The wedding day...pictures, pictures, and more pictures.

Shortly after getting ready (see post here if you missed it), I was first up to take pictures with Tara. It was actually relatively painless and I am beyond pleased at the outcome. Of course, we had to have Justin hide for the 45 minutes or so I was taking pictures since we weren't seeing each other before the ceremony. Here are just some of the product of that photo shoot (like 5 out of a million...and all are SO GOOD):

Exhibiting the back of the dress... with the train down. The train was bustled right after the ceremony until, well, forever. It never came down again. I'm kind of sad that it's appearance was so limited because it looks really cool. I like the waterfall-ish look and it's one of the things that drew me to this dress. It also makes me very glad I opted not to cut off the train in alterations- I almost did, but then opted for a bustle instead. Glad I made that choice!

Laughing here because Tara had said something to the affect of "oh yeah, the bride just lays on the couch during her wedding day..." Turned out to be a pretty cute picture.

Sidenote: LOVE this shot. It's playful and I think the flowers just look gorgeous!

And of COURSE one of me and the pink flamingos... (story of the flamingos documented here).

Next up for pictures: my handsome groom while I went into hiding. A few from his photo shoot:

LOVE this one... with the redish tree in the background.

Also really love this one in his late grandfather's chair.

And a few more pictures from our respective photo shoots pre-ceremony:

My family, dad, mom, and brother Jon.

My dad and I...

And brother and I (aka: my best man)

Love, love love this shot of Oliver, Bailey and I.

Justin and his boys... our groomsmen.

And then all of the Valente men (this was a GREAT series...it was hard to pick just one to put on the blog).

Justin and his dad, Joe (who married us).

Justin and his brother Jordan (aka his best man). Also, sidenote: for those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, you remember that LAST August, Justin and I were at Jordan and Stephanie's wedding on this same weekend. Their year anniversary is August 21, ours is August 19 (link the the post of their wedding that I blogged about here. And yes, my girlfriend Ashley was there for that wedding too!) Pretty funny. Justin and Jordan think it's pretty cool because they can help each other remember their respective anniversaries (the running joke as Stephanie and I perfect our eye rolls...)

The little twin flower girls (Justin's cousins daughters, Luca and Tessa).

And the "big" (meaning, older- 10 year old) twins that helped the baby flower girls above and were the ring bearer and flower girl- my good friend and neighbor's kids (Ryan and Lauren).

Meanwhile, while all of this picture taking nonsense was going on... baby Isla had the right idea. A little snooze to miss out on all of the action.

The wedding day...It's all in the details

I've gotten several requests on the "details" of the wedding ceremony for those who weren't there. There really isn't a whole lot to show but I do have some pictures (again, from our amazing photographer, Tara, of Red Thread Images). Most of the "in the details" part came in to play at our reception at the winery the following day but, here's some to all of you that wanted a peek:

The jewelry: keeping with the black and white theme of the dress.

The dress.

Close up of the sash, for those of you who asked.

...And the shoes.

The front door of Justin's grandma's house held our invitations and a single red rose... note that I did not design this at all, this is all thanks to Justin's mom.

My flowers- again, I have to give our awesome florist props for this... I just said I wanted a "red-ish bouquet with a black sash." And told him to go to town. Also note that he was a new florist... about a week out from our wedding we got a call that the guy we'd met with way back when had quit, SO, yeah. Luckily, I was a pretty low maintenance bride and really didn't care or have specific things I wanted. Since I did have low expectations and just didn't care, it made me love everything so much more because I didn't know what I was getting!

Our violinist and guitar player... they were AMAZING. If anyone in the Seattle area needs recommendations, I'll get you their information.

Ring bearer pillow carrying the boys' two rings... (will talk about this more in the actual ceremony post).

And the set up of the ceremony site... thanks to my parents and brother who worked hard to get it perfect! More "details" to follow in a later post...the ceremony!

The Wedding Day, Getting Ready

I've decided to divide up the actual wedding day posts into several parts due to the unbelievable amount of pictures in each (all courtesy of Tara at Red Thread Images, our AMAZING photographer- most of you saw her recap of our day here). My recap, again, is going to be in parts- this is part numero ono.

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!

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. 

The second day...rehearsal, sort of.

August 18, 2011. Another day where it was almost the wedding but not quite. So enough to make us feel like oh, I don't know, HOLY SHIT, HOW IS IT ALREADY HERE ? but not enough to really be in the calm of "Ok, it's here now."

It started off as any other normal day. Justin worked early in the morning from 6am to 11am or so. For me? Wasn't such a normal day. Well, it was at first I guess... I got up, went to the gym, ran for a bit and then went to get a manicure and pedicure. Awesome. Not so awesome? The girl running late. Like really late. A half an hour late. And when I was sort of on a timeline? Not cool. After that, I literally busted my ass to get to costco to get some last minute items for the BBQ we were having that night at Justin's grandma's house for our sort of but not really rehearsal as well as some items for the wedding reception (turns out, we had so much crap leftover in the end that this trip wasn't necessary at all for those reception related things... oh well).

