Engagement/Wedding Archives | Page 4 of 9

Rehearsal

So I know a bunch of you can’t wait to see photos from the wedding… well here’s a news flash: Neither Can I! I got some photos back from my back-up photographer, but I don’t have any from the Main photographer yet. The Back-up photographer got some good shots but I really want to see the Main Photographers photos!!! So yes I’m dragging my feet just a bit but for good reasons. She said it’d probably be 2 weeks. Well tomorrow I will officially have been married for 2 weeks! OMG can you believe it?

These photos of Rehearsal night are by the back-up photographer, Taylor. He also did our engagement photos. The other set of photos from this night are actually by Evelyn or whoever she gave her camera too (aka April’s husband Jeremy). Both of them (Evelyn & Taylor) are starting photography businesses. (I have links to both of their websites if you click on their names.)

**Since I have 2 different photographers here I tried to give the photo credit where credit was due 🙂**

***************************
Warning! There is Picture OVERLOAD here 🙂
but what’s new with me, I mean really!

****************************

(Evelyn)
PC’s brother in Law Jason and sister Liss waiting for rehearsal to start. I think the preacher was up at the front of the church just talking at this point.

(Evelyn)
Memaw (PC’s mom). Again, I really think the preacher is talking here.

(Evelyn)
Jeremy & April

(Evelyn)
Kalem

(Evelyn)
AC & B.
I love this picture, I think it’s a great one of both of them!

(Evelyn)
Noah

(Evelyn)
Evelyn

(Evelyn)
Before rehearsal started PC and I showed both of the slide shows I did for the wedding so that all family members could see them. We were afraid with all the hustle and bustle of the day they might miss out on them.

(Evelyn)
Aunt Jan and grandma watching the slide show.

(Taylor)
AC & B.
I’m pretty sure a picture of my grandparents came up about this time. You can almost see a tear in AC’s eye.

(Taylor)
Dad and the preacher sat at the front watching the slide shows.

(Evelyn)
I really think Grandpa was ready to just leave 🙂

(Evelyn)
We had decided upon PC walking both of our mothers in. At this point rehearsal started. He walked them in, they lit the unity candles and then he escorted both to their seats and went back up to the front to wait for me. During the actual wedding he had to wait through the 4 minute video slide show as well.

(Evelyn)
Kalem & Evelyn walking in

(Evelyn)
Noah & April walking in

(Evelyn)
Dill Pickle. His ring bearer pillow I swear was as big as him! My mom made it and it’s special to us because our wedding colors are also our bedroom colors so now the pillow sits on our bed (when it’s made :)).

(Evelyn)
Tbug was being a booger during this and not paying attention.

(Taylor)
You think they are taking a picture of me?
Nope…..

(Evelyn)
PC came to the rescue to show Tbug how to drop flower petals, even though she’s been a flower girl before….

(Evelyn)
You can sure bet Greg & Tim were taking pictures of this moment! You can also see my arm behind PC b/c Tbug was walking next to me and doing the actions with me & him.

(Evelyn)
So we made her go to the back and try it all over again!

(Taylor)
The boys are patiently waiting for me to finally come… hahaha!

(Taylor)
If you see April cracking up, it’s because I think about this point I started skipping down the aisle next to my dad. Yes I was skipping in my heels. Not the brightest move on my part!

(Evelyn)
Ok I calmed down and finally proceeded to walk down the aisle.

(Taylor)
And here we are laughing at what the preacher and my dad are saying back and forth to each other and then my mom proceeds to tell him to be good.

(Evelyn)
Now the preacher is reading what will be said. We didn’t say any of it, he just did the overview.

(Taylor)
I would like to know what they are all 3 looking at myself!

(Taylor)
More of reading what’ll be said. Me I’m crying at this point. I couldn’t help myself.

(Taylor)
I love this picture of my parents.

(Evelyn)
Now the look on my face, let me explain. The preacher has the general ceremony all typed out, he just then goes in and changes Bride to the brides name and Groom to the grooms name. Well at the end of the general form it says, “May I present to you Mr & Mrs Groom.” So PC and I made sure for the preacher to say that this night and I was excited to be Mrs. Groom. hahaha!

(Evelyn)
The preacher had to show Tbug how to link arms with Dill Pickle to make it back down the aisle.
Oh and if you are asking if that’s a sheep Easter basket, why yes, yes it is. Thank you so much for asking 🙂

(Taylor)
Okay, Noah so cracks me up right here!

(Evelyn)
Here come Evelyn & Kalem

(Taylor)
PC’s dad is in the back hanging out with Greg & Tim waiting for it to be over so we can all head to the Phelps house for dinner.

Peace, Love, & Photos of PC carrying the flower girl basket!

Our Church, Our Decorations

So the night before Wedding day Eve my mom and I had a small run in. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother to death but sometimes she and I get in fights/arguments just like everyone else. For the small amount of fights we had through this hole process, I think we probably surprised everyone! So anyway she came home that night and said they were going to put my wedding cake in the middle of one of the rooms at the reception hall. WHAT? The middle of the room… are you flippin out of your mind? This from the lady who when I said we were having PC’s family over for the 4th of July her first comment was the kids would come in the house and clog up our toilets? This from the lady who didn’t want chicken wings at the reception because people would leave their plates with the bones lying around instead of throwing them away? And you want to put my wedding cake in the middle of one of the main rooms everyone will be in? Where they could bump into it, sneeze on it, cough on it, steal a swipe of the icing.. whatever… it’s in the middle of the room……. Oddly enough in the end it worked but…..

So after I dropped the lemonade off at the reception hall PC and i ran to my parents house after a few things. Once we got there we immediately turned around and headed back to town. We were on a time crunch. My mom was getting ready to go finish last minute touches at the church and April was waiting for me at the church to try her dress on. Once we got to the Phelps house I immediately ran out the backdoor, jumped in my car and zoomed off to the church (all 7 blocks… I counted ;)). Well PC was planning on heading over to the church too and when he got there he and I got into a small argument. He was upset with me because I “stormed” out of the house. Later he said he thought my mom and I had gotten into a fight/argument about the cake again. Me, I was just trying to get to the church, try April’s dress on and then head to our house so I could take a shower, change and shave my legs.

On my way back from the church I took a different route and got stopped by the train… so what do you do while waiting for a train? You take pictures of the train passing by 🙂

Once I got back into town I headed to the Phelps House to see if I could be of any service, nope. however miss Tbug gave us her present. She was so excited. It was an old window out of a house that had PC & my name on it and said est 9/4/10. It was adorable!

Then I headed to the church to see if my mom needed any help doing finishing touches. When she said she didn’t I wondered around the church taking different photos and eventually wound up sitting in the front pew just taking in the beauty.

Present Table and the Bird Cage was for Cards
Plus our Greeting cards.

This was where the guest book was set up. We opted to do the photo signature frame as opposed to a traditional guest book.

Here is the church standing at the back doors.

The family pews were marked off with Calla Lilly & Rose flowers along with the bows.

The rest of the pews just had teal, brown and white bows.

PC picked these candelabras.

We did a memorial for my grandparents & PC’s step dad.
Thing about this kneeling bench is it is in honor of my great aunt & uncles daughter who passed away years ago.

This was PC & my unity candle.

And to help Tbug feel a part of our family (unity) as well we did a family unity candle. PC and I were the brown candles and Tbug was the teal candle.

This was the calm before the fury so to speak. Although there never was fury, it got busy after the few minutes of quiet time I had!!!

Peace, Love and me taking my sweet time 😉

Rehearsal Surprises

So just as PC kept the secret about the Personal’s shower from me, I got to keep a secret of my own from him. Remember back in April we headed down to Kentucky to see these guys?

Greg, Tim, Welch & PC

Tim deployed to Afghanistan in early May. Greg deployed in late May, early June and then Welch deployed in August.

When we started planning our wedding we knew there was a good possibility that none of them would be at the wedding. As far as we knew Tim was to deploy for 6 months (May + 6 months = November) and Greg and Welch for 1 year (=2011). That made PC very sad but we proceeded on with our plans. Tim’s services over there were done in 2 1/2 months (he is a civilian contractor as well as Greg.) so he was home Mid-July to early August. That meant he had the opportunity to attend the wedding and he was planning on it.

Ok so there’s some of your back ground details.

Now… moving on to the secret…

During the month of August PC would talk to Tim and things that were being said had PC thinking that Greg was going to try and put in for leave time so he could be home for our wedding but he wasn’t 100% sure. Then Greg kept asking him questions such as when’s the wedding, etc so that really made PC curious. Then the week of August 23rd Greg sent me a message on G-talk saying that he wasn’t sure how good I was at keeping a secret and he hoped that he didn’t make a mistake by telling me this but… he was planning on putting in for leave so that he could be at the wedding. That made me so happy! Tim & Greg would be at the wedding for PC… how much better could that be? But I had to keep it a secret! {sigh} I hate keeping secrets from him but I was going to :). So then PC would say things to me during that week and I had to play dumb.

On Monday Aug 30th PC really suspected that Greg was coming home because he hadn’t been on G-talk for a while. So to help with the secret I emailed Greg:

So I have no idea where you are at in the world or even if you’ll get this… but PC just sent me a message saying… I haven’t seen Greg on-line in a while. I’m not sure if you get to come home like you planned to or not but he thinks something is up… so if you get this and can think of some way to get on line I would… just to throw him off.

So Tuesday morning Greg called PC around 6:30am and PC didn’t get his phone answered. He was so bummed! Then Greg tried again so it was more around 11:30 our time and PC got to talk to Greg. Greg went on about how he was on one of the Air-force bases, etc and didn’t have access to internet. He even went so far as to ask to talk to me and give me the “talk” about if I hurt him, that they’ll kill me and that PC is their boy etc. haha!

Now I have to admit, getting the “talk” threw me off too but looking back I’m pretty sure it was to keep me from giving anything away with my facial expressions.

So let’s jump forward to the night of rehearsal….

PC had been bugging Tim about, When are you coming? Get here soon! etc because he misses those guys… They showed up at the church during rehearsal. When we started rehearsal I played both slide shows I did for the wedding so that all family got to see the shows in case they were all busy the next day.

So I’m not sure what caused me to look over my shoulder but I did, and when I did, I saw Greg. So I elbowed PC and told him to look over his shoulder. He looked at me and said what? Again I told him to look over his shoulder. He somewhat did but looked at my mom who was sitting right behind us and then said, What am I looking for? I just said, Look over your shoulder. A couple more times of that and he did one of those double take moments. He looked, re-looked, and jumped up and ran over to where Greg was sitting and tackled him in a bear hug. (Now you have to understand these 3 are like brothers). I was so happy right then I could hardly contain my excitement for PC and of course I got up and went to hug both of them!

Wedding Day Eve Morning

Let me state for the record, I am not now nor have I ever been a morning person! Whew I feel so much better now that I got that off my chest and I can be completely honest with you! I mean I’m not the lying type so It feels so good that we are friends and I can tell you anything! Remember friends don’t judge ;).

So I took the Friday before the wedding off. I figured I had enough to do that day and I have vacation I have to use before Oct 9th or else I’ll lose it so why not take the day before off, right? We made appointments for April and me to get pedicures (Evelyn had recently had one with her momma but she still came. How else would I get pictures, haha, truthfully the pictures were her idea :)) and I had fake nails put on. After my Saturday night bowling excursion and about ripping my thumb nail off, my finger nails looked horrible! And oddly enough, nails show up in pictures, especially the pretty french tips :)!!!

