I feel pretty!

I felt oh so pretty on our wedding day. Here is a breakdown of what I wore!

1) Dress by Alita Graham from Kleinfeld:

(Kyle’s suit and tie were from Brooks Brothers)

2) Shoes by Badgley Mischka and 3) Aquamarine engagement ring from Braunschweiger Jewelers:

4) Earrings from Dandelion Jewelry, hairpiece made by Regina B (thanks Mo!!)

{author’s personal collection}

And one last detail…

5) The ring my father gave me on my eighth birthday

The boys looked pretty good too! Kyle told me that as Punam was pulling up to our house, our best man was trimming Kyle’s hair in the front yard. Classy boys, real classy.

The seemingly endless searching for what to wear absolutely paid off and I felt so beautiful our wedding day. While I envy the brides that find their dress right away, it was totally worth the 10 bridal shops I visited in the end! Anyone else in the 10+ club?

*all photos by Punam Bean unless otherwise stated

Speak now, or forever hold your peace

A line that was not uttered at our ceremony, thank goodness. Not like anyone would have spoken up, unless they were trying to be a smarty-pants, but still it was nice that the split second of nervousness that might have caused did not happen. Here's what DID happen though.

We got to the church late because of all the venue coordinator drama that happened in the morning, so things were a bit rushed getting in there. We only had a couple minutes to get in the church, get my veil on (NOTE: Have your hairdresser put your veil in if possible! Mine was totally loose and kept falling out because no one knew how to get it in), and get lined up to go inside. The bridesmaids and flowergirl all looked so pretty lined up! Soon, the doors were open and I walked down the aisle on my uncle's arm.





I'm glad Punam took this shot because I have pretty bad eyesight. I could see Kyle standing at the altar but couldn't see the expression on his face or really anything at all until I got much closer.



Another note to brides-to-be: have your dress steamed BEFORE you get it altered. I was worried about tripping on my dress the entire time down the aisle since when it was steamed, it ended up being longer than it was when it was originally altered. Oops.

It was so great to see everyone in the church! Some of Kyle's students came to the wedding too, it was such a fun surprise to see so many of them there.

The ceremony was lovely although Kyle totally got called out by our pastor. Our first date he was supposed to show me around town since I'd be moving there in a few months. Well, our pastor MapQuested how far away we actually were from the center of town that night: 20.9 miles. So much for showing me around! The date went well enough that I got the tour in the next couple months though :)



I love this photo of my aunt and uncle...









"Don't trip, don't trip, don't trip"...I had to hold Kyle back a bit and tell him to slow down so that I wouldn't trip on the way out. He was too excited to get out of the church though so we could have a moment to take it all in!

We didn't do a grand exit as we left the church or anything, and I'm glad we didn't. Instead of a receiving line though, we came right back into the church after we recessed and dismissed each row, greeting everyone on their way out. This only worked because there weren't more than 100 people at the ceremony though since any more would have taken way too long! All the hugging did have a detrimental effect on my hair though...totally flattened it out! Not cool.

How did you leave the ceremony?

Don't mess with this bride and her cake!

Or specifically for this girl? Her ice cream cake.

It took just one uninspiring cake tasting for us to decide that a regular wedding cake wasn't for us. We knew early on that a traditional "cake-decorator-spends-hours-on-it-making-every-flower-under-the-sun-out-of-gum-paste" cake was not going to be something we'd like to spend a chunk of money on but we realized we needed to have something for our guests as dessert.

So, like I said, I attended only one cake tasting and was totally uninspired. On top of that? I refused to pay more than $4/person on something that we weren't excited about. So, what WAS I excited about? Ice cream cake. I know I already blogged about our Maggie Moo's cake and cupcakes here, so here's the final product!



A smaller wedding cake for just the two of us...red velvet ice cream with a yellow cake base. Decorations were simple, just our monogram and vines from our invitations.

PS - I played keep-away with our wedding cake after we fed each other. Not the piece, the entire cake. Did that send a bad signal about how I don't like to share? Will I be labeled as "does not play well with others?" It's just with ice cream cake, I promise!!

For our guests? 5 flavors of ice cream cupcakes!







{ photos by Punam Bean }

Sidenote: A fun fact about Maggie Moo's? The company was co-founded by Juel Tillery and his wife! He is probably totally my cousin or something.

My friends have commented how amazed they are that Punam actually got photos of the cupcakes before they were devoured. They obviously didn't sit out all night so as soon as they were brought out, the DJ made an announcement that there were ice cream cupcakes. First, a nice, organized line formed to get some, but VERY shortly after, it was absolute MAYHEM. Ice cream cupcakes=success.

One of the best ideas ever!

Our Vintage Cars

I am so SO happy we got the transportation that we did. Wasn't easy to track these cars down, but with the help of a friend of the family we were majorly hooked up! A friend of Kyle's great-grandfather mentioned he had them and said he would love for us to use them on our wedding day. Not only was it awesome to be taken around in these (although it would have been more awesome with some air conditioning, not gonna lie...), the photos we got from them are better than I ever imagined they would be! The fact that in a way we were able to incorporate his great-grandfather in the day is just beyond amazing.

Punam spotted this cornfield en route from the church to the venue so we pulled over to take some shots.















{ all photos by Punam Bean }

Dreamy.

These are some of my favorite photos from the day. It was one of Kyle's only responsibilities in the planning process and he more than exceeded what I had envisioned! Anyone else's Mr. blow them away with one of their wedding responsibilities?