Wedding Week: Gettin' Glam

Y'all, I am stinking at this Wedding Week thing! It's not so much a week anymore, huh? There's so much I want to share, yet so little time to put it all together. Hopefully I'll be able to wrap it up soon, because we are getting so close to the good part. You know, the actual wedding!

Ok, so at this point in the wedding day it was finally time to put our pretty faces on! The great thing about getting ready in the VIP Suite at The Georgia Club was the number of mirrors and amount of spaaaace. No boxin' each other out (LB that's for you!) to get mirror time. Or accidentally knocking a fellow bridesmaid's arm while she's carefully applying mascara. Or if any of that went down I just didn't see it, because I was too busy chillin' in here with my personal makeup assistant (aka my amazing sister/MOH):

My soon-to-be sister-in-law, Jenny, also pitched in her eye makeup expertise. My two sisters did a marvelous job helping me to feel like a pretty pretty princess!
And here are a few snippets of the other lovely ladies primpin'. I don't know about you, but I really love looking at people's getting ready photos. You can always sense the excitement and anticipation of the day's events!

The moral of the next 14 photos or so: It really does take a village to dress a bride and get her to the church on time! :)

One of my favorite photographers once said, "Without exception there is a time on every bride’s wedding day when she just needs a moment. To think. To pray. To be scared. To be brave." The next three images represent that moment for me:

We finally arrived at the church (complete with a close-call near sighting of the groom on the highway), took some family and wedding party photos, and then sat in the bridal room and semi-patiently awaited the clock to strike three.

Meanwhile, we can't forget about the guys, they had to get spiffed up too! They got ready in the chapel at the church, and it took them all of five minutes to get ready so we only have shots of them pinning on their boutonnieres and checking their iPhones and such. Gotta love 'em though!

I love the image below, because of how it mirrors the one taken two years earlier at Ashley & Alan's wedding (shown right below it). I love how our husbands get along so well, and it's just another reminder of how a marriage is more than just a union between two people. So about that union...details on our ceremony coming up in the next post! Pinky promise.

Toodaloo!

All photos by Shannon Belletti.

Wedding Week: Bridesmaids Brunch

Hey y'all, I'm back for more Wedding Week posts! This is taking a lot longer than I thought. Hope you keep hanging on with us!

So before we knew it, wedding day was upon us. Waking up that morning, it still didn't feel like it was really our wedding day. But as the day went on, my excitement grew more and more. I guess that's why "surreal" is the perfect word to describe it, it was like an out-of-body-is-this-really-happening kind of experience. But in a good way. Any other brides feel me on this?

Anyway, my sister and I were up by 6 a.m. to get things ready and pack all the essentials in my Jeep before our 8 a.m. hair appointments. Check out my sister's 'do. Lovely and sophisticated, just like her:

From there we were on our way to The Georgia Club VIP Suite, where we had the bridesmaids brunch and all got ready together. We decided to have the brunch the morning of the wedding so my girls could actually be there to open their gifts and hear how much I love and appreciate them. As I mentioned in the last post, most of my bridesmaids were coming from out of town, so only 3 out of the 9 would have made it to a luncheon the day before the wedding. And what's a party when you're missing more than half of the guests of honor?

So because it would be an early morning for everyone, I told my maids to just come in their comfy clothes and sans makeup. Easy breezy. So there are no pictures of us sporting cute dresses or goofy shots of us pretending to be proper while holding porcelain tea cups. Nope. But there are pictures of this. :)

The brunch was hosted by my best friend Jenny and her mom and sister, and they did a great job picking out some delicious goodies for us to munch on before we got ready. They had it catered by a lady in our church named Joan Ottinger, who also did our wedding cake. We had all the typical chick food including cookies, brownies, and chicken salad sandwiches, but it was 1000x better because Joan made it! I just wish I had been hungrier that morning. I can't eat when I'm anticipating something!

One of my favorite things to do is wrap gifts, so when it came to the bridesmaids gifts I knew I wanted to wrap them as opposed to putting them in a bag. I found this cute gift wrap from Target, then printed out these Martha Stewart place cards to use as gift tags.

They each got a set of monogrammed note cards and gold earrings, a little mix of Southern and tradition. I know it might be a little cliche to give jewelry, but it's a great way to have a cohesive look when it comes to accessories and it's usually something they can wear again.

And all of a sudden it was time to get ready! I'll be back for more on that later. Y'all have a great weekend! Anybody got awesome plans? I'm excited about going home this weekend, antiquing with my mom and sister, and Rachel's bridal shower on Sunday afternoon. And this amazing warm weather. Hello spring!

All photos by Shannon Belletti.