I'm planning on just putting pics with small captions on the other pages, so I thought I'd go ahead and give a recap of the wedding day here.

The whole day started as I woke up to absolutely beautiful weather outside. I had been stalking the weather websites for the past week and was worried it might be too cold for our outdoor ceremony. It ended up being the most perfect weather possible for a December day, like 64 and sunny.

I had to share the bed with my sister at my parent's house (since Tyler said I couldn't stay with him the night before and my old bed was occupied by my grandma), so that brought back memories of the past times when we had to share. Fortunately I didn't get the normal kicks in the back like she used to do every night, and apparently I'm a bed hog, hehe.

I had never gotten around to getting my nails done the days before the wedding, so after we finished showering that morning my BM Tina (the one from OOT who also spent the night at my parent's house) and I ran over to Walgreen's and bought Sally Hansen French Manicure kits. My mom, aunt and sister all went over to Canyon Springs at 10:30am to get started on hair and make-up, and then Tina and I joined after our shopping.

I had the other 2 BM's come staggered later in the morning so they wouldn't just be sitting around waiting for their hair to get done.  Whoever wasn't getting worked on was helping steam the dresses (just bought a cheap one from Walmart and it worked great!) or finishing setting everything up. One of the hair ladies even offered to do my nails with the kit, and they came out great.  We ended up getting all of the hair done in pretty good time, and then I don't know what happened with our timing. The girls were supposed to go take before the ceremony pictures at 2:20pm with the guys right after. Somehow we completely lost track of time though. At 2:15, as I was standing there trying to steam my dress with my hair done but absolutely no make-up on yet, someone remarked that we were supposed to go take pictures in 5 min. Ahh! I panicked a little, but then the photographer with us (wife of the main photographer) just told us to calm down and that we would get the girl's pictures after the ceremony. Phew! 

So then we all finished up with our hair and make-up and then just had to stand around all dressed for like 45 min. I wouldn't say I freaked out exactly during this time, but I was definitely getting really anxious and excited.  Then my mom came in around 3:55 and told us it was time to go down to the waterfall. I couldn't believe the moment had finally come!

Our golf cart was waiting outside for us so we hopped in and started going! We went the back way so people wouldn't be looking at us right away. Once we got there and climbed out of the cart, there wasn't really anywhere for me to hide, so people started looking. The Best Man told Tyler I was there so he started to turn to look at me and my sister yelled at him and told him not to look yet, haha. My BMs formed a little circle around me to try to hide me, but I doubt it worked very well. My sister also started crying at that point. That was completely unexpected and started to bring tears to my eyes, at which point my BMs told me to stop crying and made me laugh instead.

The processional started with the grandparents walking down the aisle, followed by our mothers (they walked in to The Luckiest by Ben Folds, instrumental version played by Don Walter). We had a unity candle set up that had one large pillar candle, two smaller pillar candles, and 2 taper candles. My mom went over it many times with Tyler's mom about how she was just supposed to directly light the small pillar candles. So what does she do when she gets up there? Lights the taper candle. Then Tyler is trying to correct her and she just stands there looking like a completely confused idiot. Very pretty, but still dumb looking, haha. My mom practically sprinted down the aisle after that and decided to just light the taper candle too so it didn't look like Tyler's mom messed up.

Then the music switched to Flightless Bird, American Mouth by Iron & Wine, but an instrumental version.  The BMs started walking down, and somehow forgot that they were supposed to go slowly. Oh well! I took my dad's arm and we started down the aisle. It was very emotional when he finally handed me off to Tyler.

Then our officiant, Micah Coop, said a few words of welcome and an opening prayer. He then went on to give a brief message about marriage and commitment. We then lit the unity candle (we used the taper candles to transfer the flame from the small to the big pillar candles).  Then we moved on to the I Do part. Here is what we said for this part:

      Tyler, as you place this ring on Lindsay, I now ask you: Do you take this woman to be your     lawful wedded wife?  Do you promise God, Lindsay and all of us here that from this point forward, your arms may be her shelter and your heart may be her guide? Do you promise to support her and nourish her and to love and respect and honor her for the rest of your days on earth? 

                Tyler responds “I Do”


     Lindsay, as you place this ring on Tyler, I now ask you: Do you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?  Do you promise God, Tyler and all of us here that from this point forward, your arms may be his shelter and your heart may be his guide? Do you promise to support him and nourish him and to love and respect and honor him for the rest of your days on earth? 

                Lindsay responds “I Do”



And then it was time for the vows. Here are our vows:


          Micah: Please join hands, look into each other's eyes, and repeat after me: (we both repeat at the same time, line by line)

From this day on,
I promise to commit my love to you
in times of sickness and in times of health
in times of joy and in times of sorrow.
I promise to love you completely
to console and comfort you during difficult times
to encourage you to achieve your full potential
to laugh with you and to grieve with you
to share with you life's simplest but most enduring pleasures
to be truthful and honest with you
to share with you everything that I have
and to cherish you for as long as we both shall live.


I accidentally messed up the line "to grieve with you" and said "to breathe with you," which made me laugh. Apparently the guests didn't know I messed up and thought it was strange I laughed at that part, haha. Oh well.

And then it was time for the pronouncement and kiss! Woohoo! We're married!

