why everyone thought we were nuts when we decided NOT to set up a tent outside.) The grass area where the aisle and chairs would be set up was holding SO much water. To everyone who didn't get to see us walk down a center aisle: Sorry, but we wouldn't probably all sunk into a mud hole.

A year ago today, I wore these shoes for the first time. I loved them because they're shimmery and comfortable to walk in--perfect.

However, due to the fact that we did our rehearsal IN THE RAIN, my shoes started falling apart.....literally.  Part of the back of one shoe came unglued, and it remains unglued to this day. I thought about fixing it so I could wear the shoes some time, but I kinda like leaving the shoes all messed up, for sentimental reasons, haha.  Also, when these shoes got wet, they started rubbing my feet...a lot, which made them not as comfortable to walk in anymore, but I did for the rest of the night! (Until after the rehearsal dinner and I changed into flipflops.)

Huge thanks to Matt's mom for all of the pictures from our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, including the picture above :) 

Our Wedding: Candy Bar

If you asked every guest to our wedding if they received their favor, my guess would be that at least 75% of our guests DID NOT. The only reason I'm making this assumption is because of the huge amount of candy we're STILL eating from the wedding!!

We had a candy bar set up, displayed with a variety of candies --yes, all within our color scheme, with the exception of the yellow Starbursts..haha-- for our guests to fill up a treat bag to take home.  However, I'm guessing not many people walked over to that area of the room, or didn't stop by to take a look, because like I said, we have so much candy leftover!!

Mom and I searched for various size jars and glasses to display the candy on the table.  We also bought plastic bags and silver twist ties for guests to fill and take with them at the end of the night.  And, because we like deals so much, we found tons of sheets of letter stickers at Dollar Tree, marked down to 25 cents a sheet, so we bought ALL of the Ns, because we figured we'd probably find a use for them for wedding

Our Wedding: Wrap Up

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but today ends this six and a half week marathon of daily blogs about wedding details & wedding pictures.  However, that doesn't mean there won't be any more posts about the wedding in the future!

I certainly do have more wedding related things to blog about, but, I also have completely filled in the calendar through September and part of October with other fun things I want to blog about and share.  For instance, no one has even seen any of our pictures from Jamaica yet, other than the few on my phone!  Those will DEFINITELY be coming soon :)

So, today's post is just to wrap up all of the wedding posts and thank everyone again!

Here is a list of all of our big vendors:

Our Wedding: Picture Slideshow

If you haven't already picked up on it, I love that most of our wedding details were so personalized and really "us."  They were really only things that could've been at our wedding, like pictures of us at all the different locations, etc.

Something else that I loved that really made our reception more "us" was a pictures slideshow we had playing throughout dinner.  Inside the Science Museum, they have groups of TV screens together that are hooked up to a computer.  There were two sets of TVs on one side of the room, and one more set on the opposite side of the room. All I had to do was make the slideshow with all the pictures we wanted to use, and they hooked it right up!

I was most excited about the fact that all of the TVs didn't have to be in sync!  So, while all of the TVs played the same exact slideshow, they

Our Wedding: Reception Tables Layout

Now that you know all the details about our centerpieces and table names, I wanted to share how we finalized the set-up for the reception and organized everything at home. 

I'm not even gonna lie..we started putting tables together before we even received RSVPs.  Heck, probably before we even sent out the invitations.  If we needed something wedding related to work on, we started planning out tables.  We knew that they would most likely get rearranged later on once people started to RSVP, but we would figure that out later on.  And, to be honest, working on this so far in advance really did help!

We started with family and figured out the best way to group all of them together.  We grouped families together, family friends together, church friends, college friends, etc., etc. 

Our Wedding: Table Names

When it came to all of our tables for the reception, I didn't
want just numbered tables.  I know, it's the traditional thing to do, and probably the easiest thing to do, but, I learned throughout this wedding planning process that I didn't do things "the easy way."  haha. Instead, we used an idea for the tables that took MUCH longer to put together than I thought.  However, I did start them way in advance, so that definitely helped.

Instead of number the tables 1-20, we instead came up with 20 different places that Matt and I had been to and named each table after a location!  I wrote yesterday how the centerpieces included three vases decorated in ribbon. Around the three vases were three picture frames.  The first picture frame was bigger and had the table name written on it.  The second picture frame had a picture of Matt and I at that particular place, and a description about it.  Finally, the third frame didn't have anything to do with the location, but instead had a brief itinerary of the evening, informing guests of what would come next, as well as the link for our hashtag.

Our Wedding: Centerpieces

I played around with several ideas for our centerpieces at the reception.  The first idea ended up being nearly impossible, the second idea would've just been way to expensive in the end, and then one night, it came to me in a dream.  No, really.  It did.  And when I told Mom the next day, she had been thinking of the same thing, too! So, it was just meant to be and that's what we went with.

I really didn't want many flowers, for several reasons. 

