I took two weeks and a day off of work. I had a week off before the wedding and a week and a day off for the honeymoon. Sigh. It was wonderful. I remember driving away from work that last Friday and having the most excited feeling building up inside of me.
I had a few days to just get some things done and then friends were coming into town, starting on Wednesday night. There are a couple of events that just made that week so real to me and they have remained vivid in my memory.
Here they are.
1. Crying for no apparent reason.
This happened twice. Neither were on the wedding day.
Random cry #1.
We have some good family friends, Kevin and Cathy, that helped me out so much with some of the extra decorations at our wedding (to give a reference, their daughter is now my sister-in-law, and no, it was not an arranged marriage). I went over to their house early in the week to pick the decorations up.
Cathy, Heather (the now sis-in-law), and I were sitting at their dining room table, just chatting for a bit. We started laughing about the crazy accents that Kevin will make up and somehow, I just started crying.
Looking back, I think everything just hit me. I was getting married and wouldn't be single anymore. I would never come home again to a completely empty apartment. I would never decide on a whim to head down to see one of my girlfriends in the south without running it by my husband. And apparently, it hit me that I would never hear my good family friend do one of his crazy accents again as a single lady.
Let me clarify - I wanted to be married.
However, I felt like I had lived my single life to the fullest. Being single was awesome. Not that I didn't want to be married eventually, but I felt like I had come to a point where I realized that where I was in life was just were I needed to be and I really enjoyed it. I had carried the single torch well (yes, there is a torch...you didn't know this?) and I would never be single again, so I had to let go of that time in my life.
Luckily, Cathy and Heather are criers, too, and Cathy ran and got tissues and we all just sat and cried for a minute or so.
Then we stopped, and it was back to being excited about the wedding.
Random cry #2.
The day after the bachelorette party, I went out to exchange a couple of pieces of lingerie that I had received. I came back to my parent's house, where we were setting up and doing a million last minute things before the rehearsal dinner that night. My mom told me (very gently, of course) that my grandad had to be admitted into the hospital, but that he was fine. I took it in. It wasn't the end of the world, and hopefully he'd be OK in time for the wedding (he was, since he informed the nurse, "I'm getting out to see my granddaughter's wedding").
So we started talking about other wedding related things and I was telling my mom how I exchanged only two pieces of lingerie which was amazing for me because I don't have a "oh, yeah, it's like they made those clothes just for your body" type of size.
And then I started crying. Because talking about lingerie always brings a tear to the eye.
2. Having every single person that I loved so very much all in one place.
You have to understand that for me, this is a pretty big deal. I went to college in Tennessee and not only fell in love with the south, but with a bunch of its finest residents. Many of my best friends live far away from me, many relatives live far away from me, and many of our family friends live far away from me.
So having so many people travel so many miles to see Luke and me get married in my backyard meant the world to me. I remember being with several of my closest girlfriends in my room while I was packing my suitcase for our honeymoon and I just felt so incredibly lucky.
3. Feeling anxious/excited/peaceful all at once.
I remember getting up by 7 AM every day leading up to the wedding. I just had stuff to get done so there was no need to just lie around. I worked at my parent's house all week during the day - a combination of being a controller mixed with the desire to have a hand in how everything was done.
But there is no feeling that I will remember better than the feeling of walking on my wedding day up to the end of the aisle that I would walk down to become Luke's wife. I just remember that a complete peace came over me, and I knew with absolute certainty that I was making the best decision of my life.
So I guess that's why I love when brides come to get their wedding extras. I love to see the excitement/nervousness/peacefulness when they come. There's something about talking with a girl who is about to get married in a few short days. There is a lot of hope there, and that's a pretty cool thing.
All this to say, here are Carrie and Ryan's extras. :) Carrie is such a sweet bride and I loved working with her. She got married in June and had me do her programs, her table numbers, and her place cards.
If you remember from Carrie's wedding invitations, she wanted to keep it simple. We used the same metallic silver card stock as in her invitation suite, the same fonts, and we were able to keep it simple, just like she wanted.
Halo Handletter is the script font and Big Caslon Medium for the block font.
I absolutely love how the Halo Handletter looked on those place cards.
A few words about Carrie...she is such a gracious bride. So encouraging. So easy to work with. So quick to pass on any compliments she received on her invitations. I like her a lot and genuinely hope to work with her again one day.
The best part was that when Carrie came to see me, just a few days before her wedding, she had that excited hopeful glow about her that I love to see when I meet with brides. She was happy and content and I was so glad I got to play even a small little role in her wedding day.
Congratulations, Carrie and Ryan!
No comments:
Post a Comment