Wedding Recap - Getting Ready Part 3

by Stephanie
Here are some more pictures of getting ready before the wedding!

This is my mom putting my dad's boutonniere on. He looks like he is thinking that this whole wedding thing is totally insane lol. Which it was! While we were all getting ready there were tons of people in the house running all over the place lol.


This is Danny calling the guys trying to find out where on earth they were. They were late as always lol. They were all supposed to be there getting ready a while ago. Luckily it doesn't take guys that long to get ready! The guys actually ended up having tons of extra time before the wedding so they went around with the photographer and took a ton of really fun pictures. I'm still a little jealous that they had time to take some fun pictures. Us girls took so long getting ready that we didn't have a chance to get any good, fun, pictures together before the wedding. It's ok though, there was no way on earth I was going to wake up before 6am on the day of my wedding just to get some extra pictures lol. Yup...the girls started getting ready at 6am...there were 8 of us getting our hair/makeup done by only two people!


Waiting for something, but at least there is coffee now!

Danny's brother, the best man, pinning on his boutonniere.

The guys starting to get ready.

Me, still in my batman pj's and flannel shirt, with my hair and makeup all finished.

Look! My hair had curls in it! They didn't stay in for much longer than the ceremony, but that is ok. Everyone saw me with my hair nice and done for a little while at least! It started to sprinkle right after the ceremony for a few minutes, so needless to say, the curls fell out quite a bit. Plus, we danced a ton and were playing games until midnight...lol.

Carla put a little more hairspray in, and then put in my two hair facinators. They were so pretty. They had some lace, crystal beads, and synthetic pearls. They were one of my favorite touches. I still wear them sometimes!

I love this picture. It is glowing which is exactly what I felt like.

So pretty!

Last minute make up touches.

Next time, pictures of the girls getting dressed! That means, pictures of me getting in my wedding dress! :-D

And they lived happily ever after...

Wedding Recap - Getting Ready Part 2

by Stephanie
Danny and I had agreed to get each other a wedding present to be exchanged on the day of our wedding. We debated back and forth about whether or not to give them to each other before the ceremony, or after the ceremony. The issue was that we decided NOT to see each other until the doors opened at the church and I started walking down the isle (which made logistics for the actual wedding day really complicated! But it was TOTALLY worth it). So if we exchanged gifts before the wedding then we would be opening the gifts without the other one there. We decided that it would be a nice idea to exchange the gifts in the morning while getting ready because it would be a little break from the chaos where we can take a moment to open the present and just think about each other for a minute.

So in the morning I totally forgot to wrap the present! So had one of the bridesmaids wrap it for me while I was getting my hair and makeup done (Julie wrapped it I think...pretty much everything is a blur so I'm not really sure who did it lol). We all thought it would be fun if Danny and I both opened our gifts at exactly the same time even though we were two floors apart (Danny downstairs, me upstairs) in my parents house.

So Julie ran up and down the stairs to figure out the timing! It was so funny and fun. So here are some pictures of us opening our gifts:

This is me writing Danny a real quick note explaining that his gift would get engraved at a later date, when I could find a place to do it. We had agreed not to write each other letters like some people do because we knew we weren't going to have time to write something that would be as meaningful as we would have wanted it to be. So I cheated a little bit! Big deal! I just wanted him to know what the engraving was supposed to say! And I threw in "I love you" and a couple mushy things lol.

This is me starting to open up my present:


It was an absolutely AMAZING necklace. It was white gold with diamonds and came from the same design line as my wedding ring set. At this point I had still not decided if I was going to wear by great grandma's set of pearls, my mom's set of pearls, or a necklace of my other great grandma's. As soon as I saw the necklace from Danny I knew it was what I was meant to wear that day. It went perfectly with my dress. It was so amazing. I wear it almost every day now.

These are pictures from the store's website that I blew up in photoshop:



Here is Julie giving Danny his present!

Danny opening it up and realizing that I had cheated by writing him a note :-)

This is a picture from the Skagen website of the watch I got Danny.
We both ended up wearing our gifts on our wedding day which is pretty special. I wear my necklace all the time and Danny wears his watch all the time. It is really neat that we got each other something that we can wear everyday to remind us of our wedding day.

And they lived happily ever after...

