Wedding Week - The Morning Of and the Actual Getting Married Part

The week before the wedding was crazy. Seeing Zach for the first time in months, getting used to being in the same physical space again. Trying to spend enough time with all the wonderful relatives and friends who had flown in. Crazy awesome (by Mormon standards anyways) bachelorette party. All the last little bits of planning.

And then it was finally that day. The big day that had been all I could think about for months. After all that stress, I woke up perfectly, serenely happy. Since I had to run over and get hair done, I was up far earlier than everyone else. It was a quiet morning, me eating a bowl of cereal, putting on my makeup, all alone. I can see the appeal to a big suite of happy women, all getting ready and sharing the happiness and excitement of that day. But for introverted me, it was really special to start the day with just me and my joy.

Even when everyone got up and started getting ready, even after we realized that we hadn't planned how I was getting to the ceremony site (the Portland Oregon temple) and got a late start, I was still perfectly calm and happy. It was finally happening and nothing else seemingly mattered.

Unfortunately my zen like calm attitude to things had sort of had the opposite on my groom. On the way over, I got a panicked phone call from Zach, wondering where I was. Given that I'm almost always early and he's usually the one running late, I think not having me be there before him on our Wedding Day freaked the guy out a little bit. I'm not sure how much of his big smile when I pulled up was due to happiness over getting married, or happiness that he wasn't being stood up.

Once I showed up we were quickly whisked around to fill out various forms and otherwise get ready. Everyone was very sweet, especially the one poor woman trying to figure out how to tell me that I couldn't wear my dress to be sealed in. (In the LDS Temple, dresses have to be white, mine was ivory. Which I knew, and had no intention of even trying to wear mine. Besides, you have to put so much stuff on top of the dress for the ceremony, that what dress is underneath barely shows.) Each of us quickly changed into Temple white and went up to sit in perfect silence. Neither of us knew what to say, all we could do was hold hands, grin  like loons and sink into our last few single moments before being called into the sealing room for the ceremony.

The Temple. Grey skies might not be as pretty, but they kept things cool for August and didn't rain, so I'm more than ok with them.

I know that the actual sealing ceremony is a big deal for many Mormon brides. For most of my life getting married in the Temple had been raised up as the ultimate pinnacle, to the point where everything else about the day is supposed to be just fluff. It didn't feel that way to me. The actual wedding part of the day, the thing where we said our promises and were married was probably the least emotional, meaningful part of the day for me. It felt like just something we had to go through. I suppose it was nice enough, but it had nothing to do with either of us. The very nice elderly gentleman who we met about 5 minutes before hand said some generic things about the importance of marriage, and mostly the importance of God and Church to marriage, and how important it was to do various churchy things. And, well, I wasn't there to marry the church, I was there to marry Zach. I felt similarly disconnected from the generic one size fits all vows. They did what they needed to do, and saying I do did bring a small surge of emotion, but all in all it felt odd to be doing a ceremony that had so little to do with either of us.

I wouldn't say that I regretted it. It was nice to have one element of our wedding that took almost no planning. All we had to do was call to reserve, get recommends, and show up. Easy peasy. I know that it meant a lot to our families. Besides, what else could we have done differently? A ring ceremony or something else like that would have been a decent amount of work, and probably viewed as a silly waste of time by our guests. I like the idea of stealing away with Zach for a few minutes and saying our own vows, just the two of us, but I think that would have felt forced. Still, for such a big moment in our personal lives, I wish we had somehow made it more personal.

Regardless, the ceremony happened, and we were married. Yay! Of course the sealer finished things up by pronouncing us as the wrong name, Mr and Mrs. His Last Name, as opposed to Mr. and Mrs. My Last Name HYPHEN His Last Name, as we had so carefully decided, as meant so much to us and as the paperwork clearly said. Fortunately one of my favorite aunts corrected him so we didn't have to. He literally bit his lip and raised his eyebrows after being corrected. Clearly, he did not approve. Whatever. The little old temple ladies thought our name choice was awesome. More importantly, so did we. And my aunt and I exchanged a subtle victory high five, which cracked me up and almost makes the name snafu worth it.

