ABC easy as 123

Since celebrations are week-long affairs in my mind and technically it is Wedding Wednesday, you're getting my Wedding ABCs today. I forget where I first saw this, but I've had it tucked in my back pocket for the perfect time, and what better time to reminisce about my wedding day than my anniversary week.

P.S. Can we all just take a moment to bask in the "two post a day" phenomenon that is happening right now. 

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A - Attendance: I forget now how many people were actually there, but we invited over 400 people.

B - Bridesmaids: I had 4 bridesmaids and 1 junior bridesmaid. They were my very best friends and I was so lucky to have them all standing next to me.

Simply gorgeous.

C - Catering: Our reception was at the New Bern Golf & Country Club and they did all their own catering.

D - Dress: Still obsessed.

E - Engagement: We were engaged for 15 months. Which sounds like a really long time, but actually flew by.

F - Flowers: I don't even know. If you've spent more than 5 min. around these parts you know I am so not a flower person. I knew I like calla lilies (the most expensive flower) and I wanted lots of color. My florist did the best job of giving me exactly what I didn't even know I wanted. They were gorgeous.

H - Honeymoon: We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Punta Cana, Domincan Republic for five days.

I - Invitations: Again, we had the best lady design and print our invitations. They were simple and elegant, and didn't break the bank. Everything we wanted. My mom calligraphied them all and minus the fact that we almost ran out, thanks to a shipping error, invitations were pretty stress free.

J - Justice of the Peace: My preacher.

K - Keepsakes: If this is like favors, I don't think we had any. Honestly, that parts a little fuzzy. I know we had talked about doing coozies or something, but with our guest list tipping 400 it wasn't realistic. We did have personalized napkins, does that count?

L - Ladies Night Weekend: My bridesmaids and I spent the weekend at Topsail Beach, enjoying the sun and the sand during the day and crashing trashy beach bars at night. It was wonderful.

M - Music: We had a band/DJ combo which was great because the band was able to play a variety of beach music and classic rock while the DJ spun some pop and hip hop tracks, including Gettin Jiggy Wit It, duh.

N - Newlyweds: I'm not quite sure what this means, except that I refuse to consider us anything but newlyweds, despite the fact that we've now been married two years. I hope to have the same mentality in 50 years.

O - Old, New, Borrowed, Blue: When I was born one of my mom's really good friends gave me a bonnet with a poem instructing mom to save it for my wedding day where it could turn into a hanky. So that was my old. Mom sewed a little blue ribbon on it for my blue and I carried it with my flowers. I borrowed my mom's diamond earrings and obviously, everything else was new.

P - Photography: We used Emma Lupton Photography based out of Oriental and she was great!! I've mentioned before my mixed emotions about photography and yes, do I wish I had more pictures - always. I see so many neat photo-op ideas on Pinterest that I wish I had used, BUT Emma did exactly what we asked her to do, which was not waste a lot of our time taking pictures. In the moment, we didn't want to spend minutes hours posing for Pinterest-worthy pictures. And in that sense, I wouldn't change a thing.

Q - Question Popping: A recap of this is longggg over due. Stay tuned...

R - Reception: Again, our reception was at our local country club which is on the river and a gorgeous golf course. We drank, ate, and danced the night away. It was probably one of the most fun nights of my life. Definitely top 5.

S - Shoes: Good ole' comfy Jack Rogers.

T - Trash the Dress: No thank you.

U - Unique: I like to think there were lots of little unique touches here and there. Robbie really wanted our wedding to be a reflection of us. The first thing that comes to mind is our cake topper (that didn't actually sit on top of our cake).

V - Vows: We wrote our own vows together. We said the same things to each other, but they were written in our own words.

W - Wedding Woes: I've mentioned before that wedding planning was pretty easy for me. I didn't have any major woes. The invitation crisis I mentioned above came close. But we got that handled. The guest list almost got a little out of control, too, with everyone wanting to invite someone else. But we got that handled too.

X - X-Rated: I'm not sure what this means either. Buuuuuut I'm going to assume it has to do with our wedding night/honeymoon and let's just say, while both were extremely enjoyable, some things are better left un-blogged.

Y - Young Kids: Robbie's little brother and sister (who were 8 at the time) were our Junior Bridesmaid and Junior Groomsmen. But they were the youngest in our wedding party. No flower girl. No ring bearer. This was kind of uncharacteristic for me and Robbie because we are both usually surrounded by little kids, and I think we probably hurt some feelings in the process, BUT we had a valid reason. We both come from big, close families. We have lots of cousins, that we are both very close to. And a lot of these cousins are under the age of 10. Picking ONE flower girl and ONE ring bearer out of them would have been impossible. So instead we chose to share our special day with all of them equally. Young kids were invited to both the wedding and the reception (one of the reasons our guest list was so high) and to some of the showers we had leading up to the wedding.

I mean, how precious are they?

Z - Zzzzz: What I'm about to go do because I'm exhausted after this post.... We spent our wedding night at our new house. It was the first night either one of us had stayed at the house so it was special to be able to spend it together.