Planning a Wedding (in pictures)...

Like most girls, I had some ideas of what I wanted my wedding to be like, but I had never planned it out in too much detail before we got engaged. I did know that I didn't want to have a Christmasy wedding (red), and I didn't really want a lot of color. I had always pictured having a very classic, timeless wedding, and with that in mind I was able to decide on black and white/cream as our wedding colors pretty quickly. We brought in a little color via the greenery, but the colors essentially were black, cream, and gold. (I just typed cold instead of gold...haha. