My Wedding Dress

Kelly over at Kelly's Korner is hosting a blog carnival where you showcase your wedding dress (or your dream wedding dress). Head on over to her blog if you would like to participate!

I loooove my wedding dress and I don't think I have ever talked about buying it, so of course I want to share my story and some photos with all of you.

I went dress shopping the weekend we booked the reception site (I was all excited about wedding planning and my mom was visiting from NY), so we went to the one bridal shop in the town where we were married. When I walked into the shop I told the ladies that I did not want anything with lace, buttons, or stitching. That pretty much eliminated 90% of the dresses in the store, but they were able to find a few that I agreed to try on.

The first dress I tried on I had to have. It fit perfect, was kind of different while still looking like a wedding dress, and made me feel amazing. I was ready to walk out of the store with the dress, but the ladies convinced me to try on a few others, just in case. After spending less than 5 minutes total in the 3 or 4 other dresses I tried on, I still knew the first dress was "the one". This may seem strange, but I am very much that kind of shopper. I find something I like, and if it looks good I take it. I don't like browsing and get sick of shopping very quickly.

So, I am the girl that bought the first wedding dress she tried on! Here it is...



You can see more wedding pictures here!

Let me know if you participate in the blog carnival! I want to see all of your dresses too!

Wedding Recap!

I think my body is finally letting me know that I need to slow down and take it easy. We have traveled the last three weekends and it has finally caught up with me. I am not sure if I have a cold, allergies, or something else, but I am so congested and I know I need a good night's rest ASAP. Before I venture to bed way early tonight, I wanted to show you the few pictures I have from the wedding this weekend!

AJ and I were the only people from our grad school crowd that made it to the wedding, so I was really glad we made the trip and I know my friend was happy we were there. Here is the dress I decided to wear. I bought it at Banana Republic a few months ago and wasn't sure if I loved it, but after wearing it the other night, I have decided that it was definitely a good choice. 

There was a 4 hour break between the end of the ceremony and the cocktail hour, so AJ and I holed up in our hotel room (it MONSOONED during the entire break) and watched the Harry Potter marathon while drinking some Blue Light and playing cards. 

Here we are at the cocktail hour. Ignore my red nose, this was when I was first starting to feel sick! 

We had a lot of fun this weekend, but now I am ready to slow down and spend some quiet time in DC until we have to begin the process of moving!

Six Months

I can't believe how fast time flies....

...in a good way!

XOXO

Our Wedding Day...In Pictures

I have finally sat down and picked out a few (okay maybe more than a few) of my favorite wedding pictures. So without further ado.....

Getting laced up

Hard at work

The chapel

Arriving at the chapel (the rain stopped!)
Peeking into the sanctuary
About to walk down the aisle with my dad
The give away
Vows
My aunt and uncle singing the Lord's Prayer (they sang a duet before the ceremony as well, and also sang at my parent's wedding 25 years ago!)
Bubbles!
Relaxing after the ceremony
So happy!
The girls (look at that blue sky!)
The boys (my brother, of course, is not looking at the camera...making this picture perfect. He always does that!)
Cheers!
The Carolina Hotel
Arriving at the hotel
Wasting time before our introduction
First dance
Dancing with my dad
Somehow the flower girl got a hold of a bouquet
Our families (No...our mom's did not plan to wear the same color, and we did not plan to symbolize our union by sitting in front of each others family)
Dancing with my grandpa
Enjoying the rock concert
Our beautiful cake
Our rings

Last shot of the night

Such a wonderful day! Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

All photos: Courtney Gray

Everything Happens for a Reason

Sorta Spoiler Alert....Four months later...

When Sex and the City: The Movie came out back in May I wanted to see it so bad it wasn't even funny. I was an avid watcher of the series; I started watching during Season 4, and acquired all the DVDs so I could catch up on the episodes I missed prior to having HBO. Love love love it. I still watch repeats and aspire to be as well dressed as Charlotte. Needless to say, I was hooting and hollering when I found out they were finally making the movie!

When the release date was first announced, the girls from my grad program made a date to see the movie together the weekend it came out...with dinner and cosmos before, of course. Unfortunately, we moved right before the movie was in theaters, so I wasn't able to attend the soiree. I was going to go with a couple girls from my book club, but I had some other obligation and couldn't make it. I also thought about dragging Alson to go see it, but ultimately felt bad about making him go when he had no interest whatsoever. I then planned on watching it with my mom while I was back in NY over the summer, and finally, on multiple occasions, thought about hitting up the movies by myself one day when Alson was at work. Alas, I didn't see it until the other night.

And it's funny how the universe works in mysterious ways.... I was really sad that I didn't get to see the movie when it first came out, but after watching it...I am so glad I waited to see it until after I was married. Especially since I would have likely seen it only a couple weeks (or days?!) before my wedding. Not that the movie would have changed my mind or made me think that Alson didn't want to marry me, but it just would have left me feeling uneasy and anxious on my wedding day.

Perhaps I am reading too far into it, and I really wouldn't have been concerned about some movie on the best day of my life....but it made me grateful that I didn't see it until this week. Just one of those "everything happens for a reason" moments.

Worth the Wait

Our Wedding Webshow

I am too busy crying (tears of joy) and playing it over and over to comment.

This is just a snippet of our day, so once I get all the pictures I will post my favorites!

Thank You Notes

Two of my friends bought us these beautiful Boatman Geller correspondence cards to use for our thank you notes:

Last night we finally finished all of our thank you notes. Boy, does it feel great!

Alson was a really great sport and pitched in with about half of the notes. My hand would have fallen off I tried to write them all myself. We wanted to finish them before we both start working/school next week...I can't believe we actually sat ourselves down and did it!

Plus, my friends splurged and bought way more cards than were needed for the thank you notes, so I have extras to use for whatever I would like!

Now, if I could only get my wedding pictures...I can't stand waiting!!

I'm Baaaaaaack

I'm here....and I'm married! Yay!

The other day I spent most of my time in the San Juan and Miami airports reading up on what I missed while I was off getting hitched and enjoying my first week of married life, so some of you may have heard from me before today....but I am officially throwing my life back into the blog world as of now. And today is the perfect day to re-start active posting, as I just spent the day trouncing around DC changing my name with social security, the DMV, the bank, etc., so it really really is official and almost all things wedding related are over. Okay, I may be a little sad about that....so what better way to deal with the post-wedding blues than reminisce.

In a nutshell....IT WAS AWESOME! Everything went off without a hitch and we both had the best day of our lives. Actually, the whole week before the wedding was amazing, as was our honeymoon, and our first home cooked dinner as married couple (which we had last night). I haven't decided how I am going to officially report on the wedding....I don't want it to be all that I blog about, but I am not sure if I can fit everything I want to say in just one post either. I may be researching into other bloggers archives to see how they handled the plethora of things I'm sure all married girls want to share after their wedding.

But for now.....

I will leave you with a couple of the pics our family and friends took:

*Unfortunately there were no cameras allowed in the chapel (except the photographer) so except for a few blurry and not well lit shots people took from their pews, we will all have to wait for the photographer's pictures of the actual ceremony. Sad face.

Walking out of the church

Taking pictures on the golf course after the ceremony

Our first dance

Everyone on the ground with the lead singer of our band during the "whisper " part of Blister in the Sun by Violent Femmes (there will be a post to praise the band...they ROCKED!)

The band rocked so hard, that everyone was a sweaty mess....including myself!
Classic Journey dancing and singing

More to come soon!

Wedding Party Gifts

My gift to my bridesmaids was an embroidered bag, with a matching make-up case. I couldn't leave my flower girl out, so she got an embroidered mini-bag (and yes, those are her actual initials):

I know the blue is not one of our wedding colors, but the pink and green bags I found were very pastel-y, and obviously wouldn't match our bright color scheme. Honestly, I thought the pink and green looked too much like a diaper bag....not the idea I was going for! So, I opted for the bright blue instead.

Alson chose to give his groomsmen embroidered beer mugs:

And our ring bearer got a bat with his name engraved on it:

Photo from personalizationmall.com

I hope everyone loves their gifts!

A Different Take on the Guest Book

Instead of doing a traditional "sign your name" guest book, I wanted something that was more personal and that we would actually look at in the future. While browsing theknot.com one day, I came across these pictures and thought this was the cutest idea!

Here is what the big frame says:

And an example of one of the cards the guests filled out:


We bought white card stock, black frames, a big glass goblet, and some pens...and with the help of my computer and printer we had our guest book. In addition to the "make a wish" card, I also made "share your advice" and "make a prediction" cards. I can't wait to see what all the guests wrote, and to make the cards into a nice scrapbook style guest book!

Photos from theknot.com

Thank You Cards

A week before my bridal tea, my mom found these thank you cards at Wegmans:


When we first ordered the invitations I wanted to get the matching thank you cards, but my mom put her foot down. She said they didn't need to match and we could just get some simple ones that weren't like $100 dollars for 50. I was kind of mad at the time.....

These were only $6 for 20 cards. And can you believe how well they match the invitations and ceremony programs?!

Oh Mom, why do you always have to be right? :)