I was wide awake at 6 that Friday morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. I got up and went out and fed the horses and sheep and llama. I left the cows and buffalo for my dad, they are just down right mean! Then I went back in the house and jumped on and read a few blogs before I had to start getting ready.

Once my parents woke up I got grumbled at by my mom for “not helping” with my wedding, when every time I tried to help I got told, “No!”…. sigh! Anyway I proceeded on with my day. I figured she was just stressed out. It bummed me out at first but I got over it.

As I was headed to town for the nails, it dawned on me I’d be driving right by Evelyn’s house so I called her and said if she was ready to go I’d just swing by and pick her up then she and I headed for the salon.

Remember I’m not a morning person…
don’t talk to me until I speak first
I’m ready to usually speak around 10am.
This was 9am… haha

April was a few minutes behind us but she caught up 🙂

That felt so good! I could have gone to sleep in that chair but both girls kept talking to me. They couldn’t believe I was a Bride to be because I was so calm and not freaking out. They wondered if it was the calm before the storm…

I smile on command 🙂
I was playing with my ankle bracelet.

Hmmm… wonder if April thinks I talk a lot?
I was just answering questions!

Ah! Finally! Pretty Nails!!!

She did silk wraps so I could take them off and they’d do the least damage.

I look like a Mad Woman!

April and Evelyn waited on me so patiently!

Then the lady begged me to let her shape my eye brows!
Heck yeah I let her. I’d been trying to get them done for a while and hadn’t succeeded.

The left one was done. The right one still needed help. They got a before and after shot this way 🙂

First time I got my eye brows waxed I screamed Bloody murder! Now I’m halfway used to it.

Toes Done… check! Nails done… check! Eye Brows waxed… Check!
Now to run some errands.

After we left the salon we had to run to the florist and check out the bouquets. Now silly me, I drive a Mustang. My trunk was loaded down with our honeymoon luggage and I forgot once we got to the florist I was to pick up 2 large vases for decoration at the reception and I had April and Evelyn riding with me. So we wrapped one in a blanket in the trunk in front of the suitcases and wrapped the other in a blanket in the backseat and it halfway sat on Evelyn’s lap.

Then we headed to lunch at McAlisters. While we were there I gave the girls part of their presents. They received the teal bathrobes that I had ordered a while back. I had them embroidered with their initials in brown. I think they loved them :)… they said they did anyway… LOL.

Evelyn gave me a sheep with a teal and brown garter wrapped around its neck. She also made one for herself and one for April that way we could all wear matching garters under our dresses :).

After we left McAlisters, we headed for Chick-Fil-A where I was to pick up 10 gallons of their lemonade. That’s what we used as our punch for the wedding. Evelyn is a manager there (nope I didn’t get a discount… haha) and so she went back and helped them make up the jugs while April and I sat at the table and watched them lug them out to us.

Once we got the 10 gallons of lemonade one of the workers helped us and we all headed for my car. Now remember me telling you about what I drove (hint: Mustang) and that we already had 2 suitcases and 2 huge glass vases plus 2 extra people… now we were going to add 10-1 gallon jugs of lemonade in there. Oy I didn’t think that out very well at all did I? I should have stolen PC’s truck. But we managed.

After we left there I took Evelyn to her house, April to her car and headed to the Phelps House to unload the glass vases and lemonade.

Peace, Love, & Lemonade

Recap with Photos

First off I want to say Hi!! I am back. I am alive and I’m Married!!! Ok so now we’re on to the next chapter of life :). I’ve been trying to get caught up on everyone’s posts but being 10 days behind that’s quite a task! If I have missed something important you want me to read, please by all means let me know! (aka leave me a comment and/or link).

So I finally got pictures from my personals shower. I love them so much I have to share with you. I won’t bore you with ALL the details again, but I’ll give you the links back to the original posts if you missed so that you’ll know fully what was happening :).

First off, let me say I was completely SHOCKED with this. That explains the look on my face when I walked in the door. I wasn’t sure how to handle it… 🙂 I was speechless and absorbing it all in.

