Our Wedding Day – Part 1

As of yesterday Chris and I have officially been married for three months!! Up to this point I’ve been writing all about all the planning we did for our wedding and everything leading up to it…and I’m still not done with those posts but I figured it was about time I wrote about the actual day itself!!

I will warn you this is going to be a long one with a LOT of photos. So long, in fact, that I had to cut this into two posts! The first will be all the getting ready and details leading up, and then the next post will be the ceremony and reception.

These posts are going to be for me just as much as they are for everyone else to read – I’m so excited to write about all my thoughts and everything that happened that day so I can remember it all. The day after the wedding while we were on the plane starting our honeymoon, I took out my phone and wrote down every single thing that happened on our wedding day in a note. I’m glad I did this because reading back, there’s already some things I had forgotten about!

Some important characters to know: Ana (maid of honor), Sarah, Katie, Lauren (bridesmaids), Brandon (best man), Alec, Danny, Lukas (groomsmen), Chris (….the groom), and Jake (our photographer)! Also, there’s going to be a future post where I link EVERYTHING we used/wore/bought on Etsy/made/whatever for the wedding so there won’t be too many links in this one – so stay tuned if you’re curious about where anything pictured came from! But that’s enough introductions – here’s our wedding day!!!

Friday, February 2, 2018

I woke up early that morning after not really being able to sleep. I was still super nervous like I had been the night before at the rehearsal, but I hoped that those feelings would subside soon. Lauren brought some donuts for breakfast but I had absolutely no appetite because I was so nervous!! We all did some shots of Emergen-C as a preventative measure to make sure we were feeling great all day haha

Before long we got a knock on the door from Danny, who was delivering the Starbucks that the guys had gone to get for us. But there was a surprise – with my drink (a grande caramel macchiato with soy milk) was a note from Chris. We had a very strict me-and-Chris-can’t-see-each-other rule, so the groomsmen had been volunteered as the messengers. Inside I read that this was the first of my gift(S) for the day. Chris explained in the note that this gift was meant to represent us, which sounds silly but we really do spend a lot of time at Starbucks 😉 The card made me smile but I was also like omg Chris really had to one up me and give me multiple gifts! Smh. I still had barely any appetite but I drank as much of it as I could. Everything I read online about what to expect on your wedding day was like, “you’re not going to have an appetite but you need to eat anyway!!” and obviously my stomach did not want to listen!

It felt like my stomach was upset because I was nervous, so we tried to get me to cry to make it feel better which sounds so crazy in hindsight LOL. So we did something that is guaranteed to make me cry – we watched Titanic videos on youtube. And I did cry, but my stomach wasn’t feeling 100% yet.

Before long I got a message from our hair and makeup stylist that she was on her way! They arrived around 11 and my sisters and Jake arrived shortly after. Jake took some AMAZING pics of us getting ready – they’re some of my favorites!! Also since this is where Jake arrived this is the place where there’s going to be a LOT of beautiful pics starting now haha

I got these amazing straws for my girls in the shape of their names – they made such cute photos!

Our hair stylist wanted to do my hair first so I hopped in the chair. She had me sit for a while to make sure my curls would set and look nice all day.

Once we had all finished our Emergen-C we opened up a bottle of my favorite peach moscato (from the Italian pavilion at Epcot 😊)! We also had my favorite Gaga playlist blasting to jam while we got ready.

Since Lauren’s name was a bit longer we were laughing about how it took a few seconds longer for the drink to actually make it to her mouth haha

My hair from the back!

I really had the Marie Antoinette look going for me. Once my hair was finished it was everyone else’s turn! I let all of them choose how they wanted their hair styled so everyone was comfortable.

While everyone’s hair and makeup were being done there was another knock on the door – my second gift from Chris, delivered by Alec.

The note this time said that this gift was meant to represent Chris – again I’m like omg ugh he got me more than one gift smh!!

Anyway – the gift inside was a Tom Ford lipstick!

But not just any lipstick – it’s from the “Boys & Girls” line where every shade is a person’s name, and the shade he got me? Christopher. A lipstick named Christopher. I remember showing this to him on the Sephora website weeks ago and saying “isn’t this funny? but I would never buy it for myself” haha. It’s such a pretty color and I was so happy! But with the gift came more nerves – it seemed like every time I thought about Chris I got nervous!! Like butterflies in my tummy nervous! What is happening!!

Once my hair was done I started on my makeup.

My hair stylist let me use her amazing ring light which helped a lot to get exactly what I wanted. Jake got a lot of great photos too! I used sparkles and eyeliner and basically did my eye makeup properly for the first time in weeks because of my lash extensions.