All of the guests got sent back in their golf cart shuttles to go to the cocktail hour while the wedding party and family stayed down at the waterfall for pictures. We had to squeeze in the girls only pics here since we had missed the time before, but it all worked out. I'm hoping we got some really cute pics here! It started getting really cold at the end and the poor wife photographer said she couldn't feel her fingers and toes, hehe.

Once we were done with pictures we headed up to the Pavillion for the reception. Our DJ introduced us (and kind of butchered the last name) and everyone cheered, yay! We then just went to our table and had some appetizers, fruit and cheese, and some wine. The buffet dinner got started then. The servers brought us our own plate with both entrees so we didn't have to go through the buffet line (can you imagine that disaster waiting to happen?). We had chicken marsala and ribeye steak with bourbon sauce, with garlic whipped potatoes and green bean almondine. It was all really delicious!

While we were at our table eating, we had a few people come over to say hi and congrats. My favorite visitor was my parent's neighbor's 5 year old son. Here is what he said to us: "Hi. Congratulations! Merry Christmas! When's the cake?" It was sooo cute. Leave it to the 5 year old to sum up what everyone else was thinking. :o)

We started making our rounds at the end of dinner and just saying hi to everyone. Once everyone was done eating we cut the cake. We didn't smash it in each other's faces (had agreed not to), but we did put a little blue icing on each other's noses. Both of the cakes were delicious. The big cake was a white cake with raspberry filling, and the groom's cake was carrot with cream cheese frosting. Yumm!!

After the cake we did the toasts. The best man gave an awesome speech that he apparently made up on the spot. I don't know about that because it was like perfect, but whatever.  My sister read hers from her paper because she was so nervous, but it was so cute and touching. I love her. :o)  My dad got up and said a few very nice words. And then Tyler's brother got up to try to say something, said that he was proud of him, and that he loved him, and then started crying and couldn't finish his toast. It was the most touching thing and completely unexpected.

Then we did the First Dance to Today by Joshua Radin.  We definitely didn't practice the dancing before, and neither of us know how to dance, so as we tried to figure out this 3 step dance we must have looked awful. And after many failed attempts and laughs from the audience we just switched to swaying. Much better, hehe.

I did the Father-Daughter dance with my dad to the song Angel in my Arms by Jack Kapanka. My mom cried the entire time. I probably would have too but my dad was joking the whole time instead.

Tyler danced with his mom to Can You Feel the Love Tonight by Elton John. We were all a little weirded out by this choice since she's inappropriate to begin with and this song is definitely about two lovers, but whatever. It worked out ok because most people aren't paying attention anyway.

Then we just opened the dance floor and started to have some fun! I had no idea what kind of moves my friends had! Haha. I'm hoping the photographers got some awesome pictures of us dancing.

Around 8pm we did the bouquet toss. All the girls lined up behind me, the DJ counted down, and on 3 I accidentally rocketed the bouquet behind me. It ended up going past the girls and hit Tyler's grandma, haha. They made me redo it and attempt #2 worked much better.

The garter toss was next, and ended up being a bust. Tyler didn't shoot it far enough the first time, and the second time the guys just stood there and watched it fall, haha. They're lame.

We did a couple dollar dances after that, which made us like $85. Nice. :o)

And then we just had more open dance floor until the end.

We ended the night by having the guests send us off in a flurry of "snow." It was a lot of fun! The wedding party had decorated our car during the night, so when we got out there we found our car with paint all over (ranging from cute "Just married" and "true love" to a giant penis) and beer cans tied to the back. Very stylish, haha.

And then we just drove off into the night! Yay for such a wonderful day!

I think one of the truest things former brides told me is that the day goes by so ridiculously quickly. Any soon to be married ladies reading this.... stop stressing and please remember to just enjoy your day! Not everything can be perfect, so don't let any little oops ruin your day.  Here are a few examples of some things that didn't go as planned but that we still didn't let ruin our magical day (and now make for funny memories):
- the best man showed up at the rehearsal (day after the bachelor party) with a completely red and bruised face, from the eyebrows down his nose and to his chin. He has no idea what happened the night before (it was after the guys dropped him off and he was totally drunk). He looked pretty awful. MIL ended up making him wear make-up the day of the wedding, which did actually help a lot, but I really could've cared less. It ended up being pretty funny, aside from the fact that he was in some pain.
- we screwed up the day of with our timing and ended up missing our designated before the ceremony pictures of the girls because we didn't have our make-up done yet. No biggie though, we just spend some extra time after the ceremony instead
- MOG messed up with the unity candle lighting
- I accidentally said "to breathe with you" instead of "to grieve with you" during the vows
- I completely rocketed the bouquet while doing the bouquet toss and ended up hitting Tyler's grandma in the head
- We totally sucked with our first dance, haha. Neither of us know how to dance but didn't think about it til we were like 30 min from the ceremony. SIL taught me a simple 3 step dance, which I then taught my sister, who then ran to Tyler to try to teach him. Definitely didn't work, we were awful, laughed the whole time, and then switched to good ol' swaying like in high school prom.

Other than those little mistakes, everything was perfect. And honestly I wouldn't have even changed those oops anyway because they make for great memories. So all in all, just remember to have fun!