First of all, the morning of, I got up and ate peanut butter. Perhaps this isn't relevant BUT, to me, it is. Mainly because, unexpectedly, my nerves the morning of August 19th, 2011 were out.of.control. WHAT HAPPENED?
I mean, really? I've been through this wedding thing before, you'd think I'd be ok, you'd think that I'd have experienced this type of anxiety before. WRONG. Although I've been married before I have NEVER felt this type of anxiety. I was actually nervous. I mean really truly nervous... like shaking, can't calm down, sort of think I'm having a minor heart attack nervous. So, what does one do when she feels like she might be having a heart attack? Eat peanut butter OF COURSE. I mean, I figured if the nervousness would kill me I'd at least go out eating my favorite food. Perhaps not my logic at the time and a slight exaggeration but regardless, I ate my comfort food of choice. Also, it might be noted that this was perhaps not the most nutritious of all breakfast choices for a big day but then again, does it matter?
When peanut butter still didn't calm my nerves, I tried to work. I KNOW. I sent out emails and worked on the morning of my wedding. About 2.5 minutes after starting this, I decided that it was ridiculous. Working to calm stress on my wedding day? There is all sorts of things wrong with that picture. So, I then decided: running. My favorite of all favorite past times. That was BOUND to work. It didn't. Has anyone ever tried to run when you're shaking and your heart is going 200 beats a minute? Yeah... I'd be screwed if I ever tried to run away from a bad guy. Hopefully I'd get a massive kick of adrenaline to compensate for the wobbly legs and frantic heartbeat.
Eventually I gave up on running after a few miles in and I texted some friends who gave me the great idea to sit, drink tea, and write about how I was feeling. Of course, my friends are much smarter than I am and, that worked (thank you to my amazing girlfriends, you know who you are!)
The things I wrote about? How much I love Justin. How much I love the boys. How much I love our life. How far we've come- from a working relationship, to him developing my muscles from "squirt guns" to something resembling more of finely tuned beefed up shooters, to friends that talked every once in a while, to the best of friends that shared everything with each other, to awkward kisses in kitchens, to a relationship that completely minimized any other relationship I've ever been in, to THIS. This, unexpected relationship that started out as the purest of friendships and has led us down this path of lifelong commitment, has turned that relationship into that of a family, that is full of love and laughter and WHAT? How did this happen? How do I deserve this? After all the crap and I've ended up here, in something this GOOD?
Justin and I have both been in some fairly unsuccessful relationships for whatever reason and I think we'd both say that after experiencing our relationship together, we were never truly aware of what a relationship SHOULD feel or should look like. Part of those failed relationships may have been the stepping stones to get us to each other but regardless, they were nothing like we have now. And perhaps everyone says this when the find "the one" and they probably also say, but what we have is different. I'd like to jump on that band wagon now and just say that this is different than anything I've ever experienced and to try to really put it into words? Not possible. There are none. I just know.
And as I reflected on this feeling the morning of our wedding day, I just felt a peace. A sense of just and rightness. A calm in knowing that, sure, I've been through this before but after it all, I finally got it right. A first marriage was marred with innocence and a young age, the second was the result of too many external factors that warranted the marriage, and then the divorce- a culmination of events that will never be mentioned here. Living through each of those- both the marriages and subsequent painful divorces- taught me so much, most of which included what I'm really looking for as well as a lot of introspect into myself.
What it came down to? I found it. And I could go on and on and make everyone reading this throw up from the pure sappiness of it all... to how unbelievable I think Justin is, how incredible of a father he is, how amazing his boys are, and on and on until I wrote a million words and still didn't feel like I adequately described how I feel about him. So, I found love. True love. And that's really all that needs to be said.
Moving on from my moments of reflection (also known as "calming the hell down" and you know, BREATHING)...
Justin and I did not see each other until the moment I was walking down the aisle so all day we avoided each other like the plague. This also, I might add, took quite a bit of coordination. So right as I was heading out to go run, he was heading to our house to get my parents and brother to go to his grandma's house to set up the ceremony site. We missed each other probably by about 5 minutes. When he got to our house, he was given a gift from me to him, a gift I'd been working on, oh, for 100 days.
You think I'm joking about the 100 day part? I'm not. Above is a picture of the book (with our wedding rings). Every day for each of the 100 days before our wedding I wrote a reason why I loved him or why I couldn't wait to marry him, or even little anecdotes that happened each day leading up to our wedding. It was such a great thing to do as I was really able to capture all of the excitement and feelings I felt towards him and our commitment together leading up to our actual wedding day. I was so excited to give it to him. I think he was overwhelmed... and awed. You can ask him yourself.
Around 2pm I headed to my hair stylist (the amazing Rachelle) to get my hair all pretty for the day.
I had a fun vintage-ish black feather thing to go in my hair that I picked out to go with my dress. I liked it a lot. The flower in the middle matches the sash on my dress (in fact, it was actually one of the flowers taken off the sash and sewed on to the hair piece).
A shot of me... hair done, ready to go to the ceremony site to get the dress on (!!!)
Once at Justin's grandma's, everyone else was already there so there was some coordination required again between Justin and I so I would miss seeing him in between pictures... as well as some last minute related items that we needed to take care of and had to talk about. Surprisingly at this point, I think we were both really calm. Wouldn't that have been cute if I walked down the aisle in my workout clothes!?
Slipping into the dress with my mom... don't you love the pink bra straps?
And zipping it in, sucking it up...
Attaching the cool black sash (I LOVED the idea of black and white)... I saw the sash on another dress and special ordered it to go with my dress.
Putting on the jewelry....
Touching up the makeup...
A little help with the heels... And, voila! Ready to go... first up, pictures of me!
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Meanwhile, someone else (Oliver) was getting help from my groom with HIS shoes. The men of the group had a lot easier time of getting ready than yours truly.
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