I’ll be honest, writing about our wedding almost a month after the fact is a little weird (and difficult).  My brain is still in honeymoon/vacation mode and it’s making it a little hard to transition back into things and to take myself back to wedding day frame of mind.

I feel like there are so many details and memories I want to write about but I’m having a hard time getting them out.  They’re not as crystal clear as they were the day after the wedding!  But I figure the only way to really get myself into wedding mode is to write about it, so here goes.  It’s ceremony talk time!

I so badly wanted wedding programs but we kinda exhausted our stationary budget on invitations (which I totally meant to bring so we could have a professional photo of all the pieces and we both forgot…) so we went the Etsy route.  Basically, there are a bunch of templates you can choose from then the designer can customize the colors, graphics and text.  They send the file and you can print them yourself.  The graphic designer we chose we such a sweetheart and I loved how the programs turned out!

We had Joey’s aunt and uncle set up a couple of tents for the wedding party, but I was the first one to arrive so this is me hanging out in the girls tent by myself 🙂  Also, it ended up being sweltering inside those tents.  Why didn’t we think of that before?

I won’t post every single guest photo but these two stand out to me because it’s all my parents’ sisters who don’t often get the chance to be in Colorado.  It meant so much to have them there.

So I never really got nervous, but I was getting pretty antsy while we waited to start the ceremony.  I think I was afraid the longer we waited, the more time I would have to get nervous.  Totally normal bride fears, right?  This picture blows me away.

I think Joey shocked everyone (myself included!) by shedding some actual tears!  That might sound like normal wedding behavior, but look, I’ve been with him for 7 1/2 years and I’ve probably seen him cry twice.  I didn’t notice, but he says his tears had all my girls in tears.  It was such a surprising, real and touching show of emotion.  I can’t think about it too hard or I cry!

Public speaking is probably my #1 fear (well that, and running out of peanut butter), but I felt so calm reading my vows.  All I could see was Joey in that moment.  We wrote them together except for two lines that we each filled in on our own and didn’t hear until the ceremony.  In mine, I promised to try to remember to turn the lights off before leaving the house and in Joey’s, he promised to turn off the lights that I always leave on.  It was so perfect.  And apparently very funny to me.

Since we didn’t do any kind of unity ritual, we opted to actually sign our marriage license.  So we were official right then and there!

Joey had the brilliant idea to play Hall & Oates “You Make My Dreams Come True” for the processional, so we danced our way back down the aisle and followed it up with a little twirl.

We hadn’t originally planned on taking too many photos at the park after the ceremony (this girl wanted to get her chipotle cream meatball on at cocktail hour!) but we ended up staying a little longer and getting a bunch of photos and I am SO GLAD.  They turned out stunning!!!  I guess that whole ordeal we went through to reserve the park was worth it.

Then we hopped in our get away car (that was so lovingly decorated!) and drove ourselves to the reception.  I won’t lie, it was a lot of fun to get so many looks, honks and waves from other drivers on the road.

Reception pictures are coming to you on Friday!