WEDDING MASTERPOST

Remember that one time two years ago I started this blog and decided to start talking about my wedding in a series of posts and then I totally gave up and never finished and now I have an unfinished and unsatisfactory documentation of all things wedding? Yeah well because I'm overly ambitious that is changing today. Buckle up, friends. It's going to be a long one.

April 28th 2012, as I remember it:

-Woke up at approximately 5 am after very minimal sleeping. Who sleeps the night before their wedding??? Andrew. That's who. Apparently he slept like a baby.
-Did my hair/makeup and grabbed anything and everything I thought I might need that day and prayed I didn't forget anything.
-Attempted to eat. Attempt was unsuccessful.
-7 am rolls around and myself and my familia load into the car and off we go.
-Realize I left the slideshow DVD thing at the house that I was supposed to play at the luncheon. Whoops.
-Roll up to the temple just as Andrew and his brother arrive and attempt to talk but am too nervous to say much. (did I mention I was seriously freaking out?)
-Check in at the temple and all that lovely stuff. I decided to get sealed in my wedding dress, so I put that on and answered the nice old temple ladies questions and gripped Andrew's hand about as hard as I could. At some point people started arriving and Andrew and I were escorted to the celestial room to wait.
-I don't know what you're supposed to talk about in the celestial room with your soon to be husband but we probably missed the mark. I always imagined it would be super romantic and gushy but mostly I was trying not to throw up and I think we were both just kind of incredulous that this was happening. I mean, we had been talking about this for 2 years and it was some far away dream and then it was here and I was overwhelmed with the fact that I was 18 and making arguably the hugest decision of my life. I was confident in my decision, but I suppose just the finality of everything really hit me and I was shaking all over.
-Temple lady came in and told us it was time and I clutched Andrew's hand as hard as I could and we walked into a room of about 50 of my favorite people in the world.
-I do not remember a SINGLE thing about the sealing. It makes me really sad, honestly. I just remember sitting there and looking at everyone smiling and staring back at me. I do not do well with being the center of attention and I had never attended a sealing before and I wasn't exactly sure what was going to happen and what to say and when to say it. Long story short, I don't remember any of it. I do remember every single person in that room crying. Except me. I don't really cry. But it was lovely all the same.
-And then the sealing was over and it was like a big breath of fresh air and suddenly I felt SO good and happy and not nervous and ready to take on the rest of the day. (It was only 11 am ha) It was great.
-We exited the temple to cheers and general applause and we had to kiss in front of like... church leaders and grandparents and bleh. Weird. (Why am I so weird about PDA? We just don't know)

-Pictures pictures pictures lots of pictures. Kudos to my photographer for being AMAZING. She captured our day perfectly and just how I imagined.

-Guests slowly trickled off and headed over to this sweet Italian place a couple blocks away for our luncheon. Andrew and I stuck around a bit to take a few pics around the temple grounds.

-Did I mention my mom made my wedding dress? Because she did and it was perfect.

-Went to the luncheon and ate delicious food and our families performed and I tried really really hard not to spill pasta all over my dress (success!)

-Drove the hour back to my family's house and the whole way kept saying to each other 'Wait. We are married? WE ARE MARRIED?" and I think we listened to Fleet Foxes and at one point we stopped at a Wendy's to go to the bathroom.

-Got to my house where everyone was in full prep mode for the reception. I was instructed to chill out and relax. That was nice. I tried to take a nap on the couch but instead decided to update my name and marital status on Facebook and after that I was too tired to sleep.

RECEPTION TIME

-Stood in a line forever and talked to all my frands and got presents and whatever. Attempted to eat some of the delicious food we had, but my efforts were thwarted by the mass amounts of people that wanted to talk to me. :(

-First dance with my favorite brand new husband. We danced to 'Our Love Is Here To Stay', the Ella version because she is glorious. We didn't take our dance very seriously. We were pretty much just being goofy and making each other laugh the whole time and also talking about how today was the most perfect day and how was the weather so perfect?? 

-And then I danced with my dad and Andrew danced with his mom. We danced to Daughters by John Mayer, due to a severe lack of creativity on my behalf. 

-And then a serious dance party occurred, during which I stopped caring my hair. Clearly..

At some point during all this we slowed things down, brought out the piano and guitar and performed in true Andrew and Catherine fashion. We sang "Darling, I Do" which was a song Andrew first heard way back in 2010. He texted me and told me to look it up and then said "We are going to sing this someday." And we did. And it easily my favorite part of the whole day.

