Wedded Bliss

I follow quite a few blogs, probably too many, and most of the widely-read ones feature carnivals. The blog author writes about a topic on her blog and then anyone is invited to feature the same topic on their blog and add a link on the original author's blog. One of my daily reads, Kelly's Korner, has featured a weekly carnival each Friday that has shown off every room of her house, birthday party themes, and now wedding aspects. My current life is less than exciting these days (thank goodness!), so I've decided to join this week's carnival because I have nothing current to share with you. 

Last week they featured wedding gowns, and today I am sharing my wedding, i.e. flowers, bridal party, church, etc. If I had it to do over again, I would have chosen an outdoor, natural setting. But, in 2001 we chose the church Daniel and I were raised in. 

It's a gorgeous church, but the overwhelming blood-red carpeting and accents makes it difficult to work with colors. I originally wanted black bridesmaids dresses, but so many people were doing black around that time, so I chose silver. All of my bridesmaids had different styles, so they chose different variations of a top and skirt.  

The bouquets may have been one of my favorite parts of the ceremony. The bridesmaids carried fresh-cut red tulips, my favorite flower. I carried two dozen tightly bound red roses. I dried the bouquet and have it framed in a shadow box in our bedroom. I also framed the wedding invitation and used a large framing mat as the sign-in book and have that framed and in our bedroom as well.

Fortunately, I am still close to all but one of these bridesmaids. Lyndsey and I have been friends since 7th grade, Hannah and I are cousins, Kelly Ann is my wonderful sister (in retrospect, I should have made her my Maid of Honor, but that was difficult since she was so young), and Michelle is my sister-in-law. They were all fantastic throughout the whole year of engagement and then the wedding.

The groomsmen wore the traditional black suit with a tie. They all looked stunning!

Aside from a special music piece sung by a longtime friend and accompanied on the piano by Hannah, the music was performed by a brass quartet from the local Symphony. 

The only thing I was disappointed in from that day was the photos, which is the one thing I focused on making sure it was perfect. We each picked an aspect of the wedding that was most important to us, and personally planned that part and spent the bulk of our money there.  Daniel picked the reception, and I picked the photography.) Grr.... I worked closely with the photographer telling him how I wanted all outdoor, natural photos. He did an engagement session with us that was perfect. Then, he did the wedding/reception and it stunk. Everything is in-doors and staged. Oh, well. The marriage is what we have now that it's all over, and that is working out wonderfully!

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