I am a Broken Masterpiece: The Amazing Day Part One

Some of you might notice the time stamp on this entry. Yes, I am up in the middle of the night writing this post. For whatever reason, I woke at 2:30 and haven't been able to completely fall back asleep. And since I wanted to write about my wedding day without waking the new hubby, I figured why not do it while he's asleep...? ('Cause he gripes when I spend too much time online. Go figure. ;-))

Anyway, a friend of mine blogged about her wedding day in chunks so as not to overwhelm people, so if Amanda doesn't mind that I steal her idea, I'm going to.

Friday night was our rehearsal. J's mom agreed to make the food and serve it, which made me happy that it was cheap, but also a little disappointed because she wasn't able to participate in the rehearsal itself. The rehearsal was longer than I had anticipated and my grandparents had to wait around a little longer than I would have liked, but it's my fault for assuming that it would be shorter than it was.

The best moment of my life (up to that point) was when I surprised J with a song. For those of you who don't know, I have a beautiful voice (I know, humble thyself and everything, but I'm pretty good). J wanted a song by Warren Barfield sung at the wedding called "Love is Not a Fight" but I didn't think it was "wedding-y" enough, so I had my mom include it in our slideshow. Little did HE know that I had asked my brother in the Marines to learn how to play it on the guitar. J and I were sitting together on the side enjoying the show when Will started the first few chords and he said, "Oh, you're having Will sing it?" And then I stood up and started singing. I made the mistake of looking at him and I saw him tearing up, which made me tear up and so the whole first verse was kind fo garbled. I couldn't look at him the rest of the song, which was unfortunate because I really wanted to. But seeing him tear up like that... The only other time I'd seen him cry in four years was at his cousin's funeral last March, and to know that my song touched him that much? Priceless.

The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful: your typical rehearsal dinner. We ate. We laughed. My bridesmaids teased me that it wasn't too late to turn back...

On Saturday, I woke up at 6:15 in the morning because someone had decided to set their phone to chime announcing that it was wedding say. (Me... oops...) I was too wound up to fall back asleep so I gave up and went downstairs to wake J. (Yes we saw each other that morning... He gave up is bed so that me and 4 of the 5 bridesmaids could stay in the same place and carpool to the salon. We headed out for breakfast and cat food (my maid of honor is taking care of Paulie while we're on our honeymoon), then woke everyone up. My plan was to leave around 8, even though getting on the road at 8:10 would have given up plenty of time for our 8:30 appointments. My evil plan succeeded and we were on our way at ten past. Hee hee. On the way, my bridesmaid who was following us to the salon called and told us to turn on a local station so we did and it was playing Wannabe by the Spice Girls, which for my crew was a huge band of our childhood.

At the salon, my stylist did an AMAZING job. I don't have any pictures yet, but I will post them as soon as I do. I never did a trial run, which I know a lot of people are now thinking, "is she NUTS?!" No, I'm not nuts, I was ona strict budget and I trust my stylist, so I told her what I was envisioning and let her at it. Each of my girls got a different style because I wanted them to feel comfortable throughout the day.

I was incredibly calm all morning. The stylists and my photographer were all like, "You're getting married today, shouldn't you be freaking out?" And I'll be honest... I was surprising myself. I'm usually a stickler for being on time and while I did stress out for a moment that morning when I went to pick up my brother and it took him a teensy bit longer to get to the car than I would have liked, I was pretty chill most of the morning, even when J's sister said that she had left her jewelry in her car (at J's apartment). Luckily, it's a 40 minute round trip and we weren't meeting with the guys till 11 or so, so I sent her with a van to go and get it.

I guess I could say the reason I was so calm was because of the two-year long engagement, but in reality, I have to chalk it up to two things: 1. I love my husband. And I was so ready to commit to him that nothing could have soured that experience. And 2. It's a God thing. Those who know me know about the time thing (I HATE HATE HATE being late), and I know that I hada lot of people praying for a good day for me -- sanity wise and in all other areas.

J and I decided to do pictures before the wedding because as a guest I hate having to wait at the reception hall while the bridal party does pictures. We were planning on going to the Arch because that's where he proposed but on Friday I found out about the city's St. Patrick's Day Parade going on and we nixed that idea. It's all good, though, because we ended up leaving the church almost an hour later than was anticipated because of various reasons (and remember my time issue? Yeah... I'm REAL glad we didn't go all the way downtown.) Anyway, J and I had a special moment together in the sanctuary before heading out and that was awesome because it helped both of us chill out.

We did pictures down on Main Street. We pretty much too over the pavilion down there (the little one, not the big one on the riverfront) and a lot of people stood by and watched. Our groomsmen were INSANE, and some of my bridesmaids weren't too calm, either... J's cousin kept doing the most outlandish stuff all morning and as a result my photographer has some amazing shots. SHe said it was one of the funnest weddings she's shot. Here are a few, from my amazing photographer Kelly Adler: