Married!

I am not the kind of girl who has always dreamed of what my wedding day would be like. I haven't fantasized about the perfect dress, or the way my hair would look, or what flowers I would hold. I never imagined what it would feel like to walk down the aisle on my dad's arm, looking into the eyes of the man I would spend the rest of my life with.

Barf. Not me. Not the chick I am.

Until I met SK - and, let's be honest, actually not until we had been dating a while...I'm not a love-at-first-sight believer, either - I didn't think I wanted to be married EVER. I didn't see the point (breaking stereotypes! fighting generalizations about women! roar or something!!) and while I grew up in a loving home not touched by divorce, I had many friends who had not and it seemed to be too easy of an out. Also, Sex and the City made me feel like it would be just amazingly bad ass to be single forever.

Shut up, bitches - you know you went there a time or two, also.

So I think thats why, based on all prior knowledge of me, when SK and I returned home from Jamaica after being engaged for 4 days with our whole wedding planned out, my parent's heads exploded a little.

SK and I pretty much have the same mind when it comes to our idea of a good party, which is what we wanted our wedding day to be - the biggest party we had ever thrown. We knew we wanted it outside, we wanted food that tasted home-cooked, and we wanted the beer and wine to be flowing. We wanted to invite all of our friends and family, so our guest list topped out at about 370 people, 250ish of which we really expected to show. We also knew we didn't want to break the bank.

We got crazy HOOKED UP in so many areas, I am still amazed. Check it out:

Venue - FREE
Photographer - FREE
Flowers - FREE

Whaaaaat's that you say?? Yep. FREE.

I will do a post on all of that soon because trust me, I know how incredibly lucky we were. I am still waiting on the final tally, but I am pretty certain we pulled this whole thing off for under $10,000. And yeah - about 250 people were there.

Here are some of my favorite photos of the day

Just married

My parents

My in-laws!

Our niece, Ryan Irene - flower girl

Bridesmaids and Ryan

First dance - You Are The Best Thing, by Ray Lamontagne

Dance with my dad - Forever Young, by Rod Stewart

Garter...

Wedding cupcakes in lieu of cake


All my best girls

Planning it all ourselves gave us a level of freedom I couldn't have done this without. We got crap for some of our choices -

"You're not having a wedding cake??"
"Your bridesmaids are all going to be in WHITE?!?"
"No speeches??"
"Your dress is so plain!!"

But we stood our ground and planned the wedding WE wanted. Seriously, if I could give anyone advice for planning a wedding, that would be it - plan YOUR wedding, not everyone else's idea of your wedding.

It's been 6 weeks and I haven't once thought back to the day and said to myself, "wow, I wish that would have gone differently," and that to me means it was a success. That, and the fact that SK and I don't yet want to rip each other's eyeballs out ;)