Bridal Party and Flowers

I'm participating in Kelly's Korner's "Show Us Your Life" again this week because she is continuing the wedding theme! You can head to her site to see more people's links and pictures. I'm having a blast looking through the links. There are always so many, but it is so much fun to see the variety of wedding pictures. And, as a warning, my post is FULL of pictures. We just got married 2 weeks ago, so it's all very fresh in my mind, and I am so excited to show off the wedding some more! :-) Thanks for putting up with the ridiculous amount of detail.

Anyway, this week is bridal party and flowers. I am looking forward to seeing the photographer's pictures of this stuff (and they should be ready to view online this Saturday--as in tomorrow....woohoo!) because our guests didn't get as many detailed pictures--understandably.

The bridesmaids wore dresses from Davids Bridal in a dark pink color called watermelon. Four of the five bridesmaids all came shopping together, and they miraculously all agreed on this dress pretty quickly, which was great with me!! I love the bubble hem and the little bit of ruching at the top.

Here are four of my bridesmaids on the shopping day!

Our wedding party had a total of 11 people--5 bridesmaids and 6 groomsmen. My sister was my maid-of-honor, and Ben's dad was his best man. Ben's groomsmen were all friends from his hometown, which was really cool. And my bridesmaids included a lifelong friend I grew up with, my best friend from high school, my best friend from college, and my now sister-in-law. :-) It was a great group, and they all helped and supported me SO MUCH during the wedding planning and the actual wedding itself.

And, now for some pictures of the wedding pary during the actual wedding! The groomsmen wore watermelon vests and ties to match the bridesmaids. Ben work a white vest and tie. And my dad wore a black vest and tie.

A great shot of the whole group during the ceremony

And all of us afterward

Bridesmaids (L to R: lifelong friend Kate, high school friend Jenny,

sister-in-law Katie, college friend Jen, and sister/maid-of-honor Laura)

Groomsmen (funny note: since some of Ben's friends were from his high school days, I didn't know a couple of them that well. And I didn't meet one of the groomsman until the day of the rehearsal! :-)

A few more details about our ceremony! We had our wedding outdoors at a historical house in my hometown called the Broyhill House. I had always wanted to have my wedding there, but I had also NEVER wanted to get married outdoors. After a couple of months of looking at other venues, we decided to risk it with the outdoor wedding. It was totally nervewracking because we never had a solid back-up plan for rain (just a couple of tentative, not-so-great plans), and for most of the planning we were sure our guests (and all of us!) would be sweating buckets during the whole ceremony. Instead, it was a PERFECT day weather-wise (and all other ways, too!). It was unseasonably cool for July, and even the rain they called for on Friday night (which would have made the ground awfully mushy) never happened. I was so relieved and happy!!

Here is the front of the house

Another "fun" note--since the house is an old family home (and up on a hill with lots of beautiful grounds), there is no large parking lot. We shuttled our guests from the reception site (a couple of minutes down the road) to the house and back again afterward. I am telling y'all, this wedding could not have been pulled off without an army of our friends and family who so graciously stepped in EVERY SINGLE TIME we needed anything. In the picture of the house above, you

can see the white van that was one of our shuttles. It was driven by Jenny's (my bridesmaid) dad. Her mom directed the wedding. They were like a second family to me in high school, and everything they did for us during the wedding meant SO MUCH. I am really hoping I can at least somewhat repay the favor when Jenny gets married this December! :-)

Anyway, we got married behind the house under a huge tree. It's just gorgeous back there. And since our wedding was outdoors, we decided not to use many flowers at the ceremony. My original plan was no flowers at all (except the ones for the wedding party), but my mother-in-law got some arrangements for the rehearsal dinner that we were able to re-use at the ceremony and the reception. It was perfect!

Rehearsal flowers (looking a little rough at this point--they had been transported around quite a bit, but they held up really well!)

A glimpse of the flowers on the tables during the ceremony (and my bouquet!)

The wedding party's flowers were all roses. I carried a bouquet of dark pink roses (that photographed a little bit red, but oh well!), and my girls carried white roses. I loved the way the white roses looked with their dresses. Our moms carried single white roses, and our grandmas had white rose corsages. Funny note: my dad snapped the rose off of his corsage right when we finished taking pictures before the ceremony. Thank goodness he was able to rig it back together!

