Our Wedding Day

Since I'm way behind on blogging, I wanted to take a little trip down memory lane and post about mine and my hubby's wedding.  We had a small yet sweet ceremony at Byrd Park. It was just us and the kids for the most part (not including the minister, our photographer and our wonderful friend who was there to lend us a helping hand).

The plan was to have a beautiful private ceremony, with budgeting in mind since we plan on having a fancy vow renewal, shared with family & friends for our 7 year anniversary.  With that said, I did some online dress hunting and ended up with this pretty 50's style vintage inspired number below.  It even came with a pretty matching bolero, but I ended up not wearing it because it was really hot that day!  I was a little bit nervous about how the look and quality of the dress would be in person, since it was pretty darn affordable, but I wasn't disappointed.  The dress was purchased from www.unique-vintage.com and the picture below is from their website.

As for shoes, I wanted to have a vintage inspired pair but with a punch of color.  I decided on these cute vintage-looking heels that I saw on Tara's blog, "The DC Metro Retro."  She did a post on them and I instantly made my purchase as soon as I was done reading her blog.  Thanks Tara!  Not bad for a $39 pair of shoes.  They are super cute, but they hurt like hell!  It doesn't help any that I have wide feet.  I know my dress and shoes weren't period appropriate, but I didn't care because overall I was very pleased with how they looked when worn together.

For accessories, I purchased a beautiful pair of vintage rhinestone clip-on earrings and a vintage rhinestone bracelet from a vintage shop in downtown Richmond.  I wore a birdcage veil which I proudly made all by myself the night before the wedding!  Yes, I'm a procrastinator but feel as if I really do work better under pressure.  I had my hands full that day and night, shopping around for jewelry, supplies for my veil, trimming the tule on my dress and purchasing flowers for my bouquet.  I purchased the netting for my birdcage veil from Pocketsaurus on Etsy.  The feathers are from Michael's craft store and I added a few rhinestones and a vintage button that I had in one of my craft drawers.

Hubby and I got married the morning of September 17, 2010 at Byrd Park in Richmond.  He stayed the night at a friend's house, while I stayed at our place with the kids.  It worked out perfectly because I had time to work on all my last minute things without having to worry about locking Hubby out of the bathroom or bedroom.  My 12 year old daughter was such a huge help, I don't know if I could have finished everything in time without her.  A very memorable moment was when I had her standing up on top of the toilet while wearing my dress, so that I can trim the tule.  It was hilarious and cute and the same time.

So the morning of, the kids and I met up with my then fiance at the park.  I remember rushing trying to get ready as quickly as possible so that I can cut the stems from my flowers to bundle them up with floral tape and wrap them with a pretty satin ribbon.  We were running low on time, so the bouquet didn't come out perfect like I wanted it to, and was ribbon-less.  On the way to the park, I had to stop into Rite-Aid to pick up a can of hairspray because I ran out.  Yup, just my luck.  I sped into the parking lot and ran in and out as fast as I could.  Yes, I had my wedding dress on.  People in the parking lot and inside the store were staring at me like I was a crazy woman, haha.

The kids and I finally made it to the park.  I sat inside my car for 5 minutes because I had only written my vows on my Blackberry, and I had to copy it down on paper.  We rushed outside and I was smitten with how my soon to be hubby looked.  He was wearing his Richmond Fire Department dress uniform and looked as handsome as ever.  Before the ceremony proceeded, my future-hubby and I realized that there was a huge misunderstanding as far as who was going to bring the rings... and he was ringless at our wedding. *sigh*  Yes, I felt horrible!  I guess we were even though, because we had both planned on writing our vows, yet future-hubby decided last minute that he wanted to "wing it" instead and just speak from the heart.  Well, what do you know... he went a little blank when his time came!  Our Jewish minister had a big laugh.  And nope, neither one of us are Jewish!

To make a long story short, everything didn't go as perfectly as planned, but we wouldn't have it any other way. <3

And finally, some photos:

The End.  Well, more like just the beginning... but you know what I mean.