I've been meaning to write this post for weeks now, ever since we got our pictures back. But I wasn't really sure where to begin! It's been so long since I've been in the habit of regularly writing blog posts, and then there's the fact that this one is about my wedding! No pressure. So bear with me.
I was never one of those girls who had her wedding planned out from the time she was a little girl. I did plenty of daydreaming about my future husband and our home and what married life would be like, but I genuinely had no ideas about what kind of wedding I would want. Planning a wedding was one of the most intimidating things I could imagine.
But then after Kenny proposed back in March, obviously we had to tackle wedding planning. :) Things did come together easier than I expected. My sister-in-law bought me a wedding magazine, and I did some Pinterest browsing (of course!), and I started to get an idea of what I liked. My main thing was that I wanted our wedding to reflect us and suit us perfectly. I'm not a fancy girl...I would be embarrassed to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding even if my family and I could have afforded it. (We can't, ha.) There's a lot of pressure with weddings: for them to be big and perfect and expensive and Pinterest-worthy.
Here's the thing: our wedding wasn't big or expensive or Pinterest-worthy, but it was perfect. Honestly, I can't imagine it any other way, and it couldn't have been any lovelier!
Kenny and I got married on October 28 in our little country church, by our pastor. We had a short, sweet ceremony followed by supper in the fellowship hall. There were about 70 or 75 guests there, all of our close family and friends. We didn't have a big wedding party...my sister-in-law was my matron of honor, and my brother was Kenny's best man. My niece Stella was our flower girl. (The most adorable and best flower girl ever! She was being very shy and not especially cooperative at the rehearsal, which made me nervous. But we had a back-up plan, and on the wedding day she did her job perfectly!) Since I'm a Jane Austen nerd, everyone else walked in to Dawn, from the 2005 Pride and Prejudice soundtrack. Stella and then my dad and I walked in to The Last Dance, from the 2009 Emma soundtrack. And then Kenny and I left to my favorite Sinatra song, The Way You Look Tonight. :)
All of the details really came together. We're blessed to have so many family and friends who helped us out tremendously with the wedding (and saved us a ton of money in the process!). Our venue was basically free (we made a small donation to the church for the use of the two buildings), and all of the tables and chairs we needed were there. A family member let us borrow all of the tablecloths. A family friend made our beautiful and delicious chocolate cake! My sister-in-law and I did all of the flowers in the bouquets and church, which were artificial (except the two real arrangements at the front of the church). All of the decorations were either handmade, from Hobby Lobby, or thrift store finds (the milk glass vases, ha). My dad made tree branch candle holders for the tables, and I made tealights with our own beeswax for them. And we had pillar beeswax candles in the church handmade by a fellow farmers market vendor. We did have a caterer and a photographer, both of whom gave us discounted deals.
I made Stella's flower girl dress, and her basket was a 25 cents thrift store find that we spruced up. :) I didn't make my dress, but it was handmade by someone local to us. I thought I knew what sort of wedding dress I wanted, but we went to David's Bridal to try on some, just to make sure. I found one that I loved, except it was sleeveless (I wanted elbow-length sleeves), too low in the back, and $800. (I'm sorry, but no way could I justify that.) So we took a picture to my dressmaker, he took us fabric shopping, and made my perfect dress. Custom made wedding dress for less than half of the store-bought one! My shoes were sparkly flats from Payless that cost less than $15. :)
Over the past few years, I had stumbled across blog posts that explained how they had managed to have a wedding for $10,000. That number always seemed so high to me...that was a bargain? (My car cost much less than that and I've been driving it for 11 years, ha!) After figuring up, I think that between us and our families, we spent about $2,700 on our wedding, and I'm very happy with that number.
I'm a person who tends to get very nervous easily, so I wasn't sure how I would be feeling that day. And everyone kept telling me that I wouldn't remember a thing, which wasn't very comforting! I just kept praying for peace, and I know that a lot of other people were praying for me too. Incredibly, I felt so calm that morning! I remember telling my cousin, who was fixing my hair, that I was paranoid that I didn't feel more nervous. Shouldn't I have been freaking out? The only rough time was when everyone had to leave me alone in the fellowship hall when the wedding started, until my dad came out to escort me in. Even during the ceremony itself, I was so focused on Kenny and what was happening that I didn't even get anxious about being up in front of so many people. I'm so, so thankful that I was able to enjoy our wedding day to the fullest. Anyone who knows me knows that nothing short of a miracle from God could have given me that kind of peace.
Married life has been wonderful so far, and I feel very blessed! My life had basically been the same for so long that I didn't know how I would react to such a big change. But it has been so much easier of an adjustment that I expected. I still can't believe we're married, but at the same time it feels like the most natural thing!
So there it is, a rambling and sentimental account of our wedding day. :) I'm hoping to do another post soon with some honeymoon photos, and then another with finished pictures of our little house!
(All photo credit goes to our photographer, Adam Davis.)