-I supposed at some point we cut the cake and all that. But I truly do not remember when that was... haha oops. (Shoutout to my sister in law for the greatest cake ever. Those are indeed hippo cake toppers.) -I didn't want to do a bouquet toss or the garter thing or any of that because I think it's lame. I did give my sister my bouquet at the end of the night and she burst into tears and said some really sweet things that made me cry, which made me upset because I hadn't cried ALL DAY and she just ruined that.

-More dancing occurred until finally we decided enough was enough and we peaced out of that joint.

-... and then we came back 20 minutes later after hanging out in the car at a park. We had to open all our presents that night because the next day we left for our honeymoon and then we went straight home to Utah. So we opened all our presents with our family and finally left for our hotel at like, 11 pm that night. And the whole way there we talked about how perfect the day was and how we still couldn't believe we were married and everything was just so happy. 

-And then it took us like 20 minutes of wandering around a giant antique hotel to find our room because there was construction going on and a detour and??? It was amusing, to say the least.

And I suppose we will leave it at that.

My Wedding Dress

Trying to finish up these wedding installments so I can move on with my life. haha

Just to recap- Andrew and I were living in Utah and our wedding was happening in North Carolina, where we are both from, so we were planning this trans-continentally. It has been "a thing" since as long as I can remember, for my mother to make my wedding dress. She made her wedding dress, she made my blessing dress, my baptism dress, my everything important dress... and she wanted to make my wedding dress. As soon as I got engaged I went to a bunch of difference stores and tried on different dresses to see what I liked the best. I wanted something simple and elegant. I knew I wanted a square neck, a big sash, and elbow-length sleeves. I liked the "mermaid style" but everyone had it and I wanted to be different. I sent pics to my mom and she started getting ideas and looking for patterns.

A few months later I flew home for Christmas and we picked out a pattern, found fabric, and took measurements. We decided to do a silk dress, and in the boddes was a lace overlay. We went online to look for lace and found the most GORGEOUS lace, with big flowers and pearls embedded. (I'm a HUGE pearl person). I wish I could find the thumbnail of the lace, but alas- it is gone forever. I flew home a short time later and left mom to do all her work.

About a month before the wedding she flew me out for a dress fitting. It fit perfectly, which is great because I was worried I had gained some weight. After making a few adjustments, the dress was good to go. I just looove the way it turned out and I love the fact that my mom made it. It just really made it extra special. So without further ado- the dress.

(I really wish I had gotten some more in depth pictures of the dress, but these will have to do. )

PS I got my flower wreath from Claires about a week before the wedding, and tied white ribbons down the back. I was originally going to make my own wreath, but saw this one and it was perfect. :)

Our First Anniversary

Wow. The weekend really got busy. Okay. So, in case you weren't aware, my very first wedding anniversary was Sunday, the 28th. Seriously one of my favorite weekends ever.

We started out on Friday by heading to the park to feed the ducks. Parks have been our favorite thing for the bulk of our relationship and pretty much the best park ever is right by our house.

After that we headed to Walmart and got Moonrise Kingdom from Redbox, and bought some Oreos. At home we decided to build a fort. I love forts. We ended up spending so much energy building the fort and eating oreos and talking about who knows what, that we ended up falling asleep 20 minutes into the film. haha

Saturday Andrew and I both had to work pretty much all day. I got home around 10:30 pm and he got home around 11. I was just chillin' in bed when he got home and he came in all sneakily and smugly and pulled out some presents for me. The lot included two Toblerones (my veryyyyy favorite), a salted nut roll (sounds so weird, but seriously- the best), a bag of dark chocolate covered pomegranates (not pictured because we devoured them in literally 5 minutes, and a notebook that I have had my eye since like, August. Seriously. ForEVER. I actually got all choked up and teary when he handed me the notebook. That's how much I love it. aha, I'm lame. Okaaaay.

Actual Andrew quote: "I wanted to get you flowers but all the ones at Walmart were lame, so I just got you more chocolate." 

He gets me. It's like we're married or something.

We ended up watching the rest of Moonrise Kingdom that night in bed. I love that movie so so much.

SUNDAY! Our actual anniversary. We woke up late and made a breakfast of eggs, bacon, and biscuits and gravy. Yummm. And then I had to go work a 4 hour shift (work wouldn't let me have the day off, how lame is that??) I came back in the evening and we went to the park. (I told you we love that place)  With us we took the top of our wedding cake, which my mother mailed to us a few days prior. Our reception was in NC so she kept it in her freezer for us, complete with our hippo cake toppers. And then, like the gem she is- express mailed it to us so we could eat it on our anniversary. She's the best. So we indulged on some cake. And then we just... ran around and whatever. I'm weird, just roll with it.

SO yes. Goodness, I haven't even gotten to Monday yet. 

