On Moms...

I have read so many great posts on motherhood over the past couple of days, and after this weekend, my heart is so incredibly full.  Sometimes in the midst of chaos, I think I can forget what a true blessing it is.  How lucky I am to have two sweet, healthy children.  How incredibly blessed I am to have a mom who is still around and lives nearby.  How wonderful it is to have married a man who has a great mom, too, as well as a grandmother that would probably let me move in if I wanted to.  I often take for granted the fact that I have two sisters whom I see often, who are not only awesome mothers, but such good aunties to my kids.  Then I have a sister-in-law who I miss dearly every single day, because she is my phone call when I need a good laugh... my niece (her daughter) does the cutest darn things.  I have some amazing aunties myself, and now being grown up and having nieces and nephews of my own, I so deeply appreciate them.  My husband works side-by-side with a woman who has such a great relationship with her two kids, both older than mine, and I look up to her tremendously.  One of my best friends has four (yes, FOUR!) and kept her sanity and did a great job with them even while her husband was deployed for a year.  Another new (but already incredibly close) friend here has FIVE... and will bend over backwards to do something for others.  I have friends from blogging, and even though I've never met their children, their pictures and stories make me feel like I just saw them yesterday, and I love "knowing" their kids and what kinds of moms they are.  I have moms in my life with one, two, three, four, and five kids.  I have moms with twins and moms with kids so close in age they might as well be!  I know moms who have lost a child and moms who have prayed fervently that their child would pull through sickness.  I have moms in my life who were not planning on being moms and some that went through great lengths to become one.  When I look back on my life, I have always been surrounded by some pretty phenomenal women, most of which were mothers to their own kids, but still showed so much love and kindness to me.  I think your heart expands in ways that cannot be explained when you become a mom.  Sure your belly grows, but it (somewhat) goes back to it's original size, but everyday I find that I have more love, more compassion, more care, more hurt, more empathy, and more to give of myself to others than ever before.  Motherhood is an amazing gift, not just because it gives us some pretty incredible kids to love on, but because of the ways it changes you.  I can't imagine my life right now without this gift, and I'm thankful for a weekend that allowed me to just stop for a minute, turn off the chaos, and just focus on how special it really is.  And to all of the special mamas in my life, I just want to thank you, too.  You have impacted me and help shape me as a mother everyday.  We're better together, and I'm blessed to be surrounded by some incredibly strong moms who make me want to become a better one.  Happy Mother's Day to you all!

Me and my Mama before my wedding

My mother-in-law snuggling with my Jake

My Nana... whom we miss dearly this year

MawMaw Brenda... kissing on her great grandson

Aunt B and Carol... aunties who love us like our own mothers.  Miss you, too, Aunt B!

Aunt Claudia - one of the strongest moms I know

Aunt Karen and her girls... one of my mama role-models for sure!

My sister Angie and her boys.

My other sister, Mindy, and sweet Adam

My sister-in-law, Ginny, and cutie-pie Baby Skye

Gretchen - our other pastor's wife and a rockstar mom

Cory and three of the five... how does she do it?

Kristen, who has been my friend since high school and our kids FINALLY got to meet a few weeks ago!

Abby: Mother of three (two of which are twins) and rock-star triathlete

My best blog-buddy... hoping to meet your kiddos this summer!

Chelsea loving on sweet Charley... the youngest of her four

There are SOOOO many others and I hope you know who you are, but finding and swiping Facebook and blog pictures took much longer than I thought!  :)  And I certainly hope you don't mind that I stole some sweet moments from you ladies!

And in other mom news... please check my sister's blog HERE for a little update from her.

Ultimate Wedding Week - the Details

We've reached the last day of the "Ultimate Wedding Week" Link-Up series and today's topic is hosted by Amy over at Fresh & Fancy.  While some people find the details the most annoying part of planning anything (i.e. my husband), I actually love them!  It's the little things that are incorporated to highlight your personalities, and I loved coming up with the ideas and seeing them executed.  I guess when a pastor marries an event planner, he's going to care most about the ceremony and she's going to care most about the details.  So you see?  We really are a perfect match!

