3 Years

It has now been 3 years that we've been married. Similar to our past anniversaries, it is hard to believe it's only been 3 years as it feels like we've been together forever (in a good way of course). But at the same time, I can remember our wedding day so vividly, from the complete lack of sleep the night before, walking down the aisle, to celebrating at our reception.

The last year has been a whirlwind with a lot of awesome memories and I can't wait to see what the next year holds for us! 

Summer 2012, Gatlinburg, TN

Summer 2013, outside New Orleans

4 weeks ago

Love you dear :)

My Brother's Wedding

As I said in my last post, my brother got married this weekend!! The wedding was actually on Sunday, so it allowed for a lot of hanging out time after Matt & I arrived Friday. Unfortunately we had to leave first thing Monday morning to get back (Matt has a test today he had to study for) but we still had a good time. 

They had a beautiful wedding (and starred my adorable nieces as you'll see below) and we had a blast at dinner afterwards. It was a small gathering- about 20 people or so- and it was perfect. I think they were able to relax a bit at dinner, which as many of you know is next to impossible! 

But since you want to see the pictures, here is what I have from my camera. I took some with my brother's camera, but I don't have those quite yet, so unfortunately these won't show the portraits of the bride and groom I took. Hopefully I will get those soon!

My groom and me :)

Caroline, my new sister, putting the final touches on
her daughter's dress. PS- isn't Caroline beautiful?!? I loved
her dress!

Gotta love the ring shot

Love these two

Sweet Daddy/Daughter moment before
the ceremony started 

As you can see, the girls decided they
wanted to be with Mommy & Daddy.
During the entire service.

Gotta love this shot.

Our reception room at Buca de Beppo's

Yay wedding cake!

My aunt/Godmother (Hi Paula!) 

Some of our food-- bruschetta appetizer

One of the pasta dishes

My favorite- veal saltimbocca

Alice may have been a little tired...

I'm so happy we were able to celebrate with them!
Congratulations John & Caroline!

Look what I did!

Right before I started grad school, I somehow stumbled upon this fun little website called Wordle. It's this nifty free site where you enter in/copy & paste the text and then it creates a word cloud for you. I had tons of free credit at Shutterfly, so I decided to make a poster of our wedding vows.

I essentially copy and pasted the text from our wedding and then it spit back a design. The cool thing about Wordle is you can personalize the word cloud-- change the colors, the shape, font, etc so you can really make it whatever you want. They decide the sizes of the words based on the frequency it appears in the text. Here are some of the mock-ups I made before deciding on the final one:

 Matt and I picked the last one you see, uploaded it to Shutterfly, and had them print it out poster-size. The resolution of the upload wasn't perfect. For instance, if it was a picture we had printed at that size, it would look horrible. However, for the text, it looked great! Here's the final product hanging above our bed!

I promise I am not getting paid for this by Wordle or Shutterfly. It was just a fun, cheap little project I did and we really like how it turned out. It's cool to see the words that were the most prominent in our wedding vows on a daily basis :)

All You Need is Love: Final Thoughts

***This will be my final wedding recap post. Can't believe it took me all summer, but I wanted to thank you for following along with me! Next week will start the honeymoon recaps, interspersed with real-life updates because the following week, I start grad school! And then I won't be posting every day...

But anyway, on to my final thoughts to the entire wedding process

Final Thoughts:
Our wedding day was amazing. Everything went very smoothly (minus two minor hiccups) and people all had a good time. It was definitely a very happy day. I think I did go a bit Type A in the planning process, but that's just who I am and I'm glad I was able to get certain things done waaay ahead of time.

However, as I have said, if there was anything I could change, it would be to have a longer reception. I personally felt rushed and like I couldn't talk to our guests as much as I wanted. At the end of the reception, I was dehydrated and felt pretty bad (though I didn't realize it until I was away from the guests). I wish I could have not felt that way, but as my dad told me going into the wedding experience:

The wedding is for the friends & family while the honeymoon is for the bride and groom.

I totally agree with that now! I don't know if it was my lack of sleep the night before, the shoes, stress, or what, but I just didn't leave in the limo feeling ecstatic. Instead, I was relieved for all of it to be over. I'm sure others had different experiences and Matt didn't feel exactly the same way I did, but that's just my own 2 cents.

But don't get me wrong-- the wedding was absolutely beautiful and all of the details came together perfectly. I'm glad all of our family and friends could enjoy it and celebrate with us and it was a very happy day. I finally got to marry my best friend after dating him and loving him for over 3 years, so that automatically makes it one of the best days of my life!

Was it the best day ever? No, but I still have amazing memories of that day and I don't regret anything.

Honestly I wouldn't want my wedding day to be the best day ever. If it was, what would you have to look forward to for the rest of your life?

Photo: Kasey Lynn Photography

All You Need is Love: Vendor Reviews

Catch up on all the recaps by clicking "Our Wedding" at the top.

So now between the wedding and honeymoon recaps, I figured now would be a good time to do vendor reviews and final thoughts of the wedding. This post has the vendor reviews, and then tomorrow I'll post the final thoughts of the whole wedding experience!

First-- I wanted to say thank you to all of you who have been reading these recaps and all your sweet comments! It has been great for Matt & I to relive the day, too. I just wanted you to know that it meant a lot to me to read your comments!

