Speech!

Once we sat at our sweetheart table that was on a riser and spotlights on it (neither of those things were chosen by me, by the way), it was time for speeches to begin.  I'll be honest.  I was a little bit nervous.  There were only boys speaking!  How could they possibly get away with not saying anything completely embarrassing?  

First up, was the best man...

It was very sweet and I know that George knows how to make the people laugh.  I do remember him talking about how Richard took him in after he moved to America from India in the third grade.  Isn't it amazing to have friends that you've been friends with forever, literally?  I don't remember most of it, sadly but I do believe my groom has the paper that he is reading off of so we have that at least.  Someone's speech that we don't have is this guy's:

Yeah, that would be my brother.  His speech was also very nice but he opened with something I'll never forget.  It was one of my favorite parts of our entire wedding day.  "Now I know what they mean when they say, always a bridesmaid, never a bride."

That's my brother.  Pulling the best things out of nowhere.  He went on to say that I've always been more introverted, having him make phone calls to radio stations to hear my favorite songs but that once I let someone in, they're with me forever.  Now my brother and I don't usually get mushy about the brother and sister stuff but he did wear that pink tie for me, got his pants hemmed the day of the wedding because he thought they were too long, froze outside, stepped into this role when things got messy with the person who originated the maid of honor roll and always smiled about it.  I may have told my parents to take him back to the hospital because I wanted a sister but knowing what I know now, I'm glad they didn't.  (Don't tell him that though, he'll never let me live it down.)

After the bro of honor speech, the groomsgirl read a prayer of grace before we ate.  

Wait...did someone say something about food?  I get to eat?!  Bring it out, I'm starving!


Next time, I promise.


xoxo

Let's get this party started!

As everyone cleared out to make their way to the reception, we just couldn't believe how quickly time was moving.  How in the world was it time for the reception to start already?

So after everyone admired our cake and lovely set up (no, I'm not gonna be modest at all!) it was time for everyone to make their entrance!

It's time to cut the cake!  I was so excited!  What were we going to cut into??

I so don't remember what we cut into.  I know it was chocolate!

Wanna know something funny?  The piece of cake that was on my fork that I gave to my husband didn't go in his mouth.  It went on my dress.  I didn't know that until after I was sitting at our table.  I remember saying to him "oh, there's cake on my dress."  To which he responded that the piece of cake I fed him didn't make it to his mouth.  Oops...  I suppose if I had a stronger emotional attachment to my dress, I might have cared but I'm not certain I would have either way.  I just got married, there were tons of people surrounding us who loved us, I just ate cake...what more could you ask for?

Coming up, how my bro of honor pulled his speech out of the sky...

xoxo

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Our first place to take pictures was Olive Park.  We got out of the limo to be met by some fierce lake effect winds.  If you're from Chicago, you're probably thinking I'm crazy.  (Kinda...it's a great spot! But it definitely messed my hair up for the rest of the evening.)

Before I share those with you though, I'd like to show you one amazing photo:

 yeah, if that is not the shot that wedding dreams are made of, I don't know what is.

Needless to say, we had to turn around because there was no way that we could get anything good at that location.  Had we tried to make it to the gate, everyone would have been soaked by gigantic waves. :(  

So we moved onto our next location, Cancer Survivor's Park.  While everyone froze along with us in the wind, we still got some great shots.  

Behold some of our parents favorite photos. 

After that, we figured that we made our bridal party freeze enough so we dropped them off at the hotel.  Really brides, if you can drop your party off along the way, you definitely should.  There's no reason to make them freeze (or sweat) for hours for some pictures.  There are only so many pictures that can fit on your wall and in your wedding album, I promise.

Next up, wedding photos where we spent some time the day we met. :)

xoxo

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow...

It's been awhile, I know.  I got sick for a couple of weeks and it's also National Novel Writing Month...I plan on being a winner again this year.  Alright, enough with the excuses.  On to the snow-I mean wedding-recap!

Since it was lightly snowing when we made our way to the church, I knew there was a good chance of it still snowing when we got out.  This is Chicago, after all.  I'm pretty stoked that it was, personally.  Don't get me wrong, it was cold but the pictures look great!  (And you'll notice that the junior bridesmaid is missing from these photos.  The cold was a bit of a shock for her so she sat in the limo for these.)

That's me holding up my dress.  While the following pictures were taken, Nicole was on the sidelines helping me bustle it up again.  (What would I have done without her?!)

love this one, don't you?

I think I jumped for joy when I saw this image.

