Our wedding, 3 years later

I've seen this wedding meme pop up several times the past few months or so and it looks like a lot of fun! Since today is me and hubby's 3 year anniversary I thought I would do this meme in honor of it!

A is for Attending

We had right around 120 people, having invited about 140, despite our reception hall only being able to seat 120 in the main dining room (oops!). We got lucky though and were able to squeeze everyone in one room!

B is for Bridesmaids

My bridesmaids were (from left to right) my little sister, my best friend from Junior High and High School (she was Matron of Honor), a friend of mine and hubby's that we had both known since Junior High, and my roommate & best friend from college. No, they didn't wear the hats during the actual wedding - the hats were part of the guys' attire but they let the bridesmaids take some awesome photos with them! And as you can see, at the reception, some of them decided to wear their sashes as scarves =)

C is for Catering

We actually didn't have any "special" catering as our reception hall included the food as part of the building rental. We did buffet style for the dinner though, as we figured that'd be easiest for everyone. I honestly don't remember too much of what was served! But I do remember it was all really yummy!

Hubby actually made the suggestion of who to do our cake - a supervisor friend of his from UPS at the time, her mom makes cakes for a living and from time to time she would bring some in to share with them at work and he said it was the best cake ever. She makes her own special icing too, which is excellent! Everyone loved the cake and kept saying how good it was and the best part was just how reasonable her prices were compared to most of the other "big name" cake people in town. We also had her do my baby shower cake and I plan on calling her up and having her do Jay's 1st birthday cake too when the time comes.

Should also note our awesome cake topper! My Matron of Honor had one of these for her wedding almost a year prior to mine and I loved it! After having a hard time finding a way to do our WoW characters as a topper (as Figureprints is expensive and has their lotto system) I thought this was a nice alternative. The maker of the cake topper was originally a company on eBay called Ling's Moment (you can find their current site by Googling them). Basically you do "Buy It Now" on eBay and they send you an email with color palettes and a questionnaire about your attire, etc. They send you several pictures throughout the process so you can change a color or have them add something etc. I LOVE our cake topper - it's currently in a display cabinet in our house.

D is for Dress

I got my dress from One Stop Wedding here in Rockford. It's a smaller boutique in town and was the 1st place we went to for dress shopping. I tried on a handful but this one seemed to be the best of them and because it was off the rack we got it for a great price! I want to say it was an Alfredo Angelo. It had a row of buttons down the back of the dress which I loved and it's actually a light ivory instead of white. One of the straps was broken when we bought it but my mom, being the seamstress she is, could easily fix that and we did the unique criss-cross thing in the back. I tried a handful on at David's Bridal (and had a really pushy saleswoman who almost made it seem like I *had* to pick their most popular dress they were pushing) but this dress was in the back of my mind the whole time and I decided that was the dress and we ran back and got it before they closed for the night.

E is for Engagement

We got engaged at the beginning of January 2008 so we had roughly a 9 month engagement as we were married on September 13, 2008.

F is for Flowers

Unity Candle display (ignore stuff in background)

My bouquet

Bridesmaid bouquet

Pew bow

Reception table centerpiece, sat on top of mirrored glass

The chapel outcome

Our flowers were all DIY. I wanted red roses which are expensive and I have allergies so real flowers were out of the question anyway. My aunt used to do flower arrangements so she had some experience doing them and my mom is crafty too so between the 2 of them they did all our decorations and flowers. We used LOTS of the weekly 40% off coupons from Michaels and Hobby Lobby and my mom cleaned Michael's out of their faux red roses the day after Valentine's Day when they went on clearance too, lol...

G is for Groomsmen

Hubby with his groomsmen

From left to right we have hubby's 2nd youngest brother, our good friend who lives about an hour away whom we originally met in World of Warcraft several years prior, hubby, hubby's brother that's a few years younger than him, hubby's youngest brother. Years ago in college I was at a party with some friends and one of the guys was talking about a wedding he was in where they were doing the zoot suit look and OMG I thought that was the coolest idea ever and had to have it for my own wedding. Hubby was all for it too and so we opted for the longer suitcoats and the fedoras and we got the guys all pocket watches with chains as their wedding party gift that they could wear the day of as well.

H is for Honeymoon

The view from our hotel room balcony!

We went to Vegas for our honeymoon, getting there late Monday evening and leaving early Saturday. We did lots of tourist-y things like visiting the Hoover Dam, a nearby chocolate factory, seeing a Vegas show (Bite - an adult show with "vampires" dancing to classic rock), walking The Strip and stopping into all the famous hotels and casinos along the way (we started at the south end at Mandalay Bay and spent and entire day walking all the way north to the Stratosphere), and road the indoor gondolas at the Venetian and checked out the wax museum too! We stayed at The Plaza on Fremont Street in the downtown area and had an amazing view outside our window too!

Some tips: 1) Don't walk from Fremont Street to The Strip and especially not in heels - it's A LOT further than it looks, the flat topography lies! 2) Slots A Fun is an AWESOME place to hang out and kill time - cheap, but good (and large!) booze, low pay-in costs at the tables and $1 footlong hotdogs!! We went to this place several times on The Strip (it's out in front of Circus Circus, across from the Riviera).