We were married by a pastor from Winston-Salem who has known Ben his whole life. I liked him from the moment I met him (as did all of my family and friends who got to know him during the wedding!), and he made our ceremony meaningful and beautiful. We are so glad that he did the wedding!

Rev. Larry Jones

My mother-in-law took care of all the details of providing music for the ceremony, and my family and I are so grateful for that! We don't know what we would have done if she hadn't offered to take care of it! And the music was just beautiful (or so I heard...I didn't hear too much of it myself :-). A string quartet played before the ceremony, and a soloist sang as the mothers were walked down the aisle. She also sang Alison Kraus's "When You Say Nothing at All" during the ceremony, which is one of my favorite memories--standing up there with Ben and looking at him during that song!

String quartet and soloist

Our sisters both did readings during the ceremony, too. They read excerpts from The Awakened Heart by Gerald May and from Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner.

Laura doing her reading

Us with our sisters after the ceremony

Finally, (and I promise this is all!) a couple of fun pictures. Since we had an uneven number of bridesmaids and groomsmen, here is what happened at the end of the ceremony!

One of my favorite pictures...makes me grin every time! :-)

And my beautiful, wonderful parents, who have always made all of my dreams come true, and who really pulled out all the stops to make my wedding day absolutely perfect. I have always felt so incredibly lucky to have such a great family, in the big moments and the small ones....and boy do they know how to pull of some wonderful big moments!

Daddy and Mama

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my marathon post! :-)

I love...

Like lots of married couples, Ben and I have received some wonderful gifts. And as we've been moving in and putting away our stuff, I've had lots of opportunities to break them out and give them a try. Here are some of my favorites so far!

Pink dish scrubber!

This was just a small random part of a gift Ben's cousins gave us, and I love this thing! I'd been using just dish clothes or regular sponges for so long, so I'm really love the handle!

Our drill and electric screwdriver

Ohmigosh, y'all. I should've invested in at least one of these items YEARS ago. I've put together multiple pieces of pre-fab furniture in my college/post-college years, and I could have saved hours of pain and heartache with one simple electric screwdriver. They aren't even that expensive! Needless to say, installing towel racks, hanging pictures, and putting together even more pre-fab furniture has been a lot less tortuous this time around!

The Kitchenaid.

I've already gone on about it. There's no need to say much more. But it is definitely as awesome as I'd imagined!

I am sure I will be breaking out even more gifts as we get settled in here, and I am looking forward to trying them all out. :-)

Speaking of gifts, I finally got around to starting (and finishing!) the thank you notes for the wedding yesterday. As we had gotten gifts in the mail before the wedding, I was super good about writing the thank yous and mailing them immediately....it was a lot easier to do that for one or two gifts at a time! But a list of 40 or so thank yous to write was intimidating me, and I've been just putting it off. When my own dad (who has probably never written a thank you note in his life, by the way!) was incredulous that I hadn't written them yet, I knew I should probably get a move-on. So yesterday morning, I wrote around 30 of them, and then ran out of thank you cards and stamps. I took most of those to the post office, got more stamps, ran to Wal-Mart, and came back home. Ben and I finished the rest yesterday evening, and now I just have to stick them in the mail box. Talk about a relief!

Writing thank yous was definitely the most productive thing I did yesterday, and I might not do anything that productive today! I haven't been watching much TV since we got our cable, but yesterday evening I DVRed some of my favorite shows, so I might just spend the day on the couch! We'll see!!!

My Day

Things I've done today:

• Got out of bed before 9 AM, unlike yesterday. I thought that this would give me more time to be productive, but it seems to have had the opposite effect!
• Two loads of laundry--just sheets, but now we have NEW and CLEAN sheets on our bed. I love that!
• Organized our dining area a little more--I put most things that need to go in the pantry in there, and I am trying my best to have the table cleared off and the coat closet organized before today is over. It will make me feel so much better about life! (Yes, I am still ignoring our second bedroom. Yes, things may have been added to the room since the picture I shared.)
• Contemplated changing my blog background and spent way too much time searching around for new ones
• Changed our picture in the header instead.
• Got my new cell phone in the mail! I'm charging it now...can't wait to try it out!
• Looked for jobs online, and found one promising one for which I filled out the application.

