Number Five

Hey readers!  I just noticed today that I have a 50th blog follower!  Yay, I love that!  Thank you guys for reading and following!  I'm thinking a give away is going to happen soon.  I just need to come up with something to give away.  I'm on it. 

Anyway, today is my 5th wedding anniversary!  Last year I did a photo post of some pictures of the day.  I actually never finished showing you more pictures like I said I would, so here's more from where I left off last year.  I'll also let you in on some of my wedding details. 

I actually did get into the wedding planning process, since I had a year from when we got engaged to when we got married.  I regularly frequented http://www.theknot.com%20/ searching for ideas and looking at the forums, which are grouped by region (I highly recommend using the forums as a tool!).  I was able to find a lot of vendors that way and read bride's reviews of them.

My dress was actually less than $300, from David's Bridal and I loved it.  It was simple, A-line, no frills, and I felt like it was totally flattering and beautiful.  It really didn't take me long at all to pick out my dress, I probably tried on less than 10 and knew it was the one.  I had satin buttons put down the back to make it a little more fancy and personalized, but otherwise, I loved it as it was. 

One of the details I had the hardest time with was choosing bridesmaid dresses.  Initially, I wanted to let the girls wear a black dress of their choice to make it easy for them and casual, but they were kind of not into the idea, seeing as it was a spring wedding in South Carolina, in May (black dress = hot).  Once we decided black was out, it really came down to light blue or sage green, and we ended up going with the sage green.  The girls picked whatever style they wanted in sage, tea length.  Our colors were kind of unofficially sage green, white, and black and I LOVE this color combo :)

Greg hates tuxes, so we went to Macy's and bought him a new black Calvin Klein suit that we knew he could wear again.  He has gotten tons of wear out of the suit, wearing it to interviews, other weddings, etc... so it was a great investment.  His tie was actually a white on white striped tie from the Donald Trump Collection.  The other groomsmen were asked to wear their own black suits, and we got them Tommy Hilfiger green and white striped ties as part of their groomsmen gifts.

For flowers, I decided to also go the simple/elegant route, and basically told my florist that I just wanted ALL white calla lilies for everything- my bouquet, the bridesmaids bouquets, the boutonnieres, the corsages- everything.  I also ordered 80 loose white calla lilies and some bear grass, which the bridesmaids and I placed in cylinder vases from Michaels on the morning of the wedding.  The only other flowers we had were green hydrangeas on the top of the cake.  I felt like our venue (a country club house), was decorated enough, and didn't want to go over board with tons of fru fru flower arrangements.

See how the room was kinda busy?

Greg and I had our first dance to Sarah McLachlan's "Push" (on the Afterglow album). 

Greg's actually not a big fan of much main stream music, which posed a challenge for me in picking out a song we both liked.  He's more of a Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, techno/industrial music guy.  One group he does like is Delerium, a group that has done remixes of some Sarah McLachlan songs, so when I suggested a Sarah song he agreed that would work.  I love the lyrics to this song.  It's a beautiful.

One of my favorite pictures ever of my parents.  My mom was stunning...

My dad and I danced to Christopher Cross "Sailing".  We had a sailboat when I was younger, and this song always reminds me of my dad.  It gave me chills when we danced to it.  Magical.

I was actually a pretty big control freak about the music I wanted for our wedding.  I contemplated getting a band, but couldn't find one that played the kind of music I like, so we went with a DJ in the end.  I gave him a VERY specific list of things I liked and didn't like, and he pretty much stuck to my "like" list, which was probably three pages long...haha.  My list was carefully thought out of songs I knew people like to dance to, and I think I did a great job because the dance floor was surprisingly full for a small wedding (54 people) all night!  I banned The Grease Soundtrack, the chicken dance, and the Cupid Shuffle, but I actually do enjoy The Electric Slide.  Apparently a lot of people do... 

A girl's gotta make sure they play "You Shook Me All Night Long" and "Ice Ice Baby"...priorities.

My cake was one of my FAVORITE things from the wedding.  It was from Signe's bakery and was chocolate, almond, raspberry flavored with butter cream frosting.  It was gorgeous too.  I knew I wanted ribbon around the bottom, but wasn't sure what kind, so I had dropped off two rolls (satin and grosgrain) of ribbon at the bakery before the wedding.  Signe actually layered both kinds of ribbon and it looked AWESOME :) Genius.

 

I am firmly on the "no smush" cake side of the cake feeding argument, but Greg actually toyed with the idea for a second or two.  Thank god he fed it to me gently!

I think I'm saying "Don't you dare!" here...haha.

One of the only details of the wedding Greg really had a strong opinion about was that we have his father take our wedding pictures.  This made me extremely nervous, not because his dad isn't a great photographer, but because wedding photography isn't what he specializes in.  He's more of a still, nature/flower kind of photographer.  I kind of wanted to hire a professional wedding photographer AND have his dad take pictures, as a fail safe, but Greg was pretty insistent that we let his dad take all our pictures.  The compromise was that we got a videographer instead of a photographer.  I have no regrets, and the video is pretty funny to watch (the groomsmen hammed it up at the reception!).  The pictures actually came out great, we had access to them immediately, and it was 100% free.

I seriously can not believe it's been five years already.  Time has FLOWN by!