Our Sweet Beginning: Getting Ready

Today, Monday November 28th, marks six months of wedded bliss for me and Brian. Happy half a year to us! And what a six months they have been...full of some big ups and downs, lots of laughter and learning, and some of the happiest moments of my life. Today I'm going to start showing you bits and pieces of our wedding day; with so many pictures, I had such a hard time narrowing down what to put here on the blog. I have done my best. :) Let me know if there's anything you're interested in seeing from our wedding. Unless otherwise noted, pictures are by our fabulous photographer, Meaghan Elliott, and property of yours truly.

The morning of our wedding, all of the girls met at my parent's house to get ready. The amazing girls of Baltimore Bridal Hair and Makeup did the honors of making us all look beautiful. I seriously cannot say enough good things about Jamie and Megan; they did such quality work and kept us right on schedule. If I look calm in these pictures, it's because I totally felt it.

While the girls were getting ready, my dad was hard at work preparing his toast. He wrote us a poem, "Untitled." :)

After my hair and makeup were done, I helped my flower girl, my cousin Zoë, into her dress (please ignore the disaster that was my bedroom; it was a hectic week)...

...and we took a couple of photo booth pictures to pass some time.

 Before I knew it, my bridesmaids were in their dresses and putting on accessories. It felt like we had just started getting ready!

After one last spray of hairspray to make sure everything would stay put, Jamie put my veil in.

Then, my sister (and maid of honor) Jennifer handed me a small box that Brian had asked her to give me on our wedding day. I tried so hard not to cry (and succeeded in only tearing up) when I read the card that accompanied my beautiful gift, a "something blue" ring.

Finally, it was time to get in my dress. This is when the day felt like it took off; time started moving a lot faster and I was feeling so many emotions at once.

My dress was called the "Brooklyn," by Blue by Enzoani.

My shoes were the Nina Culver with a blue flower shoe clip and my earrings were my "something borrowed" from my Aunt Kathy.

Stepping into my dress felt surreal. I was getting married!

Then, it was finally time to jump (er, carefully maneuver) into the limo and head off to see my handsome groom!

Honeymoon in St. Lucia: Day 7

I've finally made it to the end of our honeymoon recaps! I know they probably aren't the most thrilling to read, but I know that I will love having them to look back on. So thanks for sticking with me. :)

We woke up for our last day in St. Lucia to the most incredible storm. Rain in the rainforest is no joke! We did our best to stay dry and headed down for our next to last breakfast at the Bayside Restaurant. It was actually kind of relaxing to watch the rain and listen to the ocean while we stayed dry under the pavilion.

By the time we finished breakfast, the rain had stopped. After our couple days of adventure, we wanted to spend the last full day of our honeymoon just relaxing and enjoying each other's company. Jalousie Beach has these super comfortable lounge chairs under straw umbrellas, and we decided to camp out there for the day. We laughed, read, napped, ordered lunch to our chairs, and indulged in some (very strong) sangria. The sun eventually decided to come out, and it was a perfect last day on the beach!

I (obviously) have such fond memories of our honeymoon, but something that I really remember from those lazy days on the beach is our "life" conversations. What our life together will be like, where we'll go, what we'll do, what our family will be like...all of those conversations that we know can come to fruition now that we are married (if they haven't already!) We also read a couple of great books that put the focus on what is really important after the wedding; our marriage. So, between all of the adventure and relaxing on our honeymoon, we also started building dreams, plans, and wishes for our life together.

When the sky started looking threatening again, we decided to head back up to our villa and sit on the patio. After spending some time in the pool, we acted a little bit ridiculous and played with the self-timer on my camera. I don't think I have ever laughed so hard.

From our villa, we watched our last beautiful sunset in St. Lucia...

...and then it was time to get dressed up for our last fancy four-course dinner at The Great Room. I miss that coffee and the incredible desserts. I would give anything for another Bailey's Chocolate Souffle.

The next morning, it was up bright and early for our last breakfast (amazing chocolate croissants...I don't know why we waited until the last day to try them!) and then to catch our ride to the airport. Before we left, Brian and I both had to say goodbye to our beautiful villa and the infinity pool. We were not happy to leave. :(

At the airport, we walked out onto the tarmac to catch our flight and said goodbye to the beautiful island of St. Lucia.

Our honeymoon was perfect in so many ways. It was just beyond blissful to enjoy being husband and wife; to take a week to recoup from the wedding, renew our love for one another, and to begin the next chapter in our life together. :)

Honeymoon in St. Lucia: Day 6

This week, I caught a feature about our honeymoon at the Jalousie Plantation on the Travel Channel's "Best of the Caribbean", and it reminded me to get a move on blogging about our trip! I mean, I do hope to share some of our wedding pictures eventually too. :)

When we first started planning and researching our honeymoon, I stumbled on some pictures of a couple covered in what looked like dark black mud. I had no idea what the story was, but I was definitely intrigued! After some research, we found out that St. Lucia is home to a dormant volcano, the "world's only drive-in volcano," which feeds the Sulphur Springs.