Here was my gorgeous house. They did a Tiffany’s themed shower, well because I like Tiffany’s. (shhhh don’t tell, and it’s my name…. and yes Nicole is my name too…. we all have 3 names)

As you can see, there were the panties that were hung up. I had to guess who brought which ones.

More of my decorated house.

Here I am patiently waiting to see what all is going to happen. It was snack time 🙂

After we all had eaten the wonderful array of desserts then it was time to open presents.

These were the Party Favors.

Nancy (a co-worker), my grandma and April’s mom, Dee.

PC’s sis Liss, April, & Sue

Thought I’d share a few of the presents (trust me I got gobs of pictures :))

This was from PC’s mom. My mom accused her of wanting more grand kids… LOL

Ah, now the Teddy Game. (So I can’t seem to find the Post about the Teddy… did I not share the last game with you??… if not let me know, even though the pics will give it away, you should hear how it works!)

Ah and now they reveal what was said while presents were being opened.

Here I am with my mother and my (at the time) future mother in law.

Then we added grandma into the mix 🙂

I stuck out like a sore thumb… but that’s what they said a bride should do.

Here is where they wrote down the house chores.

And me reading them.

And once the party was over, it was clean-up time.

Since it was my party, I wasn’t allowed to help clean up… so I sat there and played on PC’s cell phone because I didn’t know where mine was.

Me with my girls 🙂 I look like a giant but that’s because I was wearing short heels and they weren’t. Plus I am taller than both of them flat footed anyway.

Hope you enjoyed these photos as much as I did 🙂

Peace, love, & fun times!

It's Official

I’m married!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh and a side note, I got the pat down at the airport because of the 80+ bobby pins in my hair….. Go me!!!!!!

As I Promised (dress reveal)

As I promised earlier this week I would reveal what my dress looked like on my wedding day. Please remember these were taken with my cell phone so there was no flash, low lighting, and all that wonderful jazz 🙂 But I wanted to share with you my dress anyway. If you remember they had to almost drag me kicking and screaming to go dress shopping, but in the end I found “The Dress”.

Here is the front
(remember I’d had a long day and this picture doesn’t do it justice!!)

Here’s the back (obviously)

A close up of the front.

And here’s one more of the back.

Hope you guys are having a wonderful day! Don’t miss me to much 🙂 When I come back I’ll be Mrs. P.C. 🙂

Peace, Love & beautiful dresses!!

Letter to Tbug

Dear Tbug,

Today is a new day, really just like any other day, however today is different too in that a few hours you will now have a step-mother. When I first started talking to your daddy over a year ago one comment he told me that you said was You didn’t want him to re-marry because you didn’t want a mean step-mother like you’ve seen on the movies. Wow, I still remember that even to this day. I can tell you, my goal is to never be the evil step-mother. I would absolutely love for you to just think of me as your mother, but that’s not anything I would ever force on you. You have a wonderful mother who loves you and I don’t want to replace her, but I would love to be another mother to you, not a step-mother. Your daddy and I will never force you to call me mommy, you have the option to call me what you like, well within reason… :).

(more…)

Wedding Day Eve

Good morning All! It’s officially 7:11am and I’m wide awake. I should mention I was wide awake at 6am this morning but that’s probably besides the point… right?

So far our bags are packed for our honeymoon, our overnight bag for the hotel waiting to leave for our honeymoon, my church bag is packed, heck I even got up and fed horses & sheep. Not the cows, they are mean and I don’t know how my dad feeds them anymore.

I hear that this time FLIES by and it scares me. I don’t want to miss any part of it. I woke up this morning almost in tears thinking about my dad walking me down the aisle. I’ve always been a daddy’s girl… facts are facts. And one important man walking me down the aisle to another very important man… It has me all teary eyed. I know it’s sad and silly and maybe even stupid but I can’t help it!

My mom and her friend Cynthia decorated the church yesterday and they are decorating the Phelps House today. I can’t wait to see either place. They are both beautiful not decorated, I can only imagine how they’ll be once they are decorated!!!