Vendor Reviews
I absolutely loved all of our vendors, from the photographer, to the reception venue, to the florist, to the baker. I would recommend them all to anyone getting married in the Houston area. You can get their contact information from their websites I have linked to.

Photography- Kasey Lynn Photography: Kasey did an amazing job, as did her second shooter. Throughout the whole wedding-planning process, Kasey was very prompt with responding to my emails and silly questions and was very easy to work with. We are so happy with her pictures and seriously could not have asked for anything more.

Reception venue- Amerigo's Grille: This restaurant is gorgeous, the food is amazing, and the service is outstanding. However, I wish we could have had a longer reception. I felt rushed during the whole thing and I just hope my guests didn't feel the same way. But since they are a restaurant, I completely understand why we had to clear out at the time we did. I didn't want to push the ceremony any earlier because we had several out of town guests, etc. In the end it all worked out and we got to talk to everyone, but if I could change one thing, that would be it.

Floral- LZ Floral: Lara is very easy to work with and as you may know from reading my past posts, I had a lot of floral changes just because I was indecisive. She was very flexible but also made sure we stuck to our budget.

Bakery- Kiss the Cook Cakes: The cake was amazing, both the decorating and taste, and we couldn't have asked for a better value! What more can you ask for?

All You Need is Love: I Toss the Bouquet and We Leave!

Catch up by clicking "Our Wedding" at the top. All pictures by Kasey Lynn Photography.

So my bridesmaid Kara is helping me out of my wedding dress, I get to go to the restroom for the first time all day, and I realize I'm in absolute pain. My stomach is all cramped up and my feet are killing me. Well, no time to worry about that then because I have to go meet my husband and take a ride in the limo!

After we are changed, we have to wait for the all clear before we walk down the stairs and into the onslaught of bubbles, hugs, waves, and goodbyes!

Another one of my favorites :)

Everyone loved the ears! It was definitely a good surprise and left no doubt where we were going for our honeymoon! Right before we climbed into the limo, I had to toss the bouquet!

My friend Ari catches it!

I then give my dad one last hug before we leave...

Kiss my new HUSBAND
[my hat was trying to be blown off--it was windy!]

And off we go!.. Oh wait, no!

As soon as the limo starts to pull out I tell him to stop. My mom still had my cell phone and other essentials I needed for the honeymoon. Matt runs out to go get them, much to everyone's surprise.

But then we're on our way!


The limo was stocked with beverages, so I quickly downed some water which greatly helped with my health issues. Matt & I then enjoyed a nice limo drive to our hotel for the night before flying to Disney World the next morning!

Up next: Final (maybe) wedding thoughts

All You Need is Love: The Wine Cellar Pictures

Catch up by clicking on "Our Wedding" at the top of the page! All pictures by Kasey Lynn Photography.

After we finished the cake and pie cutting, our photographer stole us for some more portraits in the wine cellar. These are DEFINITELY some of my favorite pictures of the day and it was nice to take a little break from the hustle and bustle of the reception.






After these pictures, we went to the last few tables to chat, and then went upstairs to change! One of my bridesmaids came to help me while the others passed out the bubbles to the guests because...

Up next- we leave!

All You Need is Love: We Cut the Cake & Pie

Catch up by clicking "Our Wedding" at the top! All pictures by Kasey Lynn Photography.

After the dancing was over, it was time to cut the cake! I know I'm not the first to complain about this, but either:
-Someone should offer lessons/tips for how to cut the bottom layer of a wedding cake -or-
-You should be able to cut the top layer
It is surprisingly difficult when you have to navigate all the frosting, the sheer size of the cake, etc. Basically- future brides, beware! Maybe have more than a one-inch gap between the bottom and second-to-bottom tier :P

That's some concentration, let me tell you

We did it!

Thankfully, the cake was absolutely delicious so well worth our effort! And no, no icing was smeared in anyone's faces.
We then moved on to the apple pie!

And it was much easier to cut!

You may have noticed the absence of us feeding each other cake. That would be due to my pickiness over what pictures I post of myself on the internet. Let's leave it at that, k? After the amateurs attempting to cut the cake, it was time for the experts!!

Up next-- we take pictures in a wine cellar!

All You Need is Love: We Dance, Dance, and Saw 'Em Off

Catch up by clicking the "Our Wedding" tab at the top :)

All pictures by Kasey Lynn Photography.

Matt & I chose to dance to Brad Paisley's "Then" for our first dance. I was unsure of how well I was going to be able to dance in my ball gown, but we managed :)

Take a listen while you scroll down the pictures-- oh and FYI we shortened the songs for the dances. I didn't want to dance in front of people for 5 minutes straight so we (Matt) just did fancy music editing magic.

We were able to do some fancy moves

Love this picture the photographer got of my parents

Next, my dad & I danced to "My Little Girl" by Tim McGraw. Yup, typical song, but I am definitely a daddy's girl so it's fitting.





After that, we still had one very important dance to attend to-- The Aggie War Hymn. If you aren't an Aggie or familiar with Texas A&M, it is our fight song and it is tradition to do it at your wedding, especially if you are both Aggies. Since a lot of our guests are also Aggies, it was a lot of fun for us all to go out there and sing the War Hymn. Take a listen here.

Yes, that would be me 'sawing 'em off' in my wedding dress.

Saw varsity's horns off

WHOOP!

Coming up next-- cutting various baked goods