I wonder why we got pregnant a week after our wedding...

Those pics were before I tore my new husband's shirt off.  He knew what I was going for next.

I was not in my right mind people.  I was very excited to have just married this man.  (God help me, his parents were right there!)

I know, a bit much for a wedding reception, and a blog post for that matter... but I am almost 27 weeks pregnant and these pictures make me reeeeeally happy.

photos via our ridiculous wedding photographers, the Chrismans.

My Actual Wedding

Now that I've gone on and on about the days and hours leading up our wedding, I thought I'd post pictures of our actual ceremony and reception. I never get tired of looking at our pictures, they make me feel so happy...

At a consignment shop a year or two ago, I fell in love with a pair of flat sandals that had these pretty gold and turquoise seahorses. When deciding on my wedding shoes, I knew I wanted these seahorses so I had my amazing Mom detach them from the flats and sew them on my new gold Badgley Mischkas.

The party was A BLAST. I am surprised we were in okay shape for our day after photos. Speaking of...

I've already written at length in previous blog posts about my feelings re the wedding, I'll leave it at that. It was the most phenomenal day of my life up until now. Brad and I are looking forward to the many adventures in store for us and all the surprises along the way...

Thank you once again to our remarkable photographers, Ben and Erin at Chrisman Studios (& they have a blog) and our ridiculously great videographer, Michael Reed.

My Wedding Day

We arrived in Mexico on Wednesday and waited for all our family to arrive at the Hacienda. Even though Brad and I promised each other that we would always be right there, present in the moment, there was so much excitement and anticipation that, at times, it was hard to keep that promise. It's like I couldn't take it all in. I found myself running around trying to take care of everyone and everything and not being on vacation like everyone else. Welcome to being the bride. It is true that the bride's experience of the whole wedding event is completely different than what everyone else experiences. It's like you automatically take on this "I'll do it" role and are constantly thinking, "What do I have to do next?" The wedding wasn't till Saturday and there really wasn't a ton I had to do. I didn't mention this in the below post but we had been talking with our wedding coordinator for months now and although Brad wanted to fire her several times for what he considered to be general incompetence, I convinced him she would come through and everything would be fine.  See, in Todos Santos where we were getting married, there was no wedding anything (planners, caterers, vendors, etc.) so you had to contract with people from Cabo which is about an hour away.  Finding information on wedding vendors in Mexico isn't the easiest thing. Contacting them is even more difficult. There are only a handful of verifiable ones and they were booked. So we settled on a woman who is an American expat and runs a wedding planning business with her husband. She was an older lady, super sweet (at first) and I thought we were in pretty good hands. Instead of listing all the things that drove us mad about this woman, I'll just say that it is extremely frustrating to have covered everything you want on your wedding with your wedding planner in clear instruction and with detailed photographs in the initial week of contract, and then proceed over the course of several months to reiterate the exact same plan every time she calls or emails with her personal suggestions or her pictures or her questions of issues I thought were long ago settled. You know those cheesy beach weddings with sand-filled vases, a plethora of seashells and metallic teal tablecloths? It was like she was insisting we have one of those. Even though it was frustrating having to go around and around with her about the same things, I wasn't worried about how things would shake out for the wedding. We did luck out and get the best caterers in Cabo so we knew we'd have delicious food, which was important to both of us.

Come the day of the wedding, I was just a wreck.  I don't know what came over me.  I hadn't slept well the night before because I was thinking so much.  I wasn't worried or anything but I was just thinking about everything.  Where I was, what I was doing, what marriage means, that this is a huge deal, that I really need to write my vows... I had so many thoughts but at the same time, that whole day I felt blank.  I couldn't make sense of things.  I was so tired and I couldn't rest.  I looked in the mirror but I couldn't see myself.

Brad was out surfing and I was up on the balcony praying for peace and calmness of spirit.  I'd writted my vows 12 times at this point but every time I went to recite them I couldn't recall a thing.  By this time the vendors were there setting up and decorating was in full swing.  I was running around tending to last minute details and greeting friends as they came by to say hi.

My sisters finally intercepted me and told everyone, "I'm sorry, she needs to sleep."  They saw I was delirious and emotionally drained and they took me to one of their rooms.  Brad's Mom came in and we had a good talk, a good prayer and a good cry.  My sisters helped me do my nails, laid me down, put a face mask on me, turned off the lights and shut the door.  They left orders for me to please sleep.  Meanwhile, they went upstairs to clean my room, steam my dress and veil, set out all my things (including all 120 pieces of jewelry I packed), make the rose petal cones, find a leaf for my ring pillow and just basically be the best sisters in the world.  After a quick nap, we started to get ready and I slowly started to feel normal again...