I have appointments with my girls this morning, we are headed out to get our nails and our feet pampered. That’ll be exciting. And PC’s friends are coming from Kentucky. I can’t wait to see them again! We tried to talk Tim into driving up so he’d be here when PC got off work but I’m not sure if Krissy will agree to that 🙂

Haha and oh btw the countdown thing on my side bar has today as my wedding day… it says 0 days to Wedding. hahaha!

I hope you guys all have a wonderful Friday! I’ll have to get caught up on blogs after I get back from my honeymoon 🙂 Don’t worry though, I left you cute discombobulated posts for all while I’m gone 🙂

Peace, Love & Love (?? :))

3…2…1… BLASTOFF

That’s right ladies and gentlemen…. 2 days until my wedding!!!!!!!!!

I superly lucked out (yes that’s a word ;)) my mom took off all week to help with final details… the steaming of the dress, decorating of the church, decorating of the reception hall, running last minute errands etc. Plus her friend volunteered to help as well. I have 6 days of vacation left to use by Oct 9th. I took Friday off and 4 days next week since Monday is a holiday. That leaves me 1 day for a “what if” day and if I don’t use need it I’ll take a blow-off day I guess. No reason in losing it! PC’s ex-wife left us in a pickle (hehe) in June where he “had” to take his daughter even though he doesn’t have vacation so I took a day off to help so I have that one day for “what if” stunts. By the way did I mention she doesn’t have a job?? And he and I both work as do all of our parents…. Yeah anyway that’s neither here nor there.

So I didn’t get the Hair trials done, I didn’t get the Make-up trials done. My hair place said to send them pictures through facebook and if they had a problem with it they’d call and set up an appointment. Then my mom thought she’d use the salon to see what she thought and they told her they couldn’t get pics through facebook so to bring them in on the wedding day. Well apparently that’s not what they said so we had to run them pictures in yesterday. No big deal.

This is what I’m kind of thinking.

or I really like this one (very similar)

I have the veil and I have a little flower for my hair. I hadn’t thought about the flower until Dancy said something and I loved the idea but I didn’t pursue it. Monday when mom was running errands she said I’d made mention and she found one did I want it. I told her to use her judgment and she picked out one. I don’t have a picture of it to share. We are now getting to the point I don’t have many pics 🙁

(** and I wish i could give credit to the above pics, I don’t have a clue where I got them… so if you know let me know or if I need to remove them let me know**)

My bridal bouquet is going to be Calla Lilies and Roses and the bridesmaids will have Calla Lilies. PC will have a Rose and Calla Lily and the other guys will have Calla Lilies for their boutonnieres. Here is a picture I saw that I absolutely loved:

(again no clue where I found this)
Update mystery solved here This is Tara’s bouquet 🙂

My florist, Justin, said not a problem, he could do it! I have no doubt in my mind. Heck the CEO of the company I work for, both his daughters used this florist… I’m not worried :).

I have iPhone photos of my dress. I’ll post them up on a post on Saturday (I’ll prearrange the post). That way you guys can see and PC doesn’t accidentally see :). The photos aren’t the best and I was worn out that day, but it’s the best photos I can give you until I get the wedding photos back. The veil I have on in the photos is the veil my mom bought for me as well.

I also have a few pre-scheduled posts for while I’m on my honeymoon just so you don’t forget about me. They again are emails… so be prepared 🙂
***********************
So I told you what one of my last Friday nights was spent doing, judging Sheep Lead Line…

Last Saturday night we went out Rock’n’bowl with some friends. At 10pm you pay one price and you bowl in black lights with music blaring. I have nice nails that grow out long and oddly enough I had them fairly grown out, pretty and no chips. Thanks to Rock’n’bowl I’m getting fake nails put on. I about ripped my thumb nail off completely. haha! PC got a cool app for his iPhone and here are some pics from Rock’n’bowl provided by his iPhone.