Things I still want to do today:

• Activate my new cell phone and cancel my old one
• Go to the post office and mail my job application
• Clean up our living room

It's been a pretty good day so far. :-)

Organized chaos

ell, slightly more organized. It feels like we have been working non-stop to get all of our stuff put away in the new apartment, but we're nowhere near finished yet! We did make a lot of progress this weekend, though, and I'm already feeling a little less stressed about it. I'm also trying to make sure I focus on how lucky we are to have this nice apartment to live in, so many clothes to wear, and so many great new wedding gifts to enjoy. Who cares if we're a tiny bit cramped? Or if I don't get everything put away before next weekend? I am beyond excited to be where I am right now!

Here is our dining room table, as of today holding only kitchen items!

Here is the now EMPTY space between the table and the pantry and coat closet.

And here is our second bedroom/office. Yeah.

In other exciting news, we broke out the Kitchenaid last night (thanks again to my mama!!!). It is AWESOME, and I love it, and I now have a "one homemade dessert" per week policy going! :-) We made chocolate chip cookies. I look beyond exhausted in the picture below, because, well, I was! Yesterday was a long day, and just minutes before this picture I was laying in bed contemplating going to sleep for the night in my clothes!

Kitchenaid, WOOHOO

Making cookies gave me the chance to break out some of my new baking pans as well (thanks Allison and Meredith!). Can you tell which one is the new one?? Hehe.

Cookie sheets!

Some of the final product...YUM

And goodness, I almost forgot, but we also got Missouri driver's licenses yesterday! Can I just say I love the DMV (or whatever it is technically called) here?? They're open on Saturdays, the people were SO NICE, I only had to identify 6 signs on my sign test, etc. etc. I was sincerely dreading this, and I am so happy to be pleasantly surprised, especially since I'll be going back again to get a new license once my name is changed. Although it is weird to have a license from a different state, I do want to do everything I can to feel at home here. And that's the first real step so far.

The Isleys :-)

We're ending our weekend by RELAXING. I definitely think we've earned it! We ate a delicious dinner out, and now I'm blogging while Ben plays Tiger Woods on the X-Box (his wedding day gift from me! The game, not the X-Box!!! :-) And here in a minute, we'll be watching Next Food Network Star (our only summertime show so far).

Wedding Dress

Since I just got married this past Saturday, I cannot resist posting for Kelly's Korner's "Show Us Your Life" this week!

I'm a relatively new blogger myself, but I've been reading lots of blogs for a long time! I am hoping that my blog will be a way for our families and friends to keep up with us--I just moved to St. Louis from NC.Anyway, here is my beautiful dress that I wore this past Saturday (and want to wear again and again and again--suggestions for how I could pull that off????).

It's Maggie Sottero dress that I found at a boutique called Elegant Hours in NC. My wonderful friend (and bridesmaid!) Kate pulled this one off the rack on our very first dress shopping trip, and we all just knew it was the one. I did keep looking for a couple of months all across the state of NC to be sure (which was lots of fun!), but there was no question that this was my dress. I ordered it in "Diamond White" which is apparently darker than white but lighter than ivory, and I love the way the fabric looked.

OK, I could really go on and on forever about this! I will leave the descriptions for now and show some pictures instead!

Sitting in the dress, all ready to go

Coming down the aisle with my dad--a nice view of the front of the dress

Side of the dress during the ceremony

Pretty train

Back of the dress all bustled after the ceremony

Our first dance--I love the way the dress is swirled!

Those pictures are just a small sampling of some great ones our families and friends took during our wonderful day. We can't wait to see the professional pictures soon! And, I can't wait to post more about the wedding once I have a chance to take a deep breath again!

I hope you enjoyed seeing my dress. :-)

Reasons I have not had time to blog

I've been a little busy here lately!!! A great and fun kind of busy (for the most part!) that has left little time for blogging. But I'm feeling a little more settled in at our new apartment, and I am putting off more organizing for the moment. Here are some pictures of the wonderful reasons I haven't been blogging! :-)

Perhaps a little thing called a WEDDING???? :-D

At the rehearsal, practicing.

At the rehearsal dinner, with the best friends in the whole world.

Getting ready, with an army of friends helping me out!

Putting on the garter

Marrying the love of my life

Happiest, most wonderful, most perfect day

And after the wedding, relaxing together with my HUSBAND (still can't believe I get to use that word to describe Ben!!) in Blowing Rock.

