All You Need is Love: Wedding Party Pictures

Want to catch up? Scroll to the top and click "Our Wedding."

After the family portraits were complete, we took the pictures with the ushers, bridesmaids, and groomsmen both inside and outside the church.

All pictures by Kasey Lynn Photography.









I love these pictures so much and think they came out great!

Up next- Bride & Groom portraits

All You Need is Love: Picture time #1

[Real life update-- just wanted to wish everyone a happy and safe 4th of July weekend! My parents are coming up here for the weekend so they get to see our new apartment for the first time. I'm pretty excited to see them again!]

Need to catch up?

Here are all the things we DIY'ed for the wedding/reception
Here are our flowers
Everyone started arriving on Thursday
Friday, pre-rehearsal
Then we rehearsed
And of course ate
Then we woke up and my mom & I got our hair done
The girls got all prettied up!
Find out what the guys were up to
The details-- my something's
I finally got to put on my dress

Right after getting dressed and confirming that Matt was in his proper room, the bridesmaids and I got to take portraits outside! These are pretty self-explanatory, so I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Mary, my MOH-- LOVE this girl so much!

Brittany, one of my closest 'old' friends

Lindsey- my new sister! I just love her dearly

Kara-- last year's roommate and provider of dogs for stress relief

My mommy and me :)

Again, all pics by the amazing Kasey of Kasey Lynn Photography

Gifts for the Girls!

[We're still on our honeymoon, so here is another scheduled post]

Now that it's after the wedding, I can tell you what I got my amazing bridesmaids! Basically- I got them some of the same things but also got them something unique that I felt fit their personality or I knew they wanted.

First- it all came in a tote bag. Traditional, yes, but I liked that I could personalize them initially and then each of the girls could continue to make it their own. 

Next were the goodies inside the bag! 

I got them jewelry that matched the BM dresses

This is some of the stuff they got; they each got the tissues, hand sanitizer, and socks. Then the other gifts went to a specific girl. [Not pictured- Brittany's gift because I didn't want to take it out of the packaging]

Something else all the girls got were these gorgeous sun catchers my parents got from their recent trip to Kauai

All of the gifts wrapped up, before going into the tote bags

As I am writing this post before giving it to them, I really hope they like their gifts! I love all of them dearly and I'm so glad they decided to be a part of our wedding. I hope when I get to posting my recaps of the rehearsal dinner and such I can write how much they liked them! Now remember to come back this week- I have other scheduled posts!

The bridal shower

I have gotten several more pictures back from the shower, so I figured I would go ahead and do the recap!

The original plan was to have the shower outside at a nice local part, but it has been excessively windy lately. Skirts + food + wind + tissue paper = we moved it to my MOH's house. I'm very glad we did as I think people were a lot more comfortable then they might have otherwise been.

The shower was hosted by my two bridesmaids living in College Station- Mary & Kara. They did such an amazing job and I'm so thankful for them!

 Overall, it was a very relaxing time with a nice lunch (why did we not get any pictures of the spread? So sad!), gift opening, and then the impromptu tissue paper wedding dress creation. Both my mom and Matt's mom were able to come, so that was really good to have them in the same place and everything :)

I was quite excited about the sifter!

The resulting tissue paper

Mid-dress construction

Complete with a bouquet!

All of us, minus Matt's mom who acted as the photographer

So it was definitely an amazing day and I still feel so blessed by my amazing friends and family and how thoughtful they are! I'm glad I was able to have several of my close friends there, especially the Saturday before Easter. I will say it took a while to get used to being the center of attention; I wish Matt was there to buffer some of that for me, but I managed.


Now the thank you cards are all in the mail (yay!) and my bachelorette party is in two weeks. I can't wait! Til then, I have to finish my undergrad career. Two papers, a presentation, and a test this week. One huge and scary final the next. Then DONE! Ok, it's the final push...

Showered with blessings

First off- Happy Easter, everyone! While you munch on your chocolate bunny ears, I hope you remember the miracle of Jesus' resurrection! 

As you may know, yesterday was my bridal shower. I will post a larger recap later when I have more of the pictures back (AKA stolen from facebook), but I will say this:
-It was so much fun!
-I felt so blessed to have so many of my close friends there, especially when they could have been home with their families
-It was great having not only my mom there, but also Matt's mom and sister present. It meant a lot to me to spend more time with our families in one place.
-I have the best bridesmaids ever.

Here is a preview picture. Yes, you better believe we did the tissue paper wedding dress. Bed, Bath, and Beyond stuffs their gift bags with SO MUCH of it that we had to do something with it. And we still have tons left for packing!