I is for Invitation

 

I went to a bridal show shortly after our engagement and for $20 down, if you got your tuxes from this one tux shop located in our local mall you would get your invitations for free (or rather, they would rebate the cost). Our colors were red, black and silver and our theme was double hearts, so we went with these simple invitations.

I also made Save the Date magnets for people too!

J is for Justice of the Peace

Hubby's dad is an ordained Reverend/Minister who has his whole missions ministry that he does and hubby specifically requested that his dad wed us. It was the only request he really had so I agreed to it (although the months before the wedding he did start getting a little bit more into some of the wedding stuff and became a little bit more opinionated than he had been, hehe).
 

K is for Keepsakes

  

For our favors to guests we made M&M tins with red and ivory M&Ms as well as placeholder cards that I made that sat atop little doubleheart topped bells (not pictured).

L is for Ladies Night

My bachelorette party... it was held 2 weeks prior to our wedding (as the night before is just tacky) and the same weekend as my bridal shower as one of my bridesmaids lives in Minnesota and it was easier for her to have them both the same weekend so she could just stay with family in town. Since my sis is underage and was a bridesmaid and I invited hubby's brother's underage girlfriend to join us we kept it PG13 to start and invited my mom and my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law and cousin (who were 10 at the time). We went to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner (which had just opened the week before so it was a bit packed!) and then went bowling for a bit afterwards, where those of us old enough could get drinks from the bowling alley bar. Gotta admit, I was feeling a nice buzz when we left there and me, my 3 legal bridesmaids and my aunt (who was our DD for the night) went bar hopping for the rest of the night. They made me do that bachelorette scavenger hunt game where you have to take pictures doing random things, like dancing on top of a bar (which a bartender let us do on one of their empty back bars so long as he didn't notice, lol...), and get kisses (on the cheek or hand) by an assortment of guys and retrieve a condom from a bathroom, lol... it was interesting! The first bar we went to was laidback and played 80s hairband metal which I found awesome. The bartender also looked like hubby's brother's twin too which was a bit odd and we met some creepy old fart who was trying to teach us "golf swings". We went to a bar downtown that I liked and my aunt insisted we go dancing at the gay bar downtown as well, so we did (we were pretty drunk by this point, all I remember was dancing with my bridesmaids in the cage they had and some gay guys posing for a picture with us, lol... oh and I got a "goody bag" too from there!).

M is for Music

We put together our own playlist for the ceremony and one of my brother-in-laws performed a song that my father-in-law wrote and sang at his wedding years ago that he let us borrow for our wedding. For the reception we had a set of DJ's (Sounds Unlimited from Rockford, IL) who I met at the bridal show I went to - they had polka on their playlist which sold me as my dad and grandpap are both big on polka and I had to have at least 1 polka played, lol... whatever they didn't have in their catalog they said we could submit on CD for them and they did a great job. They were older guys but had been in the business since the 80s and were known for DJing the annual fireman's ball event every year and they were a lot of fun and did a really good job! They also had the best price in town too!

Our 1st dance was to our song - "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol
The wedding party's dance was to "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey
For Father/Daughter dance we used "Butterfly Kisses" by Bob Carlisle (which btw, is a REALLY long song when everyone is watching you!)
And Mother/Son dance was to "Moon River"
For our last dance we played "Closing Time" by Semisonic

N is for Newlyweds

We spent the day after our wedding at my parents house with family and relatives from out of town for a brunch and we opened our gifts too... and fell asleep on the couch for a bit before running out to Target to buy some last minute stuff for our honeymoon, like a camcorder we had on our registry as well as a luggage set.

O is for Old, new, borrowed, blue

Old and borrowed was a ring I wore, new and blue were my underwear I ordered that had "Bride" printed on the butt, lol...

P is for Photography

We had Solko Photography for our photography and well... it could have been better. Originally when we booked we had the owner slated as our photographer. We went with them as my matron of honor had them for her wedding and they did a really good job. Well, a few weeks before my wedding I get a call, requesting we permit them to have one of their other photographers shoot our wedding as another bride they booked on our day decided last minute she wanted their videography services and the only ones that could use the equipment were the owner and her husband (who was already slated to shoot that wedding, meaning she would have to do the video). They gave us a great break on our package, basically giving us our album for free, and we agreed after seeing the other guy's work and it looking fine. However I was a bit disappointed in the lack of candids he took and that we didn't get some photos with relatives we never see that I really would have liked to have gotten. To be honest, one of my bridesmaid's dad's was taking photos the whole day too and I really liked more of the ones he took better! And the album... I was under the assumption I'd get to pick which photos went in the album, but apparently not - they chose them and had it all put together by the time they called me and some of the photos... I would have chose others. I was told I could switch out 3 for free and then a fee for others. Yeah... since I owned the copyright for the proofs I bought an album and compiled the ones from the photographer and the one's from my bridesmaid's dad (and others who took photos) and put together my own wedding album which we display on our coffee table. Don't get me wrong, our photography was fine, just... iono... not quite what I thought I guess you could say.