 

 

Gratuitous happy photos to break things up.

One more quick change into our "real' wedding clothes and Zach and I met up in the lobby, ready to make our grand exit out of the Temple doors. There is a really fun, celebrityesque feeling of joy and excitement to simply stepping out of a door and being greeted with cheers from gathered family and friends. Unfortunately we forgot to mention to our photographer before hand that capturing that was kind of important to us, so I have no pictures. Oh well.

There were a few shots like that, things I just took for granted in others wedding albums that aren't in ours because I never said anything, assuming they were just standard. Like I said, oh well.

After the grand exit and numerous hugs, we started distributing flowers. The one flower request I made was no roses of any kind. I don't like them, I think they're way to big and cliche. Of course all the boutonnieres were traditional roses. But that's the nice thing about the actual wedding day. By that point it is far to late to change anything, so it's best to just laugh and move on. Looking back I probably should have tried harder to fix Zach's tie, which had a very obvious ugly black clip that shows in all the photos. Still, black tie clip and all, I thought he looked quite dashing. Even if it is odd to look back and see him without his beard. I really like the beard.

Trying not to poke anyone. Blood on a Wedding day in general, and on a Wedding dress in particular can't be a good omen.

I also had mixed feelings about the bouquets. I love irises more than any other flower, and wanted them to feature prominently in the bouquets. I assumed that asking for irises in the bouquets would mean other flowers would be there too. I kind of liked the simple clean feeling of the basic bouquets with just a few half opened stems, but at the same point I wouldn't have said no to a fuller bunch of flowers. My gorgeous bridesmaids, however, I had no mixed feelings about whatsoever.

Once all flowers were attached to the right people the whole giant group of people went over to the reflecting pool to get the group shots out of the way. It meant so much to me to have so many family members there, but I felt kind of bad that only two people from Zach's family were able to come in. Of Zach's family only his parents and his brother are LDS. You have to be LDS and endowed to attend weddings in the Temple. Since only his parents were endowed, only they could come in for the actual ceremony. On the other hand I had my parents and step parents, all but one of my Dad's six siblings, plus their spouses, plus two of my Mom's siblings, plus some cousins, plus my Grandma. (None of my siblings could come in either, I did miss having them there.) He says it didn't bother him, that of his extended family he's only really close with his Grandparents.

Still, for such an important event, it did feel a little wrong to not have everyone who matters to us there. One more mixed feeling about the Temple I suppose. I get the importance of starting married life with such an important religious ceremony, but with the family exclusion and the impersonal sealing I kind of wish that we could do things like they do in Europe (due to legal restrictions) and have one personal, civil wedding with all those we care about, and than a separate, quieter Temple sealing soon after. Basically, though we were married in the Temple, without everyone there and the ability to make the promises in our hearts it felt like an entirely different religious ceremony than a wedding. We are just as married and as happy as we would have been otherwise, but there is something to be said for how things start mattering, even if just for the sake of symbolism and nostalgia.

My Family is huge

After the big group shots, most people trickled away to either get ready for the reception or rest for a few hours, while Zach and I went off for some quality time with the photographer. And that's where I'll pick up tomorrow. Prepare for a photo extravaganza.

Walking off chatting with my favorite brother. One of the only pictures of the two of us from the wedding. Good thing it's such a sweet one.

Wedding Week - Planning and Prep

I loved/hated wedding planning. I loved the idea part of it. Looking up pretty pictures, making sketches, letting my mind run wild. It was the actual getting stuff done part I abhorred.

I had never planned any event, ever. Not so much as a Birthday party. And DIY aka crafts? Forget about it. I had half halfheartedly painted pieces of wood at camp and various church activities, but even the thought of wielding a glue gun or otherwise trying to turn little bits and pieces into something real was just not going to happen.