1) The cost of flowers adds up QUICKLY.  The only flowers we had inside at the reception were an arrangement on the buffet table, and the bridesmaids bouquets in vases on our head table.  Other than that, no other flowers, and I don't even think they were missed!

2) I've never been a huge flower person. That being said, I didn't want to "waste" money on something that I wouldn't enjoy, and only get it because it was expected.  I know, weird.

Our Wedding: Our Preacher

There was never any question about who we wanted to marry us.  Johnathan was my youth pastor since before Matt and I started dating, so he's literally known us since we've been together...since the first few times Matt started coming to church with us and went on our mission trip to West Palm Beach, Florida with us. 

We have always loved Johnathan and his wife Keira, and of course their three awesome kiddos!  We're very lucky to have such awesome people in our lives :)

I had been talking to Keira on Facebook trying to coordinate a day where the four of us could all meet up for dinner, just to chat and catch up, but this was also when Matt and I wanted to ask Johnathan if he would marry us.  Shortly before meeting up with them, we knew Johnathan had a possible job relocation, so I kind of worked that into the conversation....I said something like, "So, now, say you do get this

Our Wedding: #mandmwedding

It's nothing new that social media has really grown in the last couple of years.  I mean, there's a hashtag for everything these days....including our wedding!

Matt and I both use social media a lot.....Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, and the list goes on.  A lot of our friends and family do, as well, on a pretty regular basis.  We just knew that there would be tons of people taking pictures and Instagramming on June 8th, and we wanted to make sure we would be able to look back and see those pictures even after the wedding.  In fact, later that night while we were waiting for [our second] dinner, we went through and looked at most of them, and I'm pretty sure I said, "awww" or "oh my gosh!" a million times! haha.

So, this blog post is to thank all of our friends and family who took pictures, documented our wedding from their perspective, and shared them on Instagram using our hashtag #mandmwedding!  It was so wonderful seeing them and we loved them all!!

Now, I promised a lot of pictures would be on today's post, and that's exactly what you're going to get.  I gathered all of these Instagram pictures through the website Statigram.  It was very easy to log in to my Instagram account, search for the hashtag we used and pull up all

Our Wedding: Our Logo & Theme

I don't remember how this whole idea got started, but I'm
happy with where we went with it!

First off, deciding what day we wanted to get married on was a little bit more challenging than I thought.  Luckily, we decided SO far in advance {and did so many things in advance}, that all of our first choices venues and vendors were available.  We originally thought to get married in May, since that was when we went to our first prom together, and was our anniversary month.  But, after looking at the weekends in May, we just weren't feeling it. Okay, I wasn't feeling it {Matt didn't care which weekend, haha}.  So, I did what I do best. I went straight to Google.

Now, I know this next part is going to sound absolutely ridiculous, but I've always loved the really strange and random holidays.  For instance, did you know that today, August 7th, is National Lighthouse Day? haha. I did a Google search for random holidays in June, just for the heck of it, because I wanted to see if there was anything that could work in our

Our Wedding: Our Vows

Throughout the whole entire wedding process there were millions of decisions that had to be made and countless things to get stressed over.  Obviously.

But there was one thing I didn't think would be as difficult as it was: writing our vows.  When it came down to it, I almost dreaded it because I wanted the words to be just perfect.  Matt and I worked together to complete our vows.  We took different things we each found online, worked them together, and even reworded some things to make them fit us better.  When I look at them now, I think, "were our vows really that long? It didn't feel like they were when we said them!" haha.

I do remember being up there in front of everyone saying our vows, though.  One, I remember it because I hated being in front of so many people with all of them staring at us. haha.  Two, I remember just

Our Wedding: Miscellaneous Details

So, I feel like I've talked about basically everything so far!  I mean, there's only but so much I can say about our wedding, right? haha.

But, there are still quite a few more wedding posts to come! :)  {And, not to worry, I still have more fun posts lined up for when all the wedding ones are done! :) }

There's no specific "theme" for today's post.  Before I start going into more specific things in next weeks posts, I just wanted to share a few more detail shots from throughout the wedding day!

Plus! There's another huge shout out and thank you included below! :)

Our Wedding: Our DJ

About two weeks ago, I did posts sharing all of the music we used for our ceremony and reception. {If you missed them, you can find those posts here, here and here :) }  But, none of our music would've been possible without one person...our DJ of course!

There was never any question about who would be our DJ; it was kind of just a known fact of who we wanted and hoped would do our wedding.  And, just to be on the safe side, we asked him in November 2011 if he would! haha.

Our families have basically known Barry Martin forever.  His son, Caleb, and I played on the same t-ball team when we were younger, Barry and my dad played in the same Bluegrass/Gospel band, Barry DJ'd mine and Matt's after prom parties, and so much more.  But, some of my favorite times that Barry was involved in our childhoods, was when

Our Wedding: The Guestbook

When it came to our guestbook, I didn't really want the traditional
"sign-your-name" guestbook.  That just doesn't seem like as personalized of a guestbook as we wanted.  And, sometimes the line to sign the guestbook can get long, some people might just get out of line, etc.