Wedding Recap - Getting Ready Part 1

by Stephanie
So I haven't really posted anything about the wedding because I wanted to wait until I had some pictures to show you guys. I also admit I was a little overwhelmed with where to start, and how much there is to recap! It was a long day!

So I figure what I will do is just start at the beginning of the photos and go in chronological order. Anything that gets left out (like details from the planning I never wrote about, or details from the wedding that I dont have pictures for) I will write about at the end in whatever random order I think of them!

I am going to do the recap in little mini segments. Instead of posting all my favorite pictures from "getting ready" I am going to post about 5 to 10 at a time. This is mostly because I don't have huge chunks of time to sit around and upload pictures lol, but also so that you have more manageable sized posts to read. It just means you are going to have to keep coming back!

I am also going to do the recap with all the professional photos first, and then I will go back and do some posts with some of the great pictures our friends and family took during the day. Doing it that way will make it a little easier for me to organize all the photos.

So here we go!

Since all the bridesmaids, me, my mom, and my sister were all getting our hair and makeup done we had to start pretty early. We were up by 6:30am getting our hair and makeup started.

The woman who did it all is from Half Moon Bay and has been doing my hair since I was a sophomore in high school! She flew up from Half Moon Bay to Oregon with one of her assistants to do it.

Here are some fun pictures from that:

This was the color of my hair for the wedding. I LOVED it. My dress was a very pale ivory so the red highlights looked amazing next to the dress.

Yes, that is right. Instead of wearing one of those little "Future Mrs. Farmer" or "Bride to Be" tops like most people wear while getting ready for their wedding I wore my batman pajama bottoms and a flannel shirt! I figured if I had to wake up at 6:30 in the morning then I was going to wear something comfy! Danny laughed soooo much when he saw these pictures. He got a kick out of the Batman PJs.

This is me seeing the flowers for the first time. They were beautiful. I know it was my wedding and all, but they really were the most beautiful bouquets and boutonnieres I had ever seen. They were so different and detailed! There will be close up pictures of them later on.

Well that is it for now! I should be less busy over the next couple days and weeks so I am going to try to post more regularly so come back to the website soon!

And they lived happily ever after...

We are alive I promise!

by Stephanie
Hey everyone! So we are married!!!!! We are also back from our honeymoon as of a couple weeks now. Sorry I haven't posted anything from the wedding yet. Two days after we got back from the wedding I started my credential program at CSU East Bay Hayward, so needless to say I have been super busy.

We are almost done winding down from all the wedding craziness. We have been working on fixing up our condo (Danny is installing new light fixtures as I am typing actually!) and we have been working on trying to keep our garden alive during the heat wave. I promise I will start writing posts about the wedding, although I can't promise how often I will get to do so.

Here are a couple teaser pictures though! These were done by my friend Sean. He took so many great pictures. I will be posting mostly pictures by him, and by some other friends and family members. It takes about two months to get the professional photos back but I know you don't want to wait that long to see at least some pictures!

Once I have some more time I will start from the beginning of the day and try to go through in some sort of chronological order, but for now here are some pictures of the beginning of the ceremony.

When Danny first saw me when the doors opened up:

Me starting to walk down the isle:

And they lived happily ever after...

Bathroom Baskets

by Stephanie
I have been to a couple weddings that had little baskets in the bathrooms filled with all sorts of things that may come in handy. I usually end up needing to use a band aid, or a hair tie or something. It is one of those little things that I always thought was so helpful so we put together our bathroom baskets for the three bathrooms at my parents' house. Here are some pictures of what our baskets/trays look like and then a list of what is in the trays.

Q-tips
Band aids
Hair ties
Bobby pins
Comb
Tums
Aleave
Neosporin
Nail clippers
Oil absorbing sheets
Warm Vanilla Sugar body spray
Warm Vanilla Sugar body lotion
Nail file
Hair spray
Eucerin body lotion
Dr. Scholles Miracle Shield blister prevention stick
Clear nail polish (great for runs in your nylons!)
Sun screen
Apple scented hand sanitizer
Regular hand sanitizer
Wet ones
Shout stain removing wipes
Sewing kit
Lint roller
Listerine
Cups for listerine (or aleave)
Mint and Cinnamon gum
Mint and cinnamon breath strips
Dental floss
Single use "finger toothbrushes"
Paper hand towels
Kleenex


What do you think? Did we forget anything that might come in handy?

