November 15, 2010

Married!

Whit and I have been married for a week! All those stressful months of planning finally culminated in one PERFECT day last Saturday.

Friday was hectic - trying to gather everything we needed, get it in the right place, assemble the centerpieces, and be everywhere on time. The girls and I enjoyed a fun, full day together. We had lunch at Feathernesters - a full four-course meal including pumpkin muffins, quiche, and peanut butter pie! Then we headed over to the reception site, Independence Golf Club. This was the first venue we visited and I was sold after that one meeting. They are SO flexible to work with and the site is GORGEOUS but pretty cheap!! If you know anyone getting married soon, I would definitely recommend it! The awesome thing about them is that they are so willing to do anything you want! They let us have the entire place whenever we wanted on Saturday, and allowed us to come in to set up started at 11am on Friday! If you don't know anything about wedding venues, that is unheard of! Sometimes places only let you come in to set up an hour before your reception. So after lunch we hauled all our gear over to the golf club to put stickers on mini buckets, unwrap lanterns, and coordinate pictures. It was a crazy time - the time flew by and we didn't get to finish a lot of things. I hurriedly told our coordinator where things should go and prayed that she would get it all right! Then we threw our stuff in our sweet cottage, changed, and rushed to the church for the rehearsal.

I was very overwhelmed when I walked into the church lobby for the rehearsal. There were SO many people!! Who were all of those people?? I had so many things on my mind and wasn't expecting to see 30+ people. It seemed unusual! I figured out later why - at the other weddings I've been a part of, the church lobby is small, so everyone hangs out in the sanctuary when waiting for the rehearsal. For us, our church lobby is huge, so all those people easily fit there, so everyone was hanging out there instead of the sanctuary. Another slight detail that stressed us out a bit Friday night? Our pastor didn't show up for the rehearsal! Oh dear. (He thought that the rehearsal was after the dinner....) At least we had an awesome wedding coordinator who let us run through the processional and recessional and check the sound. It was fine, but meant that Whit and I had to talk to him later that night so we couldn't fully enjoy our sweet cocktail lounge as much at our rehearsal dinner at the Tobacco Company.

The rehearsal dinner was SO much fun! In all our planning, the thing I was most looking forward to about our wedding was probably the rehearsal dinner. The ceremony would be lovely, and reception would be fun, but the rehearsal dinner is where we would be surrounded by our very closest friends and immediate family. I couldn't wait to celebrate with just our closest friends. It ended up being more fun than I had imagined! Our table was SO FUN! We each got to have our 3 closest friends/wedding party members and then one of their dates. Since we mostly all knew each other, we had a blast telling stories and being crazy and laughing a lot. I could barely eat my food though!


I mentioned our cottage earlier - Independence has two places you can rent to stay in - a cottage and a lodge. My parents rented both for our family and my bridesmaids. The girls got to stay in the cottage, which had about 3 living rooms in the middle (seriously - 3 sets of couches, a big table, a mini kitchen, and water fountain) and then four big rooms with two twin beds each and their own bathroom! It was perfect for me and 5 of my bridesmaids (we missed you Danielle!). I was so looking forward to hanging out there after the rehearsal - since it was so big, I invited a bunch of girls to hang out there with us before I got my beauty sleep for the big day. The big bummer was that me and Jamie rode home together after dinner, and inevitably, we got lost. Typical. Interstate exits in downtown Richmond are very elusive. We missed the weird turn and the GPS screwed us up from that point on. It tried to take us further and further into the ghetto. At one point we were at a stop light next to a sketch Adult Day Care building. Oh yeah and throughout all of this the gas light had been on! So after driving completely out of town (the wrong way) we stopped to get a gas - in the ghetto - at a place with a bunch of souped up cars and sketchy people. Well, we didn't get to hang out with everyone at the cottage (the ones who came left before we got there), but it did make sense that that would be my last night as a bachelorette - it brought back some great memories of getting lost with my bff and maid of honor.


The Big Day was all that I imagined and more. It was so weird for me to be the bride since I've been in a few weddings recently. I felt totally normal though, which was the weird part! I didn't get nervous at all (including Friday night) until 10 minutes before...which makes sense because I had to stand by myself (so Whit wouldn't see me) while everyone else walked in to Isaac's amazing piano. When the doors opened I was so surprised to see everyone turned around looking at me so joyfully. For some reason I never though about that moment! I had thought about seeing Whit, but all those smiling faces were quite an overwhelming, yet happy, surprise. It felt like a dream! I fought back tears as I searched for Whit's face (no center aisle = Whit had to run up the stairs to catch my eye!). It was SO fun standing up there with him. I didn't listen to half of what Dwight said (but the things I heard were perfect!). The hardest part about the ceremony was looking into Whit's eyes the whole time - dang, if you are trying not to cry that is NOT the answer! Kati and Zach sang Before the Throne absolutely perfectly, but I realized I should have picked a less emotional song! I mostly sung in my heart so I wouldn't cry even more. My favorite parts of the ceremony were corporate worship, communion & prayer with my almost husband, and when Dwight got ready to announce us and Whit looked so ready!

After we were wed, Katelyn (our photographer) graciously gave us 5 minutes to be alone - just us! It was such a blessing. We hid ourselves and found some chicken nuggets and fruit leftover from lunch. We took many pictures, and I was so proud of myself for scouting out two great locations at the golf course - by the lake and with the club house in the background. The pictures (check Katelyn's blog!!!) turned out SO much better than I imagined! Peeeerfect. The reception was a dream. It was so beautiful inside, the food was delicious, and all our friends were there. The only problem was that after fighting back tears for 4 minutes of the Father-Daughter dance, I couldn't keep it together! So I was basically crying or close to crying for the whole second hour that Whit and I were married. Hah. Getting married is emotional! My favorite parts of the reception were the slideshow (that I put together - it was so fun getting to see everyone's reactions to it!), the toasts (so true & sentimental), and our SWEEEET glow stick exit. We ran through our line of guests as they tossed glow sticks back and forth over us. I came up with the idea due to many Phish shows that Whit and I have attended together. ;) It was such a weird idea but I'm so glad we did it because it was SO MUCH FUN! It got me so pumped up and so excited as we left. The reception went on for awhile but seemed to go so fast! We were just too busy the whole time (we missed the passed bacon-wrapped scallops and only got one slice of cake). It was so fun to see the car all decorated, too. As we were sitting in the car getting ready to leave, everyone kept throwing the glow sticks at our car! It was too fun.


In all the mayhem of the day, I forgot to put my bag for the wedding night in our car, so we had to have Jamie come bring it to to the hotel. She was such a huge help! When I asked her to be my maid of honor I had no idea all that she would help me do, but she did it all and helped me so much! So a huge thanks to her - and to the many others who helped us pull off the most amazing day!! Oh yeah - Saturday night we stayed at Hotel Sierra next to Short Pump mall. I paid for it with my skymiles so we got a sweet room for free. We stayed in the one bedroom corner suite with tub, and it was awesome! I would highly recommend staying there. I really want to go back for our anniversary, because we had to leave before the supposedly delicious breakfast buffet. Our only complaint was that we had told them it would be our wedding night and asked if they could do anything special, and all they did was give us a bag of M&M's and some popcorn!! Whatever.


Sorry for such a long post/wedding recap. Look for the next installment: Jamaica!

2 comments:

  1. Psalm chapter 115 verse 15
    Romans chapter 8 verse 32
    to you from Norway

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  2. Oh, what a wonderful wedding story. So happy for you Sydni and Whit. Can't wait to see the newlyweds on their First Thanksgiving together with family.

    Love you,
    Aunt Mimi

    ReplyDelete