Q is for Question popping

My ring!

 When and where he proposed was a bit of a surprise! I knew it was going to be sometime after my college graduation in December 2007, as we had talked before and he said I had to finish college before he would propose (as a way to motivate me to stick with it as I was really hating school the last few years). Christmas came and went with no proposal, as did New Year's, so I was expecting maybe for Valentine's Day. (I knew he already had the ring as I came across a receipt for resizing so I knew it was going to happen to eventually). We went out for lunch after church that Sunday to Chili's with one of his brother's and his brother's then-girlfriend. Him and I got to talking about when he was going to take his 2 vacation weeks that year and I told him it all depended on him and he slide down from his chair, pulled out the ring and asked if it all depended on him asking me to marry him. Obviously it did and that was what I was implying. While I still am a bit confused by the location (up until then we had never gone to Chili's together and even now we don't frequent there often, lol...), it was definitely us - laidback and a bit random, lol...

R is for Reception

Our reception was at the University Club in Rockford, IL. My aunt had her wedding there nearly 11 years or so prior and since then I had always envisioned mine being there. It's an older historic building in downtown Rockford and very pretty. We had a sit down, buffet-style dinner and then dancing in the next room later in the night. There was also a bar however we only had open bar for hubby and I as I had heard of horror stories where the whole wedding party had open bar access but gave drinks out to LOTS of the guests, making the bar tab nearly half of the reception cost!

S is for Shoes

I wore strappy block heeled sandals in an ivory color to match my dress.

T is for Trash the Dress

Yeah... no thank you. Granted I'll only wear it once, but I can't bring myself to trash it like that.

U is for Unique

Well we did the Zoot Suit type suits for the guys, we used my dad's 1965 Corvair as our getaway vehicle, and our cake topper was custom-made.

V is for Vows

 

We just stuck with the traditional ones.

W is for Wedding Woes

Oh we had quite a few!

1st, my grandma (mom's mom) passed away the night before. She had been sick in the hospital for awhile now so we knew it was going to happen sometime soon. I hadn't been close to her in years though, but it was still a bit sad. All her kids and her brother were in town for the wedding and got to say goodbye to her though and they said the wedding was a nice distraction too.

The morning of my wedding, while on my way to the hair stylist, my mom calls asking how much I really wanted to wear a veil. I wasn't that crazy about them to begin with so we bought one from Hobby Lobby for a fraction of the cost of a bridal shop's. Apparently while steaming my veil that morning my mom got the iron a little too close and it melted part of the veil - oops! Oh well, I didn't want to wear one really anyway, lol...

Then, my mom never met us at the salon as she got held up at the reception hall fighting with them over the chairs in the dining room setup. We were paying them extra to set it up banquet style like they did at my aunt's wedding (as that fits the most people in there, which we needed) which I guess they no longer do very often, but apparently half the chairs they used were too high that when sitting you couldn't get your knees under the table!! My mom got my aunt's inlaws involved, in which her father-in-law had been president at the club several times, and they took care of it for us so my mom could meet us at the church in time.

What we refer to as
"the hairspray incident"

As we're getting ready before the ceremony my mom said she wanted to spray my hair with hairspray one more time to make sure it held. As she spraying my hair like crazy we notice 1) it doesn't smell like hairspray and 2) my hair is wet. Turns out, my sis had used the spray bottle awhile back and used it for water on a hot day to spray on herself and my mom forgot and so she had soaked my hair we had just paid to have done! Fortunately we had a big curling iron to fix my curls and my matron of honor had heavy duty hairspray with her that we used and we saved the day!

It rained almost all day - we didn't get to take very many outside photos at locations we had planned and we couldn't do the dancing outside like we had wanted.

My dad's side of the family left and went back to the house to hang out between the ceremony and reception so we didn't really get any photos with them like we had wanted.

Hubby had trouble getting my dad's Corvair to start several times.

The DJ messed up my sister's last name during her introduction - I gave specific notes on how to pronounce it, as it rhymes with Harris...  yeah, he just said Harris instead /facepalm

During his speech before dinner, my dad goofed and said hubby had fallen in love with my sister many years ago instead of me. There was a pause after he said it and everyone burst into laughter at his mistake which he caught right after he realized what he had said, lol...

I'm sure there were others but those were the most memorable, lol...

X is for X-Rated

No one that does this meme seems to know what this one is supposed to be, lol...

Y is for Young Kids

Since we didn't know any little boys at the time (besides our nephew but we weren't sure if they would make it or not) we didn't have a ringbearer. Hubby's little sister and my little cousin, who were both 10 at the time, were our flower girls - hubby's sister carried the rings and my cousin did the flowers.

Z is for Zzzz

We slept good that night (took hubby forever to get me out of my dress and then it took me forever pulling all the bobby pins out of my hair, lol...), had brunch with family the next day and then Monday morning we left for Vegas which was nice, fun and relaxing!

Happy Anniversary, Hun! 

We've had our share of ups and downs these past few years we've been together, but like our vows say, we take each other "for better or for worse." Here's to many more years together!