So following pictures of the boys, Jake took a few of me.  I kinda love them.  Ok, I do love them.  I'm not ashamed to say it. 

snow in my hair :) 

cute with just a bit of a goofy air...yeah, that's me.

And with that, we made our way to the limo with the wedding party.  Tune in next time for the last batch of wedding party photos! :)

xoxo 

Breaking tradition

Immediately after we walked down the aisle, we were in a little corner of the church where people couldn't stop and see us.  Nope, we didn't get a send off.  Our church didn't allow that.  I was going to do ribbon wands just to break the rules but when it came down to it, I just didn't do it.  I'm ok that we didn't have it.  I knew people were happy for us.

And so the madness of pictures began.  We did the traditional portraits in the church.  While they weren't something that I needed personally, they turned out pretty well.  Don't get me wrong, I wanted pictures with my family but I don't like the traditional kind of thing.  I'm much more of a candid shot picture kind of girl.

While Richard was taking pictures either with his family or by himself, my mom said we should bustle my dress.  Good idea.  We tried to do so but my mom couldn't find the loop.  Nicole took a look and we discovered that the loop had mysteriously disappeared.  Thankfully, Nicole had a sewing kit on her so we were able to fix it!

After a few traditional pictures, we decided to get a little goofy & call out boy band poses...these are some of my favorites of the entire day.

punch! 

point!

dance break.

things get serious...or confusing.

Good thing we did all that warming up because this is what we were going out into immediately afterward...

xoxo

This isn't a trick

It's definitely a treat though!

I have all of these cute pictures of our flower girl & I wanted to share them but didn't really know where to put them, so I'm sharing a few today.  

playing with the removable strap on my purse. trying to figure out how to use it as a jump rope, I'm sure.

no, I don't think I wanna go down that aisle. 

 

That last one always makes me giggle.  I think it also captures her spirit of curiosity.  She may not have been the surest bet, especially since my aunt had to walk her down the aisle, but I'm glad she was a part of our wedding.  

Stick with your decisions, brides.  If you want a little one you're close to be a part of your wedding party, by all means you should.  Don't let anyone talk you out of it.  Do go into it with a laid back mindset though.  If this little one does or doesn't make it down the aisle, it's not going to make or break your wedding.  If anything, you'll get cute pictures out of it.  

Until next time!

xoxo

PS...no one says your flower girl needs to wear a white dress.  She very well could be wearing an Easter dress you found on sale at Target!

We're married!!

Vows are a very important part of the ceremony.  Obviously.  From the very beginning, Richard told me he didn't want to repeat his vows, he wanted to say them from memory if he couldn't write his own.  Since we couldn't write our own, we memorized them.  I remember him walking around the apartment repeating them to himself.  We even had a post it on our bedroom wall with them written down so every time we went to leave the room, we'd see them.

So first we stated our intentions. (aka, have babies & raise them to be Catholic. Kidding! That's only one part of it.)  :)

Then comes the vows.  Richard went first and he did it perfectly.  Me?  I had a problem.

After Richard, I whispered to Father Manny saying, I don't think I can remember all of that.  So why are we all giggling in the photo above?  Because once he got me started, I remembered it all!  Also, it turns out that everybody heard me whisper that too.  It's funny but I kind of wish that nobody did.  Oh well.

 

After we exchanged vows, we gathered at the altar and prayed.  If you look at the picture above, you'll see my brother holding my bouquet.  Would you believe that I've looked at that picture quite a few times and didn't notice it until I included it in this post?  Love that I'm still discovering the amazingness in our wedding photos!

Then we went to pray to the Virgin Mary.  We decided to do this together instead of just me because two heads and prayers are better than one, right?  When we were walking back to hug our moms, I looked at my brother who was supposed to hand off 2 daisies to us.  He just looked at me and shook his head.  Ok...so we don't have flowers to give our moms but we still have our hugs.  

  
I thought it was cute that Richard's dad decided to get in on the hugging.  

We took our places back at the kneeler that we didn't use and we were presented!  St. Clement doesn't say "you may now kiss the bride." (Nor do they say "speak now or forever hold your piece"...which didn't calm my nightmares, unfortunately.)  I don't remember what Father Manny said but I know we were excited about it.  

 Best first kiss ever, if I do say so myself.  :)

And just like walking down the aisle, I don't remember seeing anyone as we were walking back up the aisle.  There are pictures that I look at and I say to myself "wow, I didn't know that they were at the ceremony!"  Really, nothing else existed but us.  I'm so lucky that we got to have such a wonderful ceremony.  For us, it was just perfect.


xoxo