First up... the dress of course!  This beauty is a Justin Alexander:

I wish I had one where the train was not bustled, but as I mentioned in previous posts, there are no picture of just me in my dress.  Such a shame, but something that will be remedied in the near future!  Any excuse to put it back on is okay by me!

As for the shoes, I think I just found them at DSW.  I knew nobody would really see them, so even though they did not match my dress perfectly, I loved them because they reminded me of something you would wear to play dress-up in as a young girl.  And isn't this day somewhat of a fullfillment of that?  And at $39.99 for something that few people would see, I'd call it a win!

As for jewelry, most of it was borrowed.  I wore my sister's earrings that she wore in her wedding three years before and my best friend lent me her grandmother's ring, which was gorgeous (and my something blue!).  The only other thing I added was a bracelet, which I just bought at a department store.  There was nothing real about it, but I loved (and still wear) it.

Josh was very particular about his ring and definitely wanted something more masculine.  We ended up finding one with crosses engraved somewhere online (I can't remember where) and mine is from Jared's.  Yes, "he went to Jared's!"  Haha.

As for my beautiful bridesmaids, this presented more of a challenge as I knew that one of them would be 8 months pregnant on my wedding day.  Being her first pregnancy, we had no idea what kind of pregnant-lady she would be.  Some carry their babies like tiny basketballs and others get pregnant all over the place unfortunately.  While shopping we laughed a lot because she had to try on everything with the little "pregnant belly" pillow, which always looked ridiculous.  Finding this picture of someone else's wedding really helped:

Isn't Google amazing?  I planned before Pinterest existed, so I just searched "Pregnant Bridesmaid" and found all sorts of pictures!  We actually ended up getting this exact dress by Bill Levkoff and my matron of honor got a slightly different one to make her stand out a bit more.  And the best part?  It's hard to figure out who has the bun in the oven!

Dark brown and cream were not my original colors.  Because our wedding was outdoors in Florida in June, I envisioned something a bit brighter and more summery.  Once I found my dress, however, that all changed.  My dress was champagne and cream in color and the summery colors did not look right with it.  Nor did short dresses as my dress was too elegant in style to look right next to them.  Dark brown alone seemed almost too formal for me and so I finally decided to mix in a secondary color and mix it up a bit.  I could get away with putting my bridesmaids in cream because my dress was darker than that, but complimented it well.  Then of course I realized that black tuxes next to all of this brown and cream might not look the best, which is why we went with the tan suits for them, which I loved.  Plus, they would have been far too hot in black!

With so many neutral colors going on, I really wanted pops of something bright in the flowers.  My bouquet was a ton (literally... that thing must have weighed 20 pounds!) of cream colored roses as to not take away from my dress, and my bridesmaids had lots of magenta and light green in theirs.  Josh and both of our dads had cream roses for their boutonnieres to match my bouquet and the other guys all had some sort of green flower... but I'm not actually sure it was a flower.  I'm actually not sure what it was, but it looked awesome.  I don't know much about flowers, so I told my florist what I wanted and she did an amazing job!  She also brought extra (smaller) roses to pin into our hair if we wanted.  A few of my bridesmaids did and I had three pinned in after I ditched the veil at the reception.  If you're in South Florida and looking for a vendor, I would highly recommend Deerfield Florist.