Enjoying the views on the parkway

Eating delicious meals at nice restaurants (one of our favorite past times!)

Admiring our shiny new wedding bands!

Real life started again WAY too soon (my piece of advice from all the wedding stuff? Take longer than 2 days on your honeymoon!!!!). We're back in St. Louis now, with all of our great wedding gifts (courtesy of my wonderful sister-in-law and her boyfriend, who drove them up here for us!) and an apartment full of old and new things that need to be put away.

Our dining area, at the moment

One wall of our bedroom

I promise to be back soon with better pictures of our cute little apartment, more wedding and honeymoon photos, and regular updates on how things are going here. Right now, I'm going to try to at least be dressed when the cable guy comes this morning!!!

Fourth of July weekend!

Ben and I had a great fourth of July weekend! It was so nice that he had Friday off from work--it gave us a chance to get some things done and just relax together. Lots of fun!

First and foremost, I was able to get my hair colored on Thursday...thank goodness!!! I have my priorities, and one of them was making sure to get my hair colored at least two weeks before the wedding--I just made it! Thanks to a great recommendation from one of Ben's friends, I found a nice salon and an AWESOME stylist. She actually had to dye my hair twice because it turned a funky orange color the first time (is anyone surprised by this? I'm not. That is precisely the reason I pay people to color my hair and no longer take any chances with boxes of hair dye!). Another shocker, I was in the salon for over 3 hours. I just know not to plan ANYTHING for directly after a hair appointment because they always always take forever. Anyway, here is me attempting to take a picture of my gray roots and reddish hair before it was dyed.

Pre-dye

You'll get to see somewhat of an after picture later in the post. :-)

Ben and I started off our weekend by hitting up the library and getting Ben a card....FINALLY. I am so excited to have access to free books again, and I checked out four new ones. Which I haven't started reading yet. But, I have goals!! Unfortunately, we did not think to take any pictures of our library experience. I'm sure Ben is disappointed I didn't snap his picture as he applied for his card...haha! The branch we went to is small and cute and near this apartment, but we'll probably be finding a new branch once we get settled in the new place--which will begin happening this coming Friday, which is just insane. But yeah! Yay library!

Then we began one of our big projects of the weekend, re-finishing Ben's thousand year old dresser. OK, probably not 1000 years old, but one that has had since he was a kid. We hauled it out to the tiny back porch he has, and started sanding.

Dresser, being sanded

Ben, sanding

Me, sanding and being goofy (I can multi-task!)

Trying to sand and look normal (notice the new, darker hair!)

Me, starting to stain the dresser (that's my "this staining stuff is hard, I am going to leave awful brush marks on the dresser, I can't believe Ben wants me to stop staining and smile for a picture" face!)

A good shot of the side of the newly stained dresser!

Dresser back inside with un-stained drawers--a project for another day!

We're really happy with the color of the dresser, and I think we would have pushed through and stained the drawers had it not rained for most of the rest of the weekend. It was a fun project!

On Saturday, we were met with packages on our doorstep when we went to leave the apartment! UPS must have dropped them off sometime Friday afternoon, and we didn't go out that front door again til Saturday morning. A pleasant surprise!

Our packages were from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and the inside boxes were wrapped yet another way...hehe! I like seeing all the gift wrapping options Bed, Bath, and Beyond offers! :-)

Here is Ben with one of our packages.

And what it contained.

Woohoo for bottler openers and pizza slicers!! We also received a big box of towels from Ben's aunt and uncle. They're beautiful and soft, and I can't wait to hang them up in our new apartment!

On Saturday night, we attempted to see the fireworks downtown, but our plan of driving down right when they started and parking on the side of a street was thwarted by hundreds of other people who had the same idea! :-) We drove around for a while and saw a few fireworks from our car windows. Next year, we will definitely be arriving earlier! :-)

The best shot I could get of any fireworks at all (doesn't the blinding street lamp add a nice touch??)

We spent Sunday mostly relaxing. We did go sign our lease on the new apartment so that I can go by Friday and pick up the keys while Ben is at work. And we worked our little fingers to the bone finishing up the wedding programs. I am so grateful that Ben helped me, and I am SO relieved that they're finished! I think I want all of our guests to take them home and frame them after all the hours I've spent working on them. :-)

Well, I am off to maybe read a book. Or watch last week's Bachelorette. Or pack up some things. :-)