my sisters and I getting ready

I was still jittery and nervous and not sure why, but I kept stuffing pineapple in my face thinking it must be my blood sugar.  My hair wasn't working at all - Mexico humidity is a beast - and then guess who comes up to the room to show me the bouquets?  The coordinator shows up with the florist and the flowers and asks, "Aren't they beautiful?" "Yes", I said, "they are. But they're white."  See, I had sent her a picture of the kind of flowers I wanted about 18 times.  Same picture, same description.  Large open bloomed roses in all different colors - orange, red, fuchsia, yellow, light pink... no white.  Then she looked at the florist and said, "I told you."  Huh? Obviously you didn't tell the florist or else you wouldn't be holding a bouquet of white and light pink under-bloomed roses!  She had a habit of blaming everything on everyone else and it had become a bit tiring.  She said she would see what she could do and left.  I laughed with my sisters and said, do you see what we have been dealing with?  It didn't matter at that point that the flowers were all wrong, I was over it and having fun with my everyone.  Besides I still had to do my makeup.

As I was starting to feel better, Brad's nerves were apparently setting in.  The guys told me later that he was standing there in front of the mirror holding his razor and asked them, "What do I do? How do I do this?"  He had forgotten out to shave.  I love that because all day I was a wreck thinking Brad is just cool as a cucumber.  Turns out, before the wedding, he was walking around feeling like he was in an alternate universe too.

When the veil was on, the hair was as good as it was going to get and the recent burn mark on the side of my face was adequately covered, the photographers called for me and said we are ready for the first look!

And as soon as I saw Brad I was back inside my body, I felt like me again and everything was 100% right.  Nerves were gone.

I can't say the same for Brad though;)  The ceremony was lovely, hilarious actually (will post pics soon).  The reception was an insane party - can't wait to show pics of that too!  But things were not picture perfect in terms of planned details.  So what if the one of the palm trees in the courtyard where we got married was lit up with blue string lights instead of white, the cake was completely wrong, they started playing some awful Kelly Clarkson song as we began to eat dinner and the coordinator who was forbade from speaking at all kept grabbing the microphone to announce ridiculous things... Okay, I say "so what" but I was initially pissed.  My sister took care of the music and fixed the cake for me and then said, "Okay, that's it, eat and start drinking."  And with that, Brad shoved a glass of champagne in my hand and the rest of the night is well documented history.

I really thought this wedding thing would be a piece of cake, but it was a lot harder and more emotionally taxing than I thought.  That being said, I want to do it all over again! It is just such an exciting and wonderful time in your life... To any of you planning right now, enjoy every minute.  Every tear, every fight, every frustration, it's all to celebrate the unique and beautiful love you share with your fiancé.  It's not about perfection or trendy photo-ops, it's about you two and the embarkation of a lifelong adventure.  Happy planning:)

And our video from this crazy wedding day is up at Michael Reed Films!

All images by Ben and Erin Chrisman from Chrisman Studios  We love them. Our slide show is up on their blog too!

Planning my Wedding

I've always known that when it came time for me to start planning my wedding I would try to do it the easiest way possible. I didn't want a color scheme, I didn't want a theme, I didn't want bridesmaid's dresses or the "here comes the bride" song or a church. I wanted the beach, I wanted my friends and family, I wanted romance and fun. Brad and I are perfectly suited for each other that way, we like to buck tradition and just do what we really want. We love Mexico so it was easy to decide on the destination. At first we were planning on doing one of those all-inclusive, pick your wedding package and show up deals, but when Brad's sister found a beautiful Hacienda on Cerritos Beach, we fell in love. Brad already had an affinity for Baja because of the motorcycle races he does there and it's a dream of ours to have a compound in Mexico with room enough for all our family to come stay/live. So, decision made. We rented out the entire 12 bedroom place for a week and started the invite process.

I don't think I realized how much drama can occur throughout the process of inviting your friends and family. Actually, I know I didn't realize it. I was really thrown for a loop by how many people said they were going to come and then backed out, people we didn't expect to come who in fact (and wonderfully) did, and by the "no brainers" - of course they'll come - who in fact did not. My biggest surprise was how sensitive I was to this - I like to think I typically remain even-keeled and unhurt by these types of things, normally giving a "to each their own" kind of response. But it's a funny thing that happens when you are planning your wedding, decisions you didn't think would be so emotional become just that and several times you end up saying, forget it, let's just go do this by ourselves.

Add to this the toll wedding planning takes on the couple. Now, just to reiterate, I thought this would be a piece of cake for Brad and I because we tend to take things in stride and not worry about stuff. We don't get caught up in the details but when we had to think about details and logistics and MONEY... stress was the inevitable result. We started fighting, we started semi-resenting the other for all the "work" we felt we were doing in comparison to the other, we (he) started hiding certain details/facts from each other (me) in order to prevent the above mentioned emotional reactions. And the money thing weighed heavily on us (more so him). Again, we said to each other (at alternating times, thank goodness) let's just forget about this whole wedding thing, I'm not into it anymore.

