Ahhhh, I still can’t believe I’m a married woman! Saturday was absolutely perfect! There were a few things that went wrong, but I didn’t know about any of them except one thing beforehand because my bridesmaids did a great job keeping them from me. 😂 We got married at Ardmore Station in a small town called Ardmore, AL on the Alabama/Tennessee line. 220 people RSVP’d, and I know we had over people there, but I’m not sure what our actual final count was. For the budget, we were trying to stay as close to $10k as we could. We ended up spending a little over $16k when all said and done (but that includes hotel rooms for several families totaling $2,500). My parents took care of the entire wedding
Ahhhh, I still can’t believe I’m a married woman! Saturday was absolutely perfect! There were a few things that went wrong, but I didn’t know about any of them except one thing beforehand because my bridesmaids did a great job keeping them from me. 😂 We got married at Ardmore Station in a small town called Ardmore, AL on the Alabama/Tennessee line. 220 people RSVP’d, and I know we had over people there, but I’m not sure what our actual final count was. For the budget, we were trying to stay as close to $10k as we could. We ended up spending around $16k when all said and done. My parents took care of the entire wedding (besides about $1,000ish that I paid for in decor), and my in-laws paid for the rehearsal dinner & favors. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly from our wedding.
The good: I did a first look with DH, and it was great! I highly recommend doing this! This was one of the things I was most looking forward to. It let us get all our nerves of the day out and take a lot of pictures beforehand (although, we still spent over an hour taking pictures during the cocktail hour). Our decorations were gorgeous! It was great to see my vision come together! It was even nicer than I was expecting. DH, also, teared up when I was walking down the aisle and during our vows. We, also, did our send-off on DH’s motorcycle, which everyone loved! The first time we walked through the sparkler line to the motorcycle and drove around the block. Then, we drove back through the sparkler line because we figured the sparklers wouldn’t be out yet. People thought that was so cool!
The bad: I didn’t, actually, know it until the next day, but my sister-in-law’s dress busted open when she was putting her dress on. Thankfully, my other sister-in-law is a great sewer and sewed it back up before the bridal party pictures. Also, we were shorted 3 corsages for the grandmothers, which I didn’t realize til the next day either, but my mom’s best friends took care of it. We had a tone of extra fake roses for the centerpieces so they used those to make the corsages.
The ugly: We were running a little behind on Friday evening waiting on everyone to get to the venue for the rehearsal (it was supposed to start at 5pm, but people got caught in traffic so it didn’t start until 5:30pm). At 5:25pm, I get a long text from one of my bridesmaids saying she wasn’t in a good place and couldn’t make it to the rehearsal or wedding because she had to drive to Florida since a family member’s health was really declining, and she wasn’t sure if they were going to live until Sunday. I was really upset/mad that she waited until the rehearsal to tell me but tried to let it go.... especially if something was really wrong with a family member. In the back of my mind, I was wondering if she was lying to me, though, because I knew another one of her friends (who picked her date way after us) was getting married the same day. Well, we improvised and no one even realized that I wasn’t supposed to only have 6 bridesmaids unless I told them (I didn’t like having one less person on my side originally, but 6 worked better for bridesmaids pictures anyways since it was an even number on each side). Fast forward to yesterday, I went to her tagged pictures on Instagram, and she hadn’t gone to Florida for a family emergency on Saturday.... she was a bridesmaid in her other friend’s wedding!!! I couldn’t believe my suspicions were true because me and her were really close in college, and I couldn’t see her ever doing that to me. I texted her about it, and she never texted me back, but I don’t plan on keeping our friendship.
BUT I didn’t let that bridesmaid situation ruin my wedding day and haven’t let it affect my honeymoon. I had so many close family & friends travel to our wedding (one bridesmaid even came from Arizona) and have just focused on how much their relationships mean to me. It feels sooo great to be able to call my husband “my husband”, and I can’t wait for forever together!
Now for some sneak peek photos from our photographer!
