Wedding Wednesday: One Year Since Our Wedding + Our Formal Portraits

      Ryan and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary over the weekend! And today is the second anniversary of the day we got engaged. What a joy it's been to be sharing monthly Wedding Wednesday posts for the past two years during our engagement and wedding seasons! It is bittersweet that these are now coming to an end. 

      I have written some very lengthy posts over the course of the Wedding Wednesday series, so I'm going to keep the text shorter in this one and let the photos do most of the talking. 😊 I wanted to finally share our formal wedding portraits of ourselves, our families and our wedding party!

     All of the professional wedding photos were taken by Vinluan Photography.

Wedding Wednesday: Our Wedding Registry

       I'm excited to finally share our wedding registry items with you today! This was one part of wedding planning that I didn't want to write any blog posts about last year before the wedding. I wanted to give a good bit of time after getting married to get the chance to use most of our registry items and be able to share what I thought of them once we'd actually used them. (Spoiler alert: all but one registry item have been great! We only had to make one return.) Let's dive into what stores we registered at, and what items we registered for!

Wedding Wednesday: All of Our Wedding Details

      One of the most fun parts of wedding planning for me was figuring out all of the individual details that would bring our day to life! Now that I have finished recapping the flow of our wedding day (getting ready, ceremony and reception), I wanted to share a dedicated blog post with information about all of the smaller wedding details. In this post you'll find all the info about our beautiful custom invitation suite, all things bridal party, details about my something old, new, borrowed and blue, and much more! And for the first time on my blog, I'm opening up a little bit about the biggest disappointment from our wedding day, which had to do with a wedding detail that was very important to me.

      Let's get into all of our wedding details!

Wedding Wednesday: Our Custom Wedding Crest

     One special branding detail that I knew I wanted our wedding to have was a custom crest. I'm not sure when this tradition originated, or why it's gotten so popular with weddings as of late. But I knew I loved custom crests and definitely wanted one! 😊 Having a custom crest is such an easy way to elevate the design elements surrounding your wedding, and to give everything a cohesive and polished feel. I thought it would be fun to share a post on the design process for our crest, and also recap all the ways that I used it for the wedding day and beyond. 

Wedding Wednesday: Our Wedding Day - The Reception

      I truly can't say enough good things about our wedding reception venue, the Wyndham Virginia Beach Oceanfront Hotel. We went with the very classic "afternoon church wedding ceremony, evening hotel ballroom reception" combo for our wedding day. I think there is something so timeless and wonderful about a hotel ballroom wedding reception, and it really is easy from a planning perspective as well (since the linens, tableware and food and beverage is usually done all in-house). 

Wedding Wednesday: Our Wedding Playlists

      When I would dream about my future wedding day when I was in high school, college and my early 20s, the number one part of the wedding day that I'd fixate on and dream about specifically was the wedding reception dance floor. I love to dance, and the thought of being on a dance floor surrounded by the love of my life and all of the people in our lives that we love seemed like heaven on earth to me! I joked to friends in the months leading up to the wedding that the one aspect of wedding planning that I was a bridezilla about was anything to do with our wedding reception playlist! God bless the poor DJ that would have to put up with me. 😉

     Anyways, before I get into recapping our full wedding reception on the blog, I wanted to share a detailed blog post with our wedding playlists, for cocktail hour, dinner and of course the dance floor! Below you can read about the must-plays, the do-not plays, and even the newest songs I would've added to the playlist that didn't exist yet in November 2024. And of course I have plenty of dance floor photos to share with you too! 

Wedding Wednesday: Our Wedding Day - The Ceremony

      Continuing on with my photo recaps of our November 2024 wedding day. Today's post is all about our wedding ceremony! We were married at Virginia Beach United Methodist Church, at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. We had some wonderful premarital counseling sessions with Pastor Tim in the months leading up to our wedding, and then he performed our wedding ceremony. 

      One of the first decisions that Ryan and I made for our wedding was that we wanted a classic late afternoon church ceremony. I know the trendier decision for brides these days is to have the ceremony and reception both at the same venue, but I wanted to be traditional in this regard. Both Ryan and I liked the traditional aspect of having a church ceremony, and I also liked how it stressed the importance of faith. I also knew that I wouldn't be able to handle planning for an outdoor ceremony and needing a rain plan if the weather didn't cooperate on our day. I loved knowing that we would have lovely ceremony pictures inside of the church no matter the weather on our wedding day. 

     Our ceremony was fairly brief (only about 15-20 minutes long), and we opted for traditional piano and organ music instead of using a DJ or recorded songs. We didn't have any additional readers or speakers for our ceremony, it was only Pastor Tim. I was very excited to have a receiving line following the ceremony for our exit of the church! We purchased bubbles wands and bubble guns for our guests, which created some fun photos of the exit. 

      Without further ado- here are the photos from our church decor, wedding ceremony, and church receiving line!

Wedding Wednesday: Our Wedding - Getting Ready

      I'm so excited to finally start recapping my wedding day here on the blog! For my wedding day recaps, I want to kind of let the photos speak for themselves to tell the story, and not add too much writing to these posts. (Not my norm! 😉) 

    Ryan and I got married on November 16th, 2024 in Virginia Beach! Ryan, his dad and the groomsmen spent the morning hanging out and getting ready at his parents' house. 