I also had no idea what weddings were supposed to be like. I was the first of my close friends to get married. I vaguely remembered going to some distant family weddings as a kid, and I went to my parents, but all in all I was clueless. Of course I turned to blogs, but all those weddings seemed like fancy, expensive affairs. This wasn't. I was shooting for something in the neighborhood of about 3k, and generally speaking most Mormon weddings are more open houses than nice events. Just a decorated church gym and a buffet. People just kind of stop by, grab some food and leave, no RSVP, no nothing. Obviously some people do nicer, fancier weddings, but I was scared that if I tried people would be uncomfortable, or just plain not come.

Fortunately, the first thing I actually had to do was find a dress. Which surprisingly was the easiest part of the whole thing.

I was sure that finding a dress was going to be a nightmare. As we were planning on getting married in the LDS temple, there were certain modesty standards that had to be met. High neckline, high back and biggest of all, sleeves. I think most wedding dresses with sleeves look so ugly. Like a satin T-shirt with a puffy skirt. They all had their slight detailed differences, but to cynical me I felt like they all looked like the same, just modifications of this (which was actually one of the better ones I stuck in my inspiration folder):

Not horrible, but not really me. And honestly, I was kind of self conscious about getting married so young and meeting my husband at BYU to begin with. It felt so cliche, like I was one of those girls who came to college to shack up and just hopped into eternity with the first decent guy who asked. It's an unfair stereotype, but so much of my identity was wrapped up in not being one of those girls, that the last thing I wanted was to look like one.

I was expecting to take forever to find something I liked and fulfilled all my rebel bridezilla fantasies. I also needed to act quickly, as my odds of find anything that wouldn't need serious alterations and awkwardly added sleeved would plummet upon my exit from Utah after graduation. So first weekend we could, my roommates and I hit all the bridal stores in Provo. I was hoping we would find something there and not need to trek up to Salt lake. Not optimistic, but hopeful.

The first place we went was fine. It had some cute dresses, and even one that kind of made me feel like a floaty fairy. I could have settled for that one, but it just didn't feel right.

The second place barely had anything worth trying on.

The first dress I found hanging up at the third place immediately drew me in. It didn't have the stain T-shirt look, I liked the unique edging on the sleeves, I loved the embroidery. And than I put in on, and that was that. I didn't want to take it off, it felt and looked so perfect. Dare I say, I felt sexy. High neck and sleeves be damned, it hugged all of my curves in all the right ways. The mermaid cut not only felt unique to me, but it also didn't eat up 5'2" me like so many other princess dresses. I wore the hell out of that dress, not the other way around.

It also happened to be one of the cheapest ones I tried on, just a little over $450. I put it on hold and decided to wait a few days for sure, but that was just a formality. From the moment I put it on, I knew it would come home with me. I do wish I had gotten to spend more than a day trying on heaps and heaps of pretty dresses, especially as I doubt I'll get to do so again. But I don't regret coming home with my dress one bit.

Next up was invitations. One of my roommates, bridesmaids and best friends offered to design the invitations in photoshop. No, they weren't fancy letterpress, but they looked fantastic and I loved the idea that no one in the world would have ones quite like mine. I can't find the actual invitation, and it looks much more real on heavy paper, but here is the PDF, minus last names and parents names. And with just the cost of paper, printing at Kinkos and stamps, they were way affordable. We also threw in one of our few decent engagement pictures and a separate insert with our wedding website url.

Engagement pictures were another thing we took care of in Provo. I'm still a little bitter about them. Zach thought the whole thing was silly and couldn't see why we should pay someone to take pictures. The best I could talk him into was the cheapest option on Craigslist. For $40 we got a stranger with a point and shoot and about 2 decent images we could send out with invitations. But at least it got done before we had to enter a long distance relationship for the last 4 months of our engagement.