Since out reception was outdoors, the hotel had cucumber and lemon water for the guests and we put a basket of fans by the entrance:

Thankfully we have a graphic designer in our family.  I have sung my sister's praises many times on this blog, and today she gets even more love.  She is crafty in many ways, but most talented on paper.  Actually, she just started her own crafting blog, so you should check it out here... but I digress.  This lovely talented lady was kind enough to design and print our program.  Weddings are expensive enough as it is, so if you have talented people in your lives, utilize them!  Besides, it adds even more of your own personal touch to the day:

The guest book was at both the wedding and reception site, but unfortunately got overlooked by a lot of people.  We bought an album with photo sleeves and asked our guests to write in the space provided next to the photo sleeves.  We then had a digital camera sitting out for them to take a photo of themselves.  We have some awesome photos of our guests who participated- some are "normal" and some are just plain funny- so the idea in theory was excellent.  If you choose to go this route, however, I would have maybe a younger family member, cousin, etc. man the table for awhile and take the pictures.  Here are a few of my favorites:

I think I hit the rest of the ceremony details in my ceremony post, so I'll move on to the reception.  We ended up having twelve tables (counting ours) and so instead of doing table numbers, we did the months of the year.  On each table was a recap of what happened in our relationship that month.  This worked particularly well for us since we met on July 31st and got married the following June 13th, so we had something happen within every month (just barely).  We listed things such as meeting, getting engaged, running a marathon together, traveling to New York, etc.  It was a fun way to share some more of our story with our guests.  And we, fittingly, sat at the "June" table.

Our delicious cake was a layer of chocolate and a layer of Amaretto vanilla, and it was to die for.  The grooms cake was made by the same crafty sister (seriously... what can't she do?) and was Josh's favorite, red velvet.  I'm guessing the crimson color has something to do with it:

See?  I told you I'm a details person.  I may have gone too into detail giving you the details, so I apologize for getting so lengthy on this!  As for my top 3 pieces of advice to future brides, I'd say:

1 - Figure out what's important to you and budget for those elements.  I wanted a fantastic photographer and videographer, as those were the things that would last forever.  Our videographer is now based in Southern California, so if you're in the area and looking for one, seriously look no further.  I wish I could show our video here... they make a "film" of your day set to music and it's seriously the most beautiful thing.  It's something I will cherish always.

2 - Pass wedding-day tasks off to others.  My sisters and mom were awesome about taking things from me and my friend Julie volunteered to deliver checks to all of the vendors who needed to be paid that day.  I literally worried about NOTHING... and a relaxed and pampered bride is a happy bride!

3 - And most importantly, remember that no matter what goes wrong, even if your wedding is a world-class disaster, at the end of the day you will be married to the person that God picked out for you... and that's really all that matters.  Besides, wedding day disasters probably make for some great stories later!

I'm glad I participated in the link-up party as it's been a nice trip down memory lane, but I have to admit that I'm looking forward to blogging about some other things I've had on the back burner over these past two weeks.  Plus, blogging 5 days a week has been challenging with work, church, and the little ones and I've stayed up much too late writing and scheduling posts.  It was worth it though.  Thanks so much for allowing me to share... I hope you enjoyed the Ultimate Wedding Party as much as I did!

Happy Friday, everyone... have a fantastic weekend!  Check back on Monday for a race recap of the Lexington Half Marathon!

Ultimate Wedding Week: The Reception

It's day 5 of the Ultimate Wedding Week series and today is all about the reception!  What better way to celebrate a great union than a fabulous party, right?  We were fortunate enough to have our wedding and reception at the same location (which I would highly recommend) so our guests headed over to the cocktail hour while the bridal party finished up the photos.  The only downside of this was that I do not have any pictures of the cocktail hour... oh well.  But when we finished our photos, we had drinks and hors d'ouevres waiting for us in a separate room so we could snack for a minute (as well as freshen up) before making our grand entrance:

I can't remember what music we walked in to, but I did love how all of the groomsmen sported their aviators, which were part of the grooms' gifts.

Next up?  The first dance and father-daughter dance.  The first picture of Josh and me might be my favorite from the whole day.  We danced to "Everything" by Michael Buble and my dad and I danced to "You Make Lovin' Fun" by Fleetwood Mac, which was "our song" when I was little.  I called it the "Miracle Song."  I picked upbeat songs for both so that I wouldn't spend the whole time crying... and it worked!