Can you believe I actually threw my back out a few weeks before the wedding? I didn't know what it meant to throw out your back but all it took was me rolling out of bed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and I was immobile. What in the world was happening to me?? I felt like I was falling apart. This back issue plagued me off and on until the wedding. Oh stress, why are you so cruel?

The thing that was nice was that we didn't really disagree on anything major. I did shoot down a couple of ideas, for instance, hiding the guestbook in a super secret spot so they'd have to hunt for it, and having kids on the balcony with buckets petals to dump on us. But mostly we let each other have what the other wanted. Brad wanted to come up with signature drinks, done. I wanted the dudes to wear simple black tailored suits with thin black ties, done. Brad wanted a flamenco guitarist to play during the ceremony and cocktail hour, done. I wanted the best photographers in the world.... took a while to get there but after some heavy persuading and a wedding date change to accommodate the photographers' schedule... done.

THE DRESS

I made the above emphatic topical distinction because this is normally the biggest thing to the bride-to-be. And it was to me too, but, surprisingly, this wasn't as emotional a thing. I decided pretty much the day after Brad proposed that I was going to design my own dress, contract with a seamstress and get'er done. I'm not a fan of strapless dresses and uniqueness is something I value. There always seems to be at least one or two things I would alter about a wedding gown so, I just wanted mine to be what I wanted from the beginning. I didn't try on any dresses, I just found a woman who makes glamorous couture gowns (so she said) and who lives in Greece (lesson learned), and I gave her exactly what I wanted. Now, it wasn't the most simple dress dress in the world to make. I'm a sucker for over-embellished aesthetics which some (my Mom) would call gaudy. Inspired by Elie Saab's gorgeous creations and Monique Lhuillier's sexy corseted bodices, I put together what I envisioned myself wearing while that guitarist did his thing. Well, the seamstress had the plans in October, the dress was due to me April 1st and my wedding was on June 30th. I didn't stress when I hadn't heard from her until April. I didn't panic when she said she needed another month to finish. I didn't even freak out when the end of May rolled around and there was still not one picture sent to me on the status/progress of my dream dress. On June 7th, about two weeks before I left for my wedding in Mexico, she sent me the first picture of my almost completed dress. Cue hot bubbly feeling in my blood immediately followed by tear flooded eyes that I struggled to wipe dry so I could see the image of this awful excuse for my wedding dress.

Within, I'd say, 2 minutes of seeing the picture, I emailed the lady and said, "That's not my dress, do not send, issue refund", then called up a DC wedding boutique and made an appointment for the next day. So two weeks before my wedding, I tried on gowns for the first time, bought a gorgeous Romona Keveza and a cathedral length veil and slept well that night. Brad did too, because I didn't tell him how much it cost. It was actually quite thrilling to find my gown right before I was going to be wearing it, I started to get really excited! After tailoring was all said and done, the dress arrived at my apartment the day before our plane took off...

The night before leaving, I packed a huge suitcase full of wedding related stuff and then another huge bag just for me (I still had no idea what jewelry I was going to wear so I literally brought every piece I own), and then did my hair. As I was just finishing off the face-framing strands with my curing iron, I guess I rested the scolding thing against the left side of my face (my good side) and left a one inch burn mark along my jaw line. Really, did that need to happen?

Everyone tells you when you plan a wedding that things will not go as planned and that there will be surprises on your wedding day. I didn't really pay these words of wisdom too much mind because I thought I would just roll with the punches, not worry about the details and be happy with whatever happens. I mean, what could go wrong?

Aye. Well, let me tell you, I didn't even recognize my own self that day...

All images by Ben and Erin Chrisman from Chrisman Studios

Our Wedding Video

All right guys, I've been trying to hold off on sharing our wedding video until we got our pictures back but I can't wait any more!  Michael Reed did our video and he is like, seriously the best ever.  Michael is Erin's brother, Erin and Ben Chrisman were our photographers, it was a family affair.  They just fit right in with us and I honestly can't imagine our wedding without the three of them.  What you won't see in this video is the three of them partying right along with us, hot tub and all.  I miss them.  Anyway!  I want this video to kick off me going over all the wedding stuff on the blog, things I haven't shared yet but really want to... like how I burnt my jaw line bad with a curling iron the night before we left for Mexico and I kept telling Ben and Erin to get my good side and asking, "can you see my burn?" And how I thought wedding planning was going to be a breeze because I don't usually get stressed out but then found out how emotionally charged every decision was and how sensitive I become with regards to relationships; I was easily hurt.  And how I was a total wreck the day of the wedding - I didn't know who I was, I couldn't relax, I couldn't even formulate a proper sentence - until I saw Brad for the first time and then came back to myself. I was overcome with peace and joy and knew exactly who I was again and everything was right with the world.  Oh, and I can't wait to tell you about having the worst wedding planner on the planet (getting married in Mexico certainly has its challenges and surprises!).  So, here is our video (bigger version here), pictures will surely follow!

Apollina & Brad-Todos Santos, Mexico from Michael Reed on Vimeo.