You see, we both graduated from BYU in April. The wedding was August, in Oregon, where I'm from. His family lived in Oklahoma. It really sucked, but we just couldn't justify either of us paying for an apartment, when we could each mooch of our parents for the summer. So we survived most of the engagement and wedding process apart. To put it succinctly, it really sucked. I don't know what we should have done differently, but I really needed him during that time, and an hour on the phone each night was not enough. (He worked nights that summer, I worked days, so even matching up our phone schedules was tough.) It's not that he would have been the best resource for wedding planning had he been in the same state or that he didn't do what he could from Oklahoma. What I needed most was his presence, his support. And that's hard to do over the phone.

So I spent much of wedding planning process feeling very alone, overwhelmed and overly responsible for doing something I didn't know how too. I wasn't actually alone. I had a wonderful Mother, Stepmother and friends all volunteering. I had so many people offer to help. Just tell them what to do, and they'll do it. Which was great, except I was in a constant state of panic because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get things done. For example, I knew we needed food, but making a concrete plan for what food, how it would be made, who would serve, what dishes we needed and than saying go and do my lovely volunteers froze me.

I was also a little stressed at hearing that my ex who I had been almost engaged to had gotten engaged and set a wedding date of one week before mine, with many of the same people attending. That had nothing to do with the planning, but with my innate competitiveness (It's not that I want anything in his life to be bad, I just want mine to be slightly better) I can't say it didn't add a little my wedding must be awesomer pressure. Because apparently I wasn't sufficiently freaking out before.

Mostly I coped with planning stress by making endless spreadsheets. It felt like getting something done, without the actual doing things part. Oh, and awkward "sketches' in paint, like this one:

About a month before the wedding I broke down sobbing about how I couldn't do this, I didn't know how to get anything done, how to organize everything. (My 1st of 2 and only 2 meltdowns. I think I did well.) Said breakdown occurred during a conversation with family, where they were frustrated with me for not communicating what I needed. Well, I certainly communicated. Sort of a sobbing, hard to make out communication, but it was the most I had done all summer.

And just like that I could finally breathe and enjoy wedding planning. My people knew what I needed, basically other people to handle the organizing, and they were amazing. I still did plenty, but my Mom and Stepmom especially were phenomenal at calling people, hunting things down, and basically making the whole thing move from being spreadsheets and fear into a real honest to goodness wedding.

I still kind of sucked at communication, so some of my plans never really materialized. I had plans for a fun guest book, but never really did it myself or communicated it to others, so we were guestbook less. But all in all I was really amazed at how well an amateur bride and a host of loving people managed to pull off a super budget wedding in a few months.

I swear, this should be the longest of these. I wanted to focus mostly on the actual wedding this week, but I couldn't ignore everything that went into the wedding completely. Hence this book of a post. Starting tomorrow, I'll get into the good stuff.

2 Years

We've been married for 2 years today. Which means we've now been married longer than we were dating and engaged. Which simultaneously feels like we've been married forever and like we just started yesterday.

I never did a wedding blog and got to show off the whole wedding shabang. So this week I'm going to turn this into a mini wedding blog and try to recap things before I forget it all.

Partially because even 2 years out I still like seeing weddings (if I see even the most distant friend tagged in wedding pictures on facebook for a couple I don't know, I will wander over and look at every last photo) and I flatter myself that some people might be interested in mine. But mostly because that was a good day. Not a perfect day, not the best day of my life. But the life we have now, being together is pretty great. It's still life, with all the normal good and bad of life, but I'd rather experience some bad things with Zach, than have him missing from the good things. I'm excited to see where our lives take us, excited to have kids and grow old together. And how that all got started is well worth remembering.

Yellow

If you look at my closet, the whole thing is pretty much just different shades of purple, pink, blue and a little green. Well and some neutrals, but they don't really count. It's nice that I generally know what colors work for me, but it can get a little boring.

However, even though I rarely wander from my fashion comfort zone, this shirt, from J Crew caught my eye. I was longing for something a little different, and being on sale I decided to take a chance. It's just your generic tissue tee with a cute establishment, but the color was a revelation to me. I may not be able to pull off bright, sunshiney yellow. But mustard yellow? I can rock that. I've been mixing and matching this shirt like crazy, and it gives just the right pop to most of my other wardrobe staples.