Yes, my dad can break it down.  He is probably the best dancer in our family and we all love taking a spin on the floor with him.  Good times.

After that we all sat down and ate dinner.  For those of you who have been told that the bride and groom never get to eat at their own wedding, I have news for you... it's your day, so enjoy it!  You bought dinner for 120 (or however many) of your closest friends, so I think that entitles you to a bite to eat, too.  Our event manager hooked us up and made sure that we had our own server, which was fantastic.  She waited on only us, played a bit of interference while we grabbed a bite, and even found some more pigs-in-a-blanket in the kitchen since Josh missed them during cocktail hour.  Yes, my husband is classy like that.  He was also the only one who got "hot bacon dressing" on his salad.  We opted to have both beef and chicken on every plate so that we would not have to track who ordered what, and the food was incredible.  I don't have a picture of the plate, but we also had purple potatoes, which I did not know existed until our tasting.  I'm not a big potato fan, but made an exception since they were special.  After dinner we had a series of toasts from Josh's best man Merritt, my matron of honor (and sister) Angie, Josh's dad, and my dad.  We laughed more than we cried, but my dad definitely had me tearing up at one point.

And then... well... things got a little crazy.  You see, I was "that bride" that forced my bridal party to learn a choreographed routine.  Yep... it was a medley of all different songs to kick off the party.  We all walked out there as if we were going to do a slow dance and then the music changed and we were off to the races.  The funniest part, however, is that I totally blanked on everything, so the video footage is quite embarrassing!  We ended with a conga line, picking up people as we went along to get them out on the dance floor whether they liked it or not:

Somewhere in the midst of it all, we did find some time to mingle with our guests and take some great photos.  Our photographer did an amazing job of following us around and making sure he got pictures of everyone!  His picture of us, my sisters, and their husbands is still my favorite picture of all six of us that we've ever taken.

And of course there was cake!  We agreed ahead of time to be kind to one another when feeding the cake, and surprisingly we both stuck to it!  As a funny side note (and a recommendation) we opted to not freeze our cake top.  The hotel was kind enough to box it up for us, which is what we wanted, and the two of us took it with us to our room.  Late night dessert?  Yes, please!  

And last but not least, we did the traditional garter and bouquet toss.  My nephew, Kevin, caught the garter, so needless to say, we did not do anything embarrassing to the couple that ended up with those items.  I always feel so bad for those people when they have to dance or take a picture!

The evening ended much too quickly and we made our rounds to say goodnight to everyone and thank them for being there.  We stayed the first night in a suite at the hotel, so thankfully we only had a short walk and then a golf cart was waiting to whisk us away.

I really would not change much at all about our reception... it was so much fun?  But if I did have any advice for future brides it would be to make sure the room is dark and cool for dancing.  We had to ask to have the air turned up and the lights turned down to get that floor hopping!  Also, be aware of where your DJ will set up the speakers.  We had our parents and grandparents at what we thought would be the best table (location-wise) and they were blasted out with loud music all night.  Whoops!  Of course they didn't mind, but they probably couldn't hear the next day either.  Lastly, don't be afraid of "group dances" such as the Cuban Shuffle, Cha Cha slide, etc.  I had originally requested that our DJ not play any of them since they can be kind of cheesy.  Someone eventually requested one and it slipped through the cracks.  Then, miraculously, everyone was out on the floor.  Who knew?  Oh, and make sure that "Rocky Top" is on your must-play list, too.  Okay, so maybe that's not for everyone, but fun alma mater songs and stuff like that is great to incorporate.  

What a great night... stay tuned for Friday when I will highlight the details of the day- everything from flowers, to the dress, to the programs, etc.  And make sure you link up you wedding post today with Natasha over at Hello! Happiness.  That impressive gal still managed to do this after having a baby girl on St. Patty's Day!

And finally, don't forget about our weekly "Reflections" link up tomorrow. Brittany picked the topic and it's James chapter 1.  Can't wait to read your thoughts!