Since our anniversary was a Sunday, Andrew took the day off Monday so we could enjoy some shopping and touristy things and dinner and whatever. We slept in (twas lovely) and then went up to Salt Lake for the afternoon/evening. 

1. Lunch at DP Cheesesteaks

2. Baby animal exhibit at This Is The Place memorial 

3. Train ride at aforementioned

4. Drove by the State Capitol (We were actually trying to find Gravity Hill, but we never did)

5. Dinner, courtesy of Des. Book

6. The SLC temple will never not amaze me

7. I'm just so excited it's warm enough for flowers

8. We accidentally stumbled upon the set for the Granite Flats show

9. Black box theatre performance of Young Frankenstein- which was most enjoyable. (We love us some theatre)

SO YES. That was our weekend. And hopefully now you understand why I had not any time to blog. You should definitely follow me on Instagram- I'm kind of an obsessive spammer when it comes to Instagram, so you can always see what I'm doing. :) (@catherinestreeter)

I'll get around to finishing my wedding posts eventually! No worries. :)

Happy Anniversary!

Sorry for the delay in posts. Andrew and I had an anniversary weekend, of sorts, and I've been having too much fun to update things. Today (the 28th) was our actual anniversary, and it was just ohhhh so lovely. I'll have a more in depth update later, but for now I'm just going to leave you with this video. It's just a bunch of candid videos I pieced together from my various friends and their cameras. Enjoy!

Anniversary Week: 4

My favorite color has been yellow for as long as I can remember, I'm pretty sure. Also, redheads happen to look fabulous in yellow- so that was the obvious pick for my wedding color. I decided to pick a teal color to go with it, and then as the occasional accent a sort of lavendar/freesia purple color.

My little sister, who was my maid of honor, got to wear yellow because she's a redhead and also, I wanted her to feel special. She was only 11 at the time, and it was really hard on her to "lose" her sister. So I did everything I could to make her feel extra special the whole weekend. That included wearing a yellow dress (a color no one else wore) and I bought her a tiara to wear that I gave to her as a present the night before.

(Isn't she the cutest thing ever? She'd been crying a bunch at this point)

I had seen pictures of wedding parties with parasols and I thought that was the greatest thing ever, so I opted for parasols instead of bouquets for my ladies. The 3 bridesmaids had white parasols, my little sister had a kid-size purple one, and I had a big yellow one. (I also purchased paper lanterns in the same colors. They were adorable.)

For bridesmaids dress, we went to David's Bridal and actually looked in the clearance section. I didn't want everyone to have the same dress because all 3 of my girls have very difference shaped bodies, and  I wanted them all to have some say in their dress and pick what they wanted. I loved the way it turned out. They all picked their own, we ordered them in the teal color, and they were super cheap because most (if not all) were clearance items. As for my sister's dress, my mom made it. :)

All the groomsmen had teal ties with their black suits. Pretty standard. They also had daisy bouts, which I really really liked. I just looove the way the wedding party looked together. Way better than I had imagined, to be honest. I was such a low-key bride I was sure something was going to come together wrong. But it didn't! Twas miraculous.

My brother, the perfect model

Oh, and on a quick little note- my sister in law bought the most adorable dresses for her little girls (my nieces) and they positively looked toooooo cute in them.

tomorrow: flowers, the dress, shoes

Anniversary Week: 3

After the date was picked, it was time for ENGAGEMENT PICTURES. Who isn't excited about those? I was stooooked. It was January and we decided to take our pictures at Sundance. Not sure... we just thought it'd be pretty. haha Anyway, it was freezing cold and wet but we had a blast. And our photographer was super adorable and the best. So definitely check her out. Her pictures are gorgeous.

Anyway, I'll just show you the pics- cause that's better than whatever I'm gonna say.

I love how that we incorporated music (specifically ukes) into our shoot. Cause, ya know, it's what we do.

Over Christmas break we went home, and also did a little engagment session with our friend back there who is a photography major. She just took a few candids and things as we walked around downtown. I really love the way some of them turned out.

So yeah... love those.

After we got our pictures back it was time for wedding announcements! I just need to tell you the coolest thing ever about our announcements. Andrew designed them all by himself. No joke. We had been looking around for what seemed like forever and couldn't find anything we liked for a decent price. So Andrew one day just started designing it and he showed it to me and I looooooved it. So, kudos to him. Here's what people got in the mail.

And then some little temple inserts for the people who were invited to the sealing. SO YEAH. I really really realllly loved how everything turned out. The other cool thing was that Andrew just took a thumb drive to Office Max with the files and we printed them off. They have this really gorgeous rose gold posterboard..ish paper that they printed the announcements on, so they really glittered and were all shiny. They were basically perfect. (And soooo cheap!)

tomorrow: wedding colors, wedding partay