Anniversary Post - Wedding Details

Guess what today is? It's our anniversary! Since I haven't blogged about it with you guys before, I decided to share a little of the day with you. I DIYed some of it, and was very involved in the planning process (obviously). So, I thought it would be fun to share. Also, it means I can share all of the things that went wrong (true story). It still was the best day of my life, don't get me wrong. But it was kind of ridiculous how you can meticulously plan something over a year and still have so many unplanned things happen.

First off, the weather over the weekend was something like this.

And by that I mean it rained. It rained on the way up to PA (where the wedding was held). It rained during the bridesmaid luncheon. It rained during the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. And yes, it rained on our wedding day. In fact, the first ray of sunshine was when we were almost back to our apartment. It was also cold. Some of our guests had to travel through snow to get to the wedding. Snow! In October. The unfortunate part of it all was that we were really hoping for a beautiful fall day with all the leaves in their colors. We started dating in October (of 2003 if you can believe it) and J proposed in October, so we thought it would be perfect. People say that a rainy wedding day means a happy marriage. I appreciate the sentiment (and the marriage has certainly been happy), but I do think that statement is a consolation prize.

The rings we designed.

I loved these shoes. They were actually really comfortable to wear, too.

Bridesmaid flowers. I wanted to use fall colors and I love roses and callas.

My bouquet, roses and callas in ivory.

Our mothers carried small nosegays (I think that's the right term).

I won't focus too much on my dress, but I did love it.

I made all the programs for the wedding using paper from Paper Source, lots of ink (I printed them myself) and ribbons. I also stamped the flowers on all of them. I used a small hole punch in the middle of the programs to tie the ribbon through.

The church

I wanted to share this photo to show how badly the weather behaved.

During the ceremony, the sound system stopped working at one point. But that actually ended up not being a huge deal. Our pastor was good about speaking up. We actually got married at a friend of the family's church. The church I grew up in is one of those really big churches, which I felt would be a little impersonal for a wedding. We absolutely loved the pastor that married us and have gone back a few times to say hi.

I chose hydrangeas for the aisle in the church.

We had these flowers in front of the church in honor of our grandmothers who had passed.

The silver used for the unity candles are heirlooms from my father's side of the family.

The boys decided to be goofy during the photos. :) We adored our wedding party. They all got along so well, and it made the day go so smoothly.

One of the benefits of all the rain was this photo, which was the iconic photo of our wedding day.

I also love this one in the rain. 

Our colors were navy and orange (the colors of our alma matter). I decorated with accents of gold.

The reception room.

Head table.

The cocktail hour. J and I were off taking pictures and missed it.

I made all the place cards. I printed the names on card stock (again from Paper Source), cut them to size, and used double sided tape to stick it to the navy place cards (also Paper Source). I also used the same stamp as before on them. The champagne glasses were a gift from J's parents.

The party favors. Our parents and us had a "party" to put them all together. I went through the M&Ms website to make personal M&Ms with our names and wedding date. I purchased the little bags and tags through one of the wedding gift websites, but I have no idea which one anymore.

So, I mostly share this photo to show the cake we designed. But, notice how happy I am? Well, funny story. We got the wrong cake delivered! Our cake was delivered to a hotel reception and we got the hotel's reception. Luckily, they were able to make the switch and we got our cake! We also had the wrong song played for our first dance and had to do a "re-do". No big deal. For the record, our DJ was terrible and also played the wrong cake cutting song.

I made the guest book using pictures and lots of blank spaces for guests to write. I did photos from our childhood through our engagement and asked guests to sign on their favorite page.

Our engagement photos were taken by a good friend of ours that I met in grad school. We worked with our wedding photographer to design our save the dates.

There are a million other photos I would love to share that are some of my favorites from the day, but I wanted to show more of the planning process in this post (keep it more DIY). However, they are all up on facebook if you are interested. :)

Despite all the setbacks, it was still so great. And looking back, we can learn to laugh at all the mishaps. We were so happy and it was so fun to be surrounded by family and friends on our special day. That is something we'll never forget.

Looking back, it's still hard to believe that I married the cute boy from my freshman hall. Happy Anniversary!

The Biltmore

Okay... so I have now covered the wedding. After the wedding, we drove over to Asheville, NC. We drove directly to the Biltmore because we had purchased tickets for Friday.

For those unfamiliar, the Biltmore was the estate of the Vanderbilt family (built by George Vanderbilt). A quick google search can probably provide a bunch more info on the family if you are interested.

Here are some of our photos. The Biltmore was definitely a lot of fun to tour and not too terribly crowded (but it wasn't yet the weekend).

The house.

The surrounding landscape. The Vanderbilts had excellent views of the surrounding countryside.

On the "patio".

Strike a pose!

We couldn't take any photos inside the house. However, the library was probably our favorite room. There was also a billiards room that J liked. The house also had an indoor swimming pool, which is very unusual for its time.

I loved how the trees were woven into the patio (obviously not original to the house, but still neat).

More views.

High-five!

The gardens were absolutely breathtaking!

I have never seen so many mums in one place before. The colors were spectacular.

J even took time to smell the roses.

Cool fountain.

Turtle fountain!

After touring the house, we went over to the area with the farm and winery. We ate at Cedric's and then walked around the farm. J went to see the animals with all the little kids. We have no idea how this chicken got up there.

The vegetable gardens.

This horse (Bert) kept giving me the stink eye.

The winery area. We got a complimentary wine tasting with our admission. The reserve Chardonnay was our favorite of the wines we tried. After the winery, we were both pretty tired and it was getting late, so we drove to our B&B in town.

More on that later....