I was nervous to do it – but it honestly looked so amazing. I was so pleased with myself!!

When I was finished getting ready I looked in the mirror at myself and honestly started crying because I felt prettier than I ever had in my life 😭

Everyone was working on their makeup and looking SO beautiful!

After my makeup was done I decided it was finally time for me to write the note to go with Chris’s gift. Typical Kaela to leave it to the last possible minute to do things I guess.

I later found out that Chris had had his notes to me written out for WEEKS in advance, and mine was written day of, stream of consciousness style – it made me laugh and really shows how different our personalities are in that respect.

So after everyone was done, it was time to head over to the venue! We wrapped up and got ready to go around 2:30. I made sure all my honeymoon stuff was ready and all I took to the venue was my phone so I didn’t have to worry about it later. We drove over and I was getting more excited but still SO nervous!!

We got to the venue and made sure Chris wasn’t around, and sneaked me into the bridal suite. I basically stayed in there until I was told to leave.

Chris and my dad working on setting things up – before I came in obviously! At some point they did sneak me into the reception area to see it before everyone arrived and everything looked SO beautiful!! This was a great moment – I basically saw all of my planning for the last year and a half come to life. It was awesome.

Jake arrived shortly after us and immediately started taking cute detail shots of the reception, the ceremony space, our flowers, and my dress!

Then he came back to take some cute photos of us in our robes!

I’m so happy with these robes, they’re so comfy and photographed beautifully, and I’ve heard from the girls that they’ve been wearing them a lot since then too!

 

We also sneaked in my favorite pup for some photos!

After our robe photos Jake went to take some pics of the guys getting ready and instructed us to get dressed for formal photos while he was gone.

At some point my sister arrived with Panera but I still had trouble eating it. They all forced me to eat and stay hydrated which I am thankful for because literally my worst fear was passing out while walking down the aisle haha. Then we all got dressed, which was quite a process for me. My dress doesn’t fit over my hips so I had to dive into it and then Ana laced up the back for me. Finally being dressed was only making me more nervous!!

After we were all dressed it was time to take some formal shots. Chris and the groomsmen took theirs first, then me and the bridesmaids.

Chris with Brandon, Alec, Danny, and Lukas <3

Me with Ana, Sarah, Katie and Lauren!

I also had to get one with Ana and Sarah, the girls who have been by my side since before Chris was even in the picture haha

We also did a few shots of us individually with our parents. Everyone was very careful to make sure Chris and I never saw each other!

Once we were done with photos it was back into the bridal suite for me. I was getting visitors here and there and we were always careful to make sure Chris wasn’t anywhere near! My mom was in there with me and my dad popped in to say hi too, and seeing him almost made me cry when I saw the look on his face. My sisters and Chris’s parents popped in a few times to visit too.

Once everyone was ready and after our photos it was time for Ana to deliver my gift to Chris. Jake got such cute photos of them and I’m told that Chris cried reading my note which I love!

My gift to Chris was a beautiful Star Wars watch. The second hand is a lightsaber!

Then Brandon arrived with my final gift of the day. I opened it up and could not BELIEVE my eyes…Chris got me the Dyson hair dryer:

Like, look at the legit shock and awe in my face in those photos!! I was SHOCKED. I could not believe it. I was immediately mad that Chris spent that much money on me haha! But I was instructed to read the note which took me from shocked to crying a lot. I remember asking through tears if I could have a tissue…

In this final note, Chris explained that this gift was “all me” – he had represented us, himself, and now me through his gifts. He had a lot of other nice words in there too that made me cry a lot – he’s so thoughtful 😭

I was trying so hard not to cry more and I was doing okay until I looked at Katie who was crying, and I told her to stop lol and she said to me “it’s just always been obvious that he loves you so much” and I just completely lost it. We all just cried. I remember standing there and hugging Ana and Sarah and just crying. They were the happiest tears ever but I was just so happy that everyone was here and that this was actually happening!!

Before I even knew it, it was time to get going and line up…and that’s where I’m going to end this post for now before it gets too ridiculously long 🙂

WOW that ended up even longer than I originally expected or anticipated…!! I’m definitely glad I decided to split it up now because I probably would have crashed my own computer with the number of photos alone. As always the professional photos in this post are courtesy of our amazing Jake at Courage & Co Photography!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading about the first part of our wedding day! I’m going to try to get part 2 up as soon as I can to maintain some sense of continuity. It’s making me so happy and nostalgic to write about it again because every part of the day really was just so special and amazing. I can’t wait to tell you the rest!!

Hope you enjoyed this post as usual and be sure to check out the rest of my wedding posts if you haven’t already done so! Thanks for reading 🙂

xo!