Jason and Genevieve's Wedding in Bernardsville, New Jersey

The story of our wedding

PRE-CEREMONY:I slept absolutely horribly. 12:45am-4:45am, and then 8:00am-9:15am. But I woke up feeling beyond energized. I slept alone in the bridal suite, and it was a great decision. It was so nice to have some time alone.My bridesmaids came over at 9:30am and we had until 11:40am to get ready. Everyone said I was crazy for not having enough time, but I didn't want to spend my whole wedding day getting ready (and I was so thankful for the extra sleep). I really am so minimalistic with makeup, and I really don't like people touching my face, so I did my own makeup even though I'm pretty amateur at it. One of my mom's friends is a saleswoman for Mary Kay so she taught me techniques for doing it better, and I honestly think I did a great job myself--I'm really glad I didn't allow myself to be talked into hiring a professional. One of my bridesmaids (who is a professional hair dresser) did hair for all my bridesmaids and did some of their makeup (I had 3 bridesmaids and a MOH) and I hired someone to do just my hair. My makeup took 20-30 minutes (probably would have been 20 but my hand was shaking and I was distracted talking to my friends) and my hair took a little over an hour.20 minutes before the ceremony was set to begin, I stepped into my strapless dress, and it was too big, despite having fit me the week before. My bridesmaid pinned me into it, but I still had to keep pulling it up throughout the day. It was mostly annoying, but a little funny--husband had to hold it up in so many of our photos and we were joking that was his first husbandly duty.CEREMONY:We did NOT do a first look, and I am so glad!!! I am not exaggerating when I say that seeing my husband's reaction to seeing me in my dress the first time when I walked down the aisle was THE most amazing moment of my life, and this is a moment I never would have wanted to jeopardize by seeing each other dressed up earlier in the day. He started sobbing the moment he saw me, and didn't stop crying the whole ceremony.I brought a tissue to the ceremony... I was SO glad I read an article that told me to do that. I tucked one in my hand by my bouquet, and husband and I ended up passing it back and forth to wipe our tears during the ceremony.I was SHAKING the entire time, but I couldn't stop smiling!We wrote our own vows. Many people said we had the most beautiful and emotional ceremony they had ever been to, and it was mostly because of our self-written vows. We allowed ourselves to be genuine and vulnerable and it was so obvious how in love we are, and everyone else could feel it. It was amazing for us to experience, and amazing for our guests to witness.WE LET OURSELVES CRY at the ceremony. It upsets me so much when I see brides wondering how they can keep themselves from crying at their ceremonies. My husband sobbed almost our entire ceremony, and I didn't full on CRY, but I choked up and had to catch a few tears before they fell. It was seriously so beautiful, having such genuine emotion, and I couldn't imagine wanting to try to avoid that.My little brother was our officiant, and he did an AMAZING job. It was so meaningful and personal. We mostly wrote the ceremony script ourselves, but my brother surprised us by adding in a few sentences of his own, saying: "I am honored today not only to be the officiant of this wedding but to be the brother of the bride. Even though today is the first day that our families will be officially joined, the truth is that Jason has been part of our family for a long time already" and that got husband crying even harder.Throughout the ceremony, I felt like I kept tuning in and out of reality. It didn't feel real--it almost felt like we were just practicing. I was alternating between complete shock and disbelief of it not feeling real, and then suddenly would tune back into the realization of "oh my god, this is IT, this is our WEDDING CEREMONY" and every time that realization would hit again, I would start crying.POST-CEREMONY:We took a few family photos first in the lobby.After family photos, we headed outside for bridal party photos. My bridesmaids all had different dresses, different hair styles, different makeup, and I think they all looked beautiful, confident, and like themselves. I was sure not going to be the one to decide how they look (beyond picking the dress color, which they all loved).Also, my bouquet was done by a florist, but bridesmaid bouquets were from Kings and we wrapped them ourselves the day before!I've been friends all of my bridesmaids for most of my life. Age 5, age 8, age 11, and age 14.My husband's groomsmen were his 2 best friends from high school, and his 2 roommates from college.After bridal party photos, we did some couple photos.My veil was AMAZING (Bridals by Teri on Etsy!) The assistant photographer whipped it and it caught the wind!Even with all the photo-taking (and even though we didn't do a first look!) we actually made it to the last 20 minutes of our cocktail hour, which was great! We got so many photos but we were able to fully enjoy every part of the day without feeling like the day was too dominated by posing for photos.RECEPTION:We did the hava nagila chair lift and it was one of my favorite parts of the day, even though I initially didn't want to do it! Felt like we were riding on waves!I said I wasn't going to dance much at our reception... but I did, and I had the BEST time.Husband and his Best Man were best friend goals the entire day. They had SO MUCH FUN and got everyone so hyped up!Our photographer pulled us out of the reception about once an hour to take some more photos, which I am so glad we did. This way our day wasn't dominated by taking hours straight of photos, but we got so many interspersed in.At one point the videographer pulled us outside during the reception to do a private dance, and this was honestly my favorite moment from the day. Coincidentally, Perfect by Ed Sheeran was playing from the restaurant and we could hear it outside on this balcony. I cried during this... it was more romantic than our actual "first dance," and honestly probably one of the best memories of my life.All week leading up to our wedding, the forecast said rain all day. Even the night before, it said rain all day. People were asking me why I wasn't worried. I just wasn't. I had a feeling it would work out. Even if it did rain--rainy wedding photos are actually really artsy and unique! But it didn't rain a DROP, all day, until the very last photo at the end of our reception. THEN I felt one drop of rain on my arm. Some more miscellaneous things:-We had a Sunday wedding from 12-5, and we didn't have a single complaint about it being on a Sunday... some people actually said they preferred it. And despite it being a Sunday afternoon AND not having a DJ, people danced a lot and we had an amazingly fun reception! -Husband and I did a video diary starting from right when we got out of work on Thursday night, took a few seconds recording every time we met up with family or friends, and he and I would do a video recap of the day at the end of every day. It is seriously amazing to be able to watch this, and to watch ourselves actually living the full weekend over again and to hear our reactions and our thoughts at the time. Truly one of the best ideas we ever had!-I had a glass of champagne at the reception and that was the only alcohol I had all day. Everything seriously felt so surreal that day, I actually felt like I was struggling to soak up the moment because I was in shock the entire day that this was actually happening. I sure didn't need to be FURTHER mentally distanced by having alcohol.-Husband and I were so excited to open our gifts that we went up to our suite after the reception and started to open cards... Have you ever opened 100 cards before? If not, it's a lot more time consuming than you'd think, lol. We started to get so overwhelmed keeping track of everything that we stopped mid-way through and finished the next day at home. We should've just waited until we got home to begin with so we could spread things out and take our time.-We had a sweetheart table, mostly just had one because we didn't want to have to choose who to sit with and risk offending someone. But it was actually wonderful to be a little removed from the reception, to be able to keep going back to our little table, have a minute or so alone with husband, and be able to take a step back and WATCH your guests enjoying themselves. It was truly amazing, and I don't think we would have had that perspective had we been at a table with other guests.I had the best day of my life, and that was because (after a year of being stressed about all the details) I let everything go. I didn't care about all the things that went wrong because all I was focused on was how much I loved my husband, how grateful I was for our family and friends, and what an amazing time we were all having.