After running to costco, I ran home to dump it all in the refrigerator, which was interesting to say the least since we already had so much stuff in there from our costco run the weekend before. And then, Justin and I had plans to meet at hot yoga. It seemed like a good idea to go to yoga the day before our wedding to kind of relax... and it was after my heart rate slowed down from running to costco to home to yoga and HOLY HELL, breathe now? Are you kidding me? Eventually the yoga breathing kicked in and I settled down from the chaos.... until we started getting phone calls about 2.5 seconds after we finished. Eh, it was the day before the wedding, guess it was pretty much assumed to be chaotic.We got home, showered, got ready, and headed out the door. Me, to pick up my dress, Justin and Oliver to get a couple of things ready to take to his grandma's for the BBQ there that night. The reason we decided to have a BBQ that night? Not because it was the typical rehearsal dinner, our wedding ceremony was too small to warrant that. No, instead it was just an excuse for us to layout the ceremony site and to get our close group of family together before the next two days really engulfed us.

After I picked up my dress, I headed to Justin's grandma's house where I stumbled upon the pink flamingos in the front yard. And then I died... from laughing. Justin's mom was in charge of dinner/appetizers the night of the wedding for the 20ish people that planned to be at the ceremony (in Justin's grandma's backyard). Ever since I asked her to help with this, the running joke was that she would also have pink flamingos to adorn the yard. Of course, I blew it off thinking she was joking. Which she was. Clearly. (and also? HILARIOUS).

We hung around a while with family before eating... above- Justin's mom, brother Jordan, Oliver, baby Isla, and Stephanie.

A picture of us! We may or may not have been pretty tired at this point... you be the judge.

A picture of Justin and his boy Oliver. (Sidenote- hello gorgeous Seattle weather! Where have you been all summer?!)

And a picture of all of us sitting around enjoying the beautiful summer evening and BBQ including my girlfriend Ashley from Dallas and her boyfriend Dave as well as my parents (not in this picture) and my brother Jon. So excited to have the out of town guests here!

And another candid of people hanging out at the BBQ. (Or perhaps this was taken to display Bailey and Oliver boxing?)

GORGEOUS sunset. Literally this was the best weekend weather wise we could have asked for... completely sunny, about 75-80 degrees. Unbelievable. You never do know with Seattle weather. After leaving Justin's grandparents, Justin went to his brother's house for the night and I went home to our house with my parents and brother. We lined up a couple of things for the next day (the Big Day) and then hit the hay....

The first day.

August 17th marked the first "official" day of the wedding festivities. Granted, the weekend(S), (oh, maybe months?) before were consumed with wedding related activities, but, this was the first day where it was actually an "OH MY GOD, it's here!" type of day. Meaning, all the planning was essentially done and if there was something else to do? Well, kind of too bad at that point. Or, HELLO, firedrill. And really, we get enough of those as it is in our daily work lives so we pretty much were at the, "Oh, well, too bad" point if something wasn't done.

So, the first of our official planned activities for this sunny Wednesday before our wedding? Drive east of the mountains to Leavenworth? Remember Leavenworth? I've mentioned it several times on this blog (like here)- it's the little town nestled east of the mountains where Justin called home for many years of his life. Coincidentally, it's also where his good friend now owns a chocolate shop (S'Chocolat). And thank god we don't live closer because I'd weigh 500 pounds... meaning, I'd be there every day. Maybe even begging.  It is hands down the most amazing chocolates ever. We love them so much we ordered 350 of them for our wedding reception. And chocolates don't ship easy. SO, not only did we love them so much we ordered 350 of them, we loved them so much we drove 3 hours (1.5 each way) two days before our wedding to pick them up. THAT, my friends, is belief in a product.

We also had an ulterior motive of picking up Oliver as well. He stayed at his grandparents house in Leavenworth so that we could pick him up bright and early that morning. Kind of important that he was a part of the whole wedding weekend, don't you think? Son of the groom, future step-son, and a groomsman... not to mention we really sort of like having him around.

Above- a shot of Justin driving to Leavenworth. We left at about 7am to get there a little before 9am, as he had to work that afternoon. It was a beautiful drive.

A shot of me... clearly I had the easy job this day.

And a shot of the mountains. There's something so calming and serene about driving through the mountains, even if it's a quick pass through and we don't get to stay in them for very long. After picking up Oliver, we headed straight to the chocolate shop to pick up our goodies, and then to a quick breakfast at Sleeping Lady (One of our favorites and a place where Justin used to work...YUM, by the way) before heading back to Seattle with our stash of chocolates. After we got back- Justin went to work that afternoon, I got a few more things ready for the upcoming events, Oliver went to get a haircut and pick up his suit with Justin, then I went in to work out for a bit, brought Oliver home, we made dinner (an old standby, tacos), and we called it a night. All in all, a successful day.

Our 350 chocolates for the wedding reception.

And of course, our own personal box from Damian for the drive back to Seattle... it looks pretty here but don't be fooled. OF COURSE, we broke into it right away.