And yes, that is our mattress in the middle of the living room lol. We are sleeping downstairs since Harley is locked in our bedroom. When we had the bed in there she kept trying to jump onto the bed which was totally not allowed by the vet...so we have been exiled to the living room lol.
And they lived happily ever after...

My engagement ring!

by Stephanie
Ok so I somehow never put pictures of my engagement ring up here! It is so perfect. I love the vintage look of it, and the filigree (the engraving on the side) is amazing. I also love how it sticks up with the little hole underneath. It is an emerald cut surrounded by a bunch of small diamonds. The wedding band will look just like the band on the engagement ring. It also has the filigree which is nice. I love all the little diamonds on the ring. It makes it sparkle in ANY light. I like that it sparkles so much more than if it were just one single large diamond.

What do you think? Shiny and sparkly! :-D
And they lived happily ever after...

Poor Kitty :-(

by Stephanie

So we have been taking a little bit of a break from wedding related projects because one of our cats, Harley, managed to dislocate her elbow the other day. It was pretty bad. I am going to get a copy of the xray one of these days so I will post it. It was horrible!

The surgeon was able to get her elbow back in the socket and now she is in a big cast. The cast has to be on for two weeks total (one more week to go!) and then she can't really do much jumping, climbing, playing, etc for an entire MONTH after she gets the cast off!

The worst thing about the whole incident was that when we brought her home after they put the cast on she had a REALLY horrible reaction to coming off the last of the anesthesia combined with the opioid (basically really strong kitty morphine) pain medicine they were giving her. She started freaking out and hallucinating and screaming and thrashing around. It was honestly the scariest thing I have ever seen. We had to call the ER vet again and ended up having to lock her in the bedroom with all the lights out and no noise or people and let it pass. Basically any stimulation just made the freak out worse. The next morning she was back to acting normal which was nice. Well, normal for a cat who has a cast on anyway!

Needless to say, she does NOT like having the cast on. After about two days she figured out how to walk (hobble, hop) around really well. She can walk well enough that she can make a break for the door every time we open it up lol. She now feels good enough that she will sit next to the door and bang her cast on it over and over and over. It sounds like someone is knocking on the front door. The vet said she can bang it all she wants, it isn't going to hurt her elbow...instead, it will just drive me totally insane! We have been giving her Lorazepam which is supposed to calm her down a little bit, but it doesn't do anything.

Here are some pictures of our poor kitty in her cast. We both signed her cast with a purple sharpie which I thought was really cute :-)

Still totally wiped out after coming home

She is SUCH a daddy's girl lol.

The cast had to immobilize both the shoulder and the elbow.
Zoe is still wondering what the heck is stuck on Harley's arm!

"Get this stupid thing off of me!" She kept kicking at it for two whole days.

This is when she still refused to stand up. She would just drag herself around the room. It was so sad and funny all at the same time. At least she felt good enough to drink some water though!

It took her a while to figure out how to turn around with the cast on. She would just sit and stare at her bed because she couldn't figure out how to turn around enough to lie down. We would have to pick her up and put her in her bed.

"But I want to go outside!!!!"


She can stand!




"What do you mean I'm not supposed to play with anything!?"

"What if I just play with Zoe instead?"

Her arm sticks up in the air when she lies down on her side :-(

The used such cute VetWrap! It is more like a sticky ace bandage, or medical tape, than an actual plaster cast. She has a big plastic splint underneath, wraped up in gauze and then wrapped really tight in VetWrap.

She is so pretty. I wrote "I love you! Love Mommy" on her cast.

"I'm not playing I swear! I have NO idea how this mouse toy got under my paw..."

She really wanted to play so we made a makeshift toy for her. We didn't want her flopping all over the place throwing her mouse around so we tied it to some ribbon so we could control where the mouse was. She loved it!

Happy kitty.

She can walk!

You can sort of see what Danny wrote on her cast on the right. "Get well soon! Love Daddy"

They are such good sisters. Zoe misses playing with her SOOOO much.

So she gets her cast off on May 4th. Hopefully when the take her cast off the elbow will stay in place. There is a chance that it could pop back out if the ligaments haven't healed themselves all the way. If it pops back out they have to do surgery and screw the elbow in and maybe use some pins...not what we want to have happen. Please keep your fingers crossed that it stays in place!

Once things calm down here I promise I will be back to all my wedding projects!
And they lived happily ever after...