Image courtesy of BM and future sister-in-law Lindsey

 

Well that was easy

Yesterday my bridesmaids and I went bridesmaid dress shopping. To be honest, though I was VERY excited to hang out with those girls, I thought this event had the potential to be long and complicated. I mean, 4 different girls, each with their own tastes, picking different gowns that still have to go together. Maybe I just had misconceptions, because it was SO easy and SO fun!

On Friday, MOH Mary, BMs Kara & Lindsey and I drove from CS to my parents' house. We had a pretty chill evening of watching the TLC wedding marathons that they have on Friday nights but I never get to watch because I'm always with Matt. So we had tons of fun watching Say Yes to the Dress & 4 Weddings, along with laughing at some of those women's cattiness and insane weddings.

Yay for all of us fitting on one couch and cuddling under several blankets!

The next day, we drove down with my mom to the David's Bridal near the galleria, where we met BM Brittany. 

We're all together!!

This was the first time for all of the girls to meet each other, and we had a lot of fun together. We're all pretty laid back, so we got along really well. I just love them :)


Anyway, so then the dress searching began! First, they brought us a mini-catalog for us to look over and designate the dresses the girls wanted to try on...

Photo credit: BM Lindsey

Then our consultant brought us the 6 gowns we selected, and the girls started trying them on. We had a quick favorite in this one:

Look at our beautiful model, Kara!

It turns out that my friend Ginny who's getting married 1 week before we are chose this one! We really liked it, too, and the girls said it was really comfortable. But then we found another one we liked. So Dress A vs. Dress B?

Kara's mom had pointed out that we should make sure the backs of the dresses are pretty, too.

So, which one did we chose? My mom conveniently had a picture of my wedding gown on her phone, so she showed that to the consultant. The consultant said she preferred one over the other, especially because it better complimented my gown. The girls' also preferred that one. So without further ado, here's the one we chose:

And instead of being in any of these colors that are posted on this blog, they will be in Wisteria. Click here, and then select our color so you can get a better idea of what it will look like. We are very excited, though we don't get to pick them up until February! What's funny is that we didn't intend for them to get the same gown. I wanted them to get which one they liked best, and they all picked that as their favorite. It works though :)

Since that took less than an hour to do, we then drove over to the galleria. The original plan was for us all to get makeovers at one of the counters, and then get lunch. So we walked up to the Clinique counter first, though they were busy so a consultant from Chanel came and got us. I was first...

Before...

During...

After. Hello amazing skin

And as much as we loved my make-up, that took almost an hour!!! Since we still had to eat lunch and then get back to CS in time for some other obligations, we unfortunately had to skip on the other ones and just went on with the rest of our plan. 


We had lunch at la Madeleine inside the mall, then had to go on our way. Despite having some creepy old men stare at us while we drove back, we had a blast and it was sad to all go our separate ways. But, it was a very successful day and that may just be the last 'big' thing on the list to check off!

Premarital counseling, part uno

Now that A&M classes have started, not as much wedding stuff is going on, simply because we've done a lot. That was completely my intention, and I like that now I can focus on my homework, my thesis, and grad school apps. So what I do cover wedding-wise will mostly be from back in the summer, pre-blog. Though, I did do something wedding-related yesterday. I messaged my bridesmaids for a date to go look for dresses. That's something, right? Here's the info on that:

• Location: David's Bridal
• Color: Wisteria 
• Length: Knee length
• I'm going to let the girls choose what dress they want. If they all want different ones, cool, if they all choose the same one, that's cool, too. I want them to feel pretty and confident in front of all those strangers, and this way I have 1 less decision to make!

K, there's your dress info. Now moving on to the topic at hand...

A couple of months ago, Matt and I will visiting my family in Houston, met with Rev. Dr. Jones, the minister that is going to perform the ceremony, for the first of 3 premarital counseling meetings. As he said, the ceremony is the easy part. It's the marriage that's hard. That is something both Matt and I completely agree with, and we want to maintain our focus on our relationship, and keep it centered on God throughout the planning. 

So at our first meeting, we didn't even discuss the ceremony. First, we talked a little bit about ourselves, and then why we loved each other, why we wanted to get married, all that, in addition to our future plans. Then Dr. Jones talked to us about marriage, what to expect, and a lot of other things that I won't go into detail here. He recommended we read a book called His Needs, Her Needs by William Harley, Jr, that Matt has started and says is really good. I can't wait to read it so we can discuss things, but in the meantime, one of my classes this semester is a Marriage Institution class. The first book we're reading and discussing is literally titled How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You. First, I do NOT recommend this book for anyone because it just builds these superficial relationships based on deception and manipulation. But, I will say that it has shown me that Matt and I have a much better relationship than anyone that follows that book would have. 

Anyway, I know this has been a very vague post, but if you have more questions, ask me. 

So have a great weekend! Date night, Midnight Yell, and A&M's first football game (BTHO SFA!) are all in my plans, so should be fun!