      Myself and the bridesmaids spent the night before and the wedding day morning most beautiful beach rental home, Bayberry House by Transcendent Stays. I had the hairstylist come to Bayberry to do everyone's hair, and my mom and Ryan's mom came over as well for their hair appointments. Everyone did their own makeup, which I was so pleased with! My mom and I then got a few photos together in my dress, and then I did first looks with my bridal party and my dad. (Only my mom and Ryan's mom had seen my dress prior to the wedding day.)

     Without further ado- here are the photos of getting ready and first looks (with my bridal party and my dad)!

Wedding Wednesday: My Wedding Dress(es)

       Before I start sharing the photo recaps of our wedding ceremony and reception,  I thought that my wedding dress deserved a detailed blog post of its own! I first wrote about my wedding dress shortly after I purchased it last winter. But that entire post was written without any photos of the dress, since the wedding hadn't happened yet! And then a second dress (reception dress) came into the picture as well. Basically, I have a lot to catch you up on dress-wise, and it seemed right to do that before starting wedding day recaps! 😊

Wedding Wednesday: Our Rehearsal + Welcome Party

      Welcome back to Wedding Wednesday! Before I get into sharing photo recap posts of the wedding day itself, I wanted to recap the day before the wedding with you. 

     Truth be told, this was actually my favorite day of the wedding weekend! Yes, I really did enjoy the day before my wedding just a little more than my wedding day. I know that probably sounds crazy! But let me tell you, there was just something so exciting and electric about the great anticipation I had for my wedding day on the day before. It felt like my childhood excitement and anticipation on Christmas Eve for Santa to arrive... except times 100 on the excitement scale. 😊 Truly a certain type of anticipatory high that I've never experienced before, and I'm not sure I ever will again! 

     And as far as my favorite part of the day before our wedding, that would definitely go to our wedding welcome party on Friday evening! If anything, I hope this blog post might convince any brides-to-be reading that wedding welcome parties are the best, and every couple should have one if they're able to!

     Now without further ado, let's get into recapping Friday, November 15th, 2024: the day before our wedding! 

Wedding Wednesday: Transcendent Stays Beach Rental House for Wedding Weekend

       I'm so excited to share all the info about the beautiful beach rental home that myself and my bridal party got to stay in for my wedding weekend! It was an honor to continue a partnership with local short-term property rental group Transcendent Stays. If you have any upcoming travel plans to the Virginia Beach area, or you yourself are a fellow bride getting married in the area, you'll want all the info about this beautiful beach rental home, which is available to rent year-round!

     Shout-out to my five bridal party memories who joined in for the photos in today's blog post, as well as my dear blogging friend Gentry! She came to Virginia Beach for our wedding, and it was a joy to have her join in for this fun photoshoot the day before the wedding. 😊

2024 in Review: Highlights From My Year.

      Once again it's time for my favorite blog post of the year (and the longest post of the year!).  Let's recap all that happened in my life in 2024. Spoiler alert: a lot of life change! And that's what inspired me to change my Word of the Year halfway through the year for the first time ever. My original word of the year was "Celebrate" but I changed it to "Transform." 2024 definitely became an incredibly transformational year for me. 

TRAVEL GUIDE: Our Honeymoon at Sandals Royal Barbados

      I'm so excited to share a recap of our wonderful honeymoon! Ryan and I went to Barbados the week after our wedding for five nights. Neither of us had been to Barbados or stayed at a Sandals Resort before. We ended up really enjoying both the resort and the island, and I have the most fond memories from this special trip. 

{Monthly} Midweek Ramblings: November 2024

November 2024: 

Wedding Wednesday: Doing My Own Wedding Day Makeup.

     For one of my final Wedding Wednesday posts before the Big Day, I have a confession to share: I'm planning to do my own makeup for my wedding day! I've done several "trial runs" of my wedding day makeup over the past few months, and I wanted to share a full list of the makeup products that I'm planning to use for my wedding day. Some are tried and true products that I already owned, and some are new higher end products that I splurged on. I also wanted to share some thoughts about what lead me to choose going this route for my wedding day beauty, versus hiring a makeup artist. Let's get into it! 

Wedding Wednesday: My Bachelorette Party!

      I have enjoyed writing all of the Wedding Wednesday blog posts that you've seen so far, but this truly might be one of the ones that I was most excited about. It's time to recap my bachelorette party! Instead of an extravagant multi-day trip, I opted to just have one night of festivities that wasn't too far away from home (Virginia Beach). I have no regrets about doing things this way, and I've been looking so forward to recapping it all here!

Wedding Wednesday: My Southern Tea Party Bridal Shower

      I am so excited to start recapping my big bridal weekend on the blog today! Today's post will be all about my second bridal shower (and the larger of the two showers that I've had), and in the next week or two I'll recap my bachelorette party. Both of these festivities were held in my favorite little southern town: Edenton, NC. 

     

Wedding Wednesday: 3 Months Out Checklist + Q&A

       This year is flying by, I can't believe we are now less than three months out from our wedding! Let's catch up on the planning that I've done in the last few months, and what I need to knock out in the final months of being engaged. 

Wedding Wednesday: My Maine Bridal Shower.

      My first bridal shower was held a few weeks ago on July 7th, while Ryan and I were visiting my parents in Maine. My mom threw me a lovely and intimate tea party themed bridal shower, with the help of my high school best friend Julia! I'm excited to recap the shower here today for Wedding Wednesday. 

Wedding Wednesday: How I Asked My Bridesmaids.

      Today's Wedding Wednesday post has been a much requested topic from some of the Instagram Q&A boxes that I've done the last few months! I've been looking forward to sharing the details with you of how I asked my bridal party to be in the wedding.