Wedding

Okay... I know you've all been waiting 4 days to find out the answer... did I run?! YES!!! I did. I got up at 8 AM and was out on the street by 8:10. I made a mistake though... the first half of my run I was on the east side of the street which was great because it provided shade... the second half I ran on the west side of the street. BIG MISTAKE... it was ridiculously hard/hot/sunny. Won't do that again in Dallas.

After the run I took a shower and then ate some of my sister's Trix. Hung out for a while and went to the church to get ready around 11. Taylor, Rebecca, Christine and I were there and just hung out eating cheese and crackers for a while. My hair and makeup was the only real thing we did... at 1 Annette (our photographer) and her crew (an assistant and another amazing photographer named Jason) came, and Geoff and Trevor came shortly afterwards. At that point we did lots of pictures in the Bride's Room, just stuff with us getting ready, giving gifts to the wedding party, stuff like that. TONS of people came to see me in the Bride's Room. Actually I think every woman who was at the wedding, plus my dad! It was awesome. At around 2:30 (I think, this timeline is all so rough) I put my dress on and put the finishing touches like shoes and veil on. I was cool as a cucumber the whole time - until I stepped out of the Bride's Room. Then I cried! Idiot. :) Oh well. I was like "get yourself together!" I pulled it together pretty quickly and by the time Christine and Rebecca started walking down the aisle I was good. Then it was my turn... I walked to Hayden's Serenade, which was the song I played in my very first flute competition. I practiced that piece for so long, it is by far the piece of music I've worked hardest in my life. I wanted something different and it was PERFECT! Geoff even asked me later to get the CD or something for him so he could hear it again, because he loved it (the only time he'd heard it before that was in the rehearsal). Geoff told me that the whole rest of the room blurred when I entered the room... he didn't even see my dad walking me down the aisle, he only saw me. (actually I didn't know that until today). He looked GREAT!!! The guys couldn't find ties until the day before the wedding, but they finally bought silver ties and orange pocket squares which looked great. I loved it. So we had our wedding... I couldn't look at Geoff while he said his vows to me so I looked at his chest. I looked at him when I said my vows though. While I was saying my vows, I didn't know how to make my voice sound so I kept changing it from low to high... people thought I was crying but I was just trying to sound good! That was pretty funny. :) The other thing I loved about our wedding was that it was funny. Pastor Anna made funny comments every now and then and Geoff and I kept squeezing each other's hands during funny or special parts to us... it was just really cool! Maybe everyone does that but it was cool. And then she prayed and I took that opportunity to fix my veil, which was literally about to fall off! I literally took it off and put it back on during the prayer! Ooops. And I think my favorite part was communion. I loved having communion! I've never seen that during a wedding before and it was so special to be able to serve each other communion and then serve it to all of our wedding guests. And Russ came to our wedding! I haven't seen him since a month after we graduated so it was awesome for him to be there! After that we took tons of pictures... it took a long time but was so worth it. I can't WAIT to see the pictures. Then Geoff and I went to a playground to take pictures... we wanted engagement pictures in a playground but it was too rainy, so we did them in our dress and suit! It was hot but I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE THOSE PICTURES!! It was sooooo much fun doing those, we were so relaxed and just having fun and I know they'll turn out great. LOL - Geoff is sitting next to me watching Mythbusters, and I don't know what reminded him of this (a commercial maybe?) but he just said "our photographer had an iphone. (Jason). He said he was eating a lot of ham sandwiches because of it but it was worth it." That's cool. Geoff loved Jason... he said if he lived in Dallas he'd definitely be friends with him. Then we went to our hotel... The Richardson Hotel... changed clothes, (got an upgraded room!) and then to our reception. We had my dad's car so we actually went in the garage door (it was at my parent's house) and kinda caught people off guard. My poor parents, especially my mom, worked SO hard that night. They'd hired a maid which was really great, but I wish I'd thought of that aspect before. Well, we were originally going to just have grandparents/parents/siblings at our wedding and a big dinner out which sort of involved to inviting more folks and having a BBQ at my parent's house. Which unfortunately meant that my parents were busy doing stuff and weren't able to have as much fun. If I had to change one thing about the wedding, it'd be that. But... I think everyone else had an absolute blast! I know I did! The "kids" (cousins and siblings) convinced me to even get in the pool at the end of the night! It was great. I loved talking to family friends and family and Russ and his girlfriend (she was wonderful and it was great catching up with Russ). We had probably 50 people there and I don't know what we would have done if it had been bigger! I felt like we neglected everyone! We had DQ ice cream cakes for our cake, which was a hit! (I think... at least it was with me!). Trevor and Christine both gave amazing toasts and we had fun cutting our cake. Annette took some awesome pictures... she did some cool things with our rings like putting them in our M&M favors and other neat artistic things. It was just such a fun night. VERY VERY relaxed and tons of fun. It was absolutely perfect. Geoff and I ended up going home around 11:30... we were the last people to leave! :)

Sunday we had a brunch for the grandparents/parents/siblings. It was soooo nice... my mom used all of her "fancy" china and crystal and stuff and it was nice to have a smaller group to talk to. After that people started leaving for the airport and Geoff and I spent the day hanging out with my parents and sister. We really didn't do much. :) We had dinner (leftovers of course!) at my parents and then went to our hotel.

Monday morning we had room service! It was the first time either of us has had room service and it was delish. A great post-wedding treat. After that we went to my parents to get packed up (it was so hard being between home/church/2 hotels). Then off to the airport. We got home around 10 last night. Trevor and Kristy picked us up from the airport.

Today was movie day... we stayed in bed most of the day watching the "Bourne" movies except to go to the theatre to watch the third. I've never seen them so that was fun! Our room/house is a disaster - we have Geoff about half moved into our "new" room (the master suite / my old room) and in addition to that we have our suitcases and some wedding gifts taking up our entire floor space. Plus downstairs there are boxes from wedding gifts everywhere. We have tons of work to do to get the house ready for 3 visitors and a team dinner for H2C next week! But it will get done. :) Very fun! Back to work tomorrow!