 J Crew. Vintage cotton ruffle tee. $14.99

I've never been the best at moderation, so now I've been on the lookout for some more mustard yellow lovelies to keep things bright as we head into Fall.

First up are these great flats from Target. I love how much punch colored flats can give to an outfit.

Merona Meaghan Mustard Flats. $19.99

Speaking of colorful punches, I also think this purse, especially with it's sun ray like pleats, would look great with a darker fall outfit .

 Via Delight. Margot Pleated Tote. $69.98

Oh, and this may firmly be in my comfort zone of purple, but I'm still sharing this awesome cloche. Hey, just because I'm trying new things doesn't mean I'm going to give up on what works.

Mossimo Cloche. $14.99

Sugar and Pepper

You know how sometimes something is so simple, that you don't think at all about it? Inevitably, everything actually does require some thought.

Like today, when I went to mix up some cinnamon and sugar for toast. And grabbed the pepper, which was in the exact same container as the cinnamon, with the major difference of being pepper.

For the record, that tastes just as bad as you think it would.

Spelling it out

Complaints about how lazy and ignorant spell check has made us have abounded ever since the first red squiggly lines have started appearing on words.

As spell check has been around since I was expected to know how to spell, those complaints always seemed silly to me. Sure, basic spelling skills are fine, but if a little tool can take some of the stress off, why not? It's become instinctual to automatically right click over the inevitable typos and guesses and make everything all nice again. I assumed I had a nice system.

And then I started sending my work in for review with this summer job. And getting overall positive feedback. Except of course for the misspellings or typos. The first time was fine for my pride, just a little mistake. The second, and the third, well that started to feel a little humiliating.

So, for the first time ever, I'm actually making an effort to learn how to spell. Especially words like definitely, which I consistently spell wrong.

It's a simple, stupid little thing, but now when I see those little squiggles, rather than right clicking and choosing the right option, I'm actually making myself fix the words by myself. It doesn't take that much more effort, I still get the benefits of something else checking my work, but I walk away actually knowing how the word is supposed to be spelled. 

Like I said, I'm not about to suddenly be an amazing speller, but it is nice to see my writing continuously getting less and less red.

Work and Puppies

There was a puppy at work for about 5 minutes today.  It was one of the best things about the whole job this summer. Now, I like my job overall. It's been really cool to be doing real things. It's just unfortunate that doing these real things is so terrifying.

Tomorrow I get to go and make my very first court filing. Hopefully soon we'll be submitting a very big, important visa application for a woman who so deserves one. I shy away from any details of client lives here, because until I 100% understand the exact rules of confidentiality, I'm going with details so vague that if any client stumbled upon this they wouldn't be able to recognize anything as them. But trust me when I say that she is exactly the type of person who these laws are meant to protect.

It still feels so weird to be doing any of these things. Sometimes I'll forget, just get lost in what needs doing. But all it takes is one client meeting or a review of the original file and all it's gnarly details to snap me back. These are very big, very real issues in real peoples lives. And somehow, I'm responsible in some way for making it right. Well, me and a partner and some very wonderful, experienced, clinic supervisors. But I mostly stress about the me part.

I just can't quite fathom that. I still feel like a kid. Like I can barely make my own life work, let alone be trusted with anything regarding someone elses. It's almost too amazing to think that I could do something to facilitate making things right. It's terrifying to think that I could make a mistake, and in a very real way ruin someones life. Now, that probably won't happen, clinic is a great environment set up for student attorneys to learn how to not do that, but still.

Is this reality, real adult life? Starting to realize how much of what you do affects others, how much we all depend in very scary risky ways on other people? I mean, I suppose I always knew that, but I'm starting to see a time when the safety net comes off. I'm intrigued by the idea of finally taking all this education and really doing something. I just wish I could be sure that that doing something would always be good.

Hence why I like the nice, simple puppy.