welcome to my journal

Last week on The Story of Us: Episode 5 I shared with you all that we bought a house!! The past few weeks have been absolutely crazy over here between sessions, moving, and my starting school again! Life could slow down a little bit over here. But I absolutely love where our life is right now!!!

Today on the Story of Us, I will share with you all about Wedding Day!! The most special day of my life! On Monday AJ and I celebrated our ONE YEAR Wedding Anniversary!! I can’t believe it has already been one year! Where does the time go??

The Planning

Like most girls, I have been planning my wedding day for as long as I could remember. Honestly, I have planned probably 10 different wedding days. I guess AJ and I will just have to do a lot of Vow Renewals. And of course, I have been able to be a part of so many beautiful wedding days that when it came to planning my actual wedding, everything came pretty easy to me. I knew exactly what I wanted.

I am a huge planner and event planning is something I like to do even in my spare time! So if you ever need help planning your wedding, I’m here for you! This is exactly why when you hire me as a wedding photographer, you also are getting a wedding planner too! We go through your entire wedding day and plan moment by moment so that you have nothing to stress about! And honestly, I love doing it!

AJ and I really wanted to celebrate our wedding with close family friends so we decided to have our ceremony with only immediate family! By doing it this way, we felt like we were sharing a very intimate moment with those that we are closet to! Then we opened it up to extended family and friends to party the night away with! This way we got the best of both worlds!

The Ceremony

Our wedding ceremony took place underneath a weeping willow surrounded by cornfields! It made both of us feel at home and almost transported us to a storybook! We also wanted to incorporate our family into our day where ever possible, so we had my brother officiate the ceremony! It was so special to have someone so close to us marry us! We also had our uncles involved by saying scriptures and poems during the ceremony and prayers during the reception.

During our ceremony, we decided to write our vows. We love the traditional vows, but we really wanted to express what our love means to us and to make personal promises to each other. Oddly enough we wrote our vows on the same night…on complete accident. I was coming home late from school one day and my vows just came to me while I was driving. When I got home I stayed in my car and quickly wrote them down before I forgot. When I walked into the house, I walked in on AJ writing his. He didn’t even know I was just writing mine too. Our minds just think so much alike.

We have our vows printed out and placed in a memory box with our wedding flowers. It hangs up on our wall and I love looking at them every night. If you can, I always am a sucker for and supporter of handwritten vows!!

Handfasting

We always wanted to partake in a traditional handfasting ceremony along with the exchange of the rings. If you don’t know what the handfasting ceremony is, it is where you actually tie the knot with three cords. One representing a different thing. I highly suggest looking up the ceremony. It’s beautiful and represents so much in a relationship! This knot is also included in our vow box!

We incorporated unique and meaningful songs during our ceremony as well. We did not have traditional hymns. Even though we are both spiritual people, we felt that the hymns just didn’t sum up our relationship as much as the songs we chose. Our recessional song was Sunscreen by Ira Wolf. And it’s the most precious and sincere song. I urge you to take a listen. My processional song was Luckiest by Bens Fold.

My walk down the aisle with my dad was so powerful! He is the most important person in my life. I have been dreaming of the day where he walked me down the aisle for my entire life! Even though I have been imagining it forever, actually having that moment between him and me is something that I will hold dear to my heart for the rest of my life! Even though he has given me a way to my husband, I will always be his little girl and he will always be my first love. He has shown me how a real man treats a woman and he set the bar pretty dang high. And I’m happy to say, AJ has achieved that bar!

The Reception

Our special and touching moments didn’t stop at the ceremony! For our first dance, AJ and I danced to “You are my Sunshine” by Morgane and Chris Stapleton. This has been our song from almost day one! It was a very easy choice! If you haven’t listened to this song, I once again urge you to give it a listen. It’s so raw and pure. Because this song has so much meaning to us, we decided to have our parents and grandparents join us on the dance floor during the second half of the song.

These people have shown us what love means and have shown us different ways to show love to our partners, so we wanted to show everyone the relationships that we look up to in our own relationship. During that dance, I broke down in tears looking around at all the couples on the dance floor and sharing that moment with them all!

I also decided to share a special moment with my mom during our specialty dances. It completely took her by surprise, because I never told her that it was happening. My dad had a very big part of my wedding day, so I wanted her to feel just as important because she is so important to me. And I am so glad that I kept this a surprise!

Honestly, our wedding day was absolute perfection! It took a village to make it happen, but they nailed it! My family was the center of the day and I’m so glad they were there for me on the most important day of my life! I know planning a wedding can be stressful and a lot of work, but it’s the most rewarding and meaningful moment in your life! At the end of the day, AJ and I became one and I love looking back on this day!

The Details

If you feel so inclined: here is the link to our wedding video done by the amazing Kadie G Photography!! Be prepared with kleenex! You’ll need it! She did a wonderful job.

My photos were done by the talented AJ Photography! I’ve worked with Amber so many times, I couldn’t imagine anyone else capturing my wedding day!

Thank you so much for reading about our special day on today’s episode of The Story of Us!! For now, here are some of my favorite Wedding Day pictures!!

Next week is the last episode of The Story of Us! I will be telling you all about how AJ proposed. You are probably wondering why the wedding day came before the proposal, but I wanted to write a blog on the day AJ actually proposed which will be the 14! So stay tuned for the conclusion of the Story of Us next week!

The Story of Us