In one of the many wedding magazines I had, I came across this awesome scrapbook you could order, and have each person fill out a page.  Well, after doing the math and realizing we'd have to get TWO of those books in order to hold all of the entries from our guests, on to Plan B.  We were DIYing most of our wedding decor and everything, anyway, so why not DIY the guestbook too?

Matt and I took the inspiration we found from that original idea, tweaked the prompts, changed the design, and made it more our own, and to be honest, I love it even more!

Our Wedding: Special Moments

As we looked through our wedding pictures with each other,
then with our families, and then as I went through them choosing pictures to post on here, I realized there were so many pictures that made you say "aww" or that were just really cool moments from the day that I'm so glad were caught on camera!

These are why I love pictures so much.  Of course, I love the posed pictures, or at least the pictures where you know the event happened, but you still have the memories to look at {i.e. our first dance}.  These moments that Steven and Lily caught are special because I know I, for one, never saw many of them, but they're so neat to look back on!

Years from now, whenever we look back at our wedding pictures, I'm going to love having candid pictures like these, that show real excitement and emotion from the day :)

Our Wedding: Pictures of Us

You may or may not have noticed, but when sharing all of these beautiful pictures from our wedding, I didn't include that many of just Matt & me.  That's because I was saving them all for one post! {Okay, that kind of sounds a bit on the selfish side...haha}

I love love love all of these pictures, mainly because I enjoyed the time when they were taken so much!  Those few minutes we had to take pictures of just the two of us were some of the only minutes we were together that evening! And those minutes flew by! Sure, we ate dinner beside each other, but we were also with our entire bridal party, because we wanted all of them to enjoy dinner with us. Okay, they all probably actually ate dinner, whereas, we did not. haha.

Looking at these pictures just makes me love our photographers, Steven and Lily even more!  The pictures they took are totally what I had imagined having to print out and hang in our house one day!

Our Wedding: Mistress of Ceremonies & Wedding Decorator

Thank you to my awesome cousin and
bridesmaid, Brooke, for letting me use this picture!!

Now that I've gotten through all of the ceremony pictures, and before I go on about any other wedding details, there is still another HUGE Thank You that needs to be given!

Our wonderful day wouldn't have come together if it weren't for two awesome people leading everyone.  My Aunt Sherrie was our Mistress of Ceremonies and her best friend and a wonderful friend of our family, Kelly, made sure everything was set up for us!

Prior to the wedding, Sherrie & Kelly came over to our house several times for dinner and/or dessert to discuss wedding details.  After the first meeting, Kelly knew exactly how everything was going to be set up, and we knew all of our decorations were in good hands!  Our upstairs den had basically become Wedding Central, so we just went through everything, showing them different details, centerpieces, etc., etc.

We had already all been to the Science Museum for our last walk through to actually see where everything would be set up, how tables would be arranged, etc., but our rehearsal was so great to confirm everything!  Plus, it would be fresh in our minds :)

On wedding day, Aunt Sherrie made sure everyone was lined up correctly, whichever groomsman was escorting a grandparent was ready, reminded the flower girls not to run down the aisle, and our ceremony went so great!  But, she did all of those tasks after also helping out to decorate! We had so many helping

Our Wedding: Reception - Send Off

For when the time came for Matt and I to leave our reception,  I wanted to do something different.  I didn't want to do rice...just so not us.  I didn't want to do bubbles...it would be dark, after all, and they wouldn't show up too well at night.  I didn't want to do sparklers {even though I love fireworks!}...because so many other people do it.  One day, an idea just came to me.  I literally have no idea where I pulled this idea from, but once I had it, I was going with it!

Our send off would include Glow Sticks! I was so excited about this idea, and wanted to keep it a surprise, since it was something I'd never seen before.  Only a couple people knew this is what we'd be doing :)

After searching online to find a site where you could get the best deal for ordering a bulk of glow sticks in three particular colors, we had about 250 pink, orange and green glow sticks!  I printed off tags that my mom and sister helped to cut out, hole punch and tie them onto the

Our Wedding: Reception - Random Pictures

While I'm definitely the type of person who enjoys structure and having a very detailed timeline to get through the day, I also enjoy those rare moments during our reception where we didn't have to be standing over at the cake table or we didn't have to be posing for a picture.  Like I said, those moments were rare, but we enjoyed them!

I loved looking back through our pictures and seeing all of our friends and family who joined us in dancing, who had the best photobombed picture, and who really looks like they had a great time! I love this time when so many people we love from different points in our lives or different sides of the families all came together to just have fun! :)

And, as you look through these pictures, try to see if you can figure out who didn't make as many appearances on the dance floor ;)