Locals say that slathering yourself in the mineral-rich mud from the volcano can make you look ten years younger. Brian and I don't necessarily need to look 15, but we jumped in anyway! Well, I guess jumped is kind of an exaggeration...considering the springs are SUPER hot. Like over 100 degrees! I was a little bit less skeptical than Brian and reached straight to the bottom of the spring and grabbed a handful of the clay-like mud. I was not about to miss out on discovering the fountain of youth! Brian took some convincing, but he eventually covered himself as well. We stood in the sun to dry and waited for the miraculous transformation to occur. :)

After donning a couple of "mudstaches," we rinsed off and assessed our new appearances. Besides softer skin (which I guess you'd expect after exfoliating with mud) and a slight greyish tint, we remained unchanged. :( So, we didn't discover the fountain of youth and we may have even been victims of the hugest tourist trap in history, but we had fun...and that's what matters! Afterwards, we got to check out the "drive-thru" volcano, where you can actually see still see smoke from its last eruption in the 1700s! During our honeymoon, I was also semi-obsessed with The Hunger Games, and appropriately kept referring to my hairstyle as a "Katniss braid."

After the volcano, we headed over to the Diamond Falls Botanical Gardens. The biggest draw of these gardens is a huge waterfall! St. Lucia suffered a lot of damage from Hurricane Tomas in October 2010; we knew that much of the area around the waterfall had been destroyed, making it impossible to get to. We were so excited to find out that the paths had been restored and we could go see the Diamond Falls!

We also enjoyed wandering through the gardens and looking at all of the exotic plants. Brian's personal favorite was the Bird of Paradise; I loved seeing all of the cocoa growing! The sign even mentioned a certain factory in Pennsylvania where most of it would be sent. :)

Our next stop required a small hike from our villa. Even though it was a short distance away, we didn't expect to be walking down the side of a mountain! While getting there wasn't really an issue, walking back up was certainly not my favorite part of our honeymoon. :)

At the end of our "walk," we took a dip in the naturally occurring mineral baths at the base of the mountain. They were warm (much more comfortable to sit in than the Sulphur Springs) and fed by a small waterfall.

After our (strenuous) walk back up to Jalousie and a quick dip in the infinity pool (Brian could not get enough of that pool on our porch!)...

 ...we got pretty and headed out to another yummy dinner at the Bayside Restaurant!

It's hard to believe that it's been over three months since we got married and took this dream vacation! I have already started trying to convince Brian that we need to return for an anniversary trip...

Our Sweet Beginning: Out of Town Boxes

This weekend, Brian and I traveled to New Jersey to attend the wedding of one of his groomsmen, Rocco. He and Katie had an absolutely beautiful wedding, and we had such a good time! Of course, since Brian was in the wedding, in uniform, and looking completely handsome, I completely neglected to take any pictures. :(

In the spirit of all-things-wedding, I thought I'd continue blogging about some of the details of our big day (which was over 3 months ago now!)

Out of Town (OOT) bags or boxes are small gifts that many brides put together to leave at the hotel for guests who are traveling to attend the wedding. I knew that I wanted to put together a token of appreciation for those people who went (literally) out of their way to attend our wedding on a holiday weekend.  I also wanted to include some information about the area and things to do just in case people had some extra time to kill. :)

I used gable boxes I bought in bulk to package up the gifts. I decorated them to reflect the colors and feel of our wedding.

To start my collection of items to fill the boxes, I made a trip to a rest stop along the highway and the visitor's center in the town where we were getting married. When I explained the boxes I was making, I was given many different brochures and maps to help our guests get to know the area. I was even able to get a brochure about the history of the Concord Point Lighthouse (which is where we got married!)

I also put together a small booklet with a note of thanks, a list of wedding weekend events with driving directions, things to do and restaurants we like in the area, and important phone numbers in case guests had any questions or needed help.

I knew I wanted to include a couple of miniature bottles of water in each box. So, while I was labeling over 200 water bottles with our monogram for our outdoor ceremony, I also did fifty smaller ones. It was incredibly time consuming, but one of my favorite details!

The last thing that needed to go in the boxes was, of course, food! I picked out several things that represented Baltimore and Havre de Grace: Utz Crab Chips, individual packages of Berger cookies, and Bomboy Havre de Mints. I also threw in some generic snack foods, like nuts, trail mix, and granola bars.

Because Brian was living in Savannah already, he was staying at one of the hotels with his groomsmen prior to the wedding. I knew I had to make an Out of Town box especially for the groom!

I added a couple of extra snacks that I know Brian likes, some travel books about St. Lucia, and a very important pair of socks.

Brian and his best man, Pat, came to pick up the boxes from me the week of the wedding and delivered them to the two hotels where guests were staying.

This was one of my favorite wedding projects and my first opportunity to let guests know how much we appreciated them sharing in the joy of our wedding day!