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...