"The Bridals"
These are just two of my bridals that were taken in November of 2008 by my cousin, Angela Jones.
"The I do's"
Our ceremony was small, but very special. We were married in the church we met, which also happens to be the place we first said those three little words, "I love you," and the place Richard purposed. Richard's Uncle (mine too, now), Pastor Alrfred Murillo, married us, we wrote our own vows, and my sister, Barbra, sang my entrance song while my sister-in-law, Jessica, played the violin. A good friend of ours, Laikwan Waigwa-Stone, played the piano, and later for our unity candle lighting, my cousin, Tim, played and sang one of my favorite Shane & Shane songs, "Your Grace is Sufficient." Also, one of my best friends, Lyndy Tankersley, created our wedding slide show, and it was absolutely beautiful.
"The First Dance"
This wasn't exactly the first dance of the night, but it was Richard's and my first dance together as husband and wife. My cousin, Tim played acoustic guitar while my cousin, Amy, sang "I Will be Here" by Steven Curtis Chapman.
"The Other Dancing"
When we first arrived at the reception, two things happened; one, I saw that the center pieces were put together incorrectly, and I realized that I forgot to make the playlist for the music.
Various family members (from both sides) and I spent months working on the center pieces - from searching fields in the poring rain for the perfect sticks, to beading trees, those center pieces were an agonizingly long project, and to see them in such a disarray, was disappointing at very least. The vases were not fully filled, causing the beaded trees to lean, the ice-blue crystals were still in someone's car (instead of on the tables where they were supposed to be lightly scattered about the surface of the tables surrounding the vases), and there were pink glow sticks lodged in the bottoms of the vases instead of the blue LED lights that were supposed to be illuminating the gel. In an effort to solve one of the problems, the vases were filled with water, but that only made them worse. SO, I let it go, and moved on to situation number two - no music. :/
Originally, we had intended on hiring a band, but when the budget grew tighter, the hopes of having that band grew slimmer. In the heap of it all, I never thought to make alternate arrangements. Finally, we were able to track down one of the building operators to unlock the sound system for us, and with the aide Mr. Laptop, we quickly threw on some tunes. Crisis averted - sort of. With all the craziness of the day, we had no choice but to dance out the stress - which is exactly what we did - well, some of us. Okay, okay, more like 6 of us: myself, Lyndy, Josie, my 3 year old flower girl, Audrey, and for a brief moment, my cousins Summer and Wendy.
All-in-all, it was a fun night, and even though things did not go as planned (as they rarely do), for not having my mom (or my dad at that time - another story for another time) around to aid in the planning process, I think it turned out alright.
My cake, by the way, was one of my favorite things...
Not only was our cake beautiful, but it tasted amazing. It was a pumpkin and cream cheese cake with blown sugar bubbles. Even the fondant was good; it was a soft, thin, cream cheese fondant - not like normal fondant that is just disgusting and thick enough to break your fork. We saved the top of our cake for our one year anniversary, and it was still delicious even a year later. I was very pleased, and while I planned on being nice to my new husband, Aunt Penny felt his nose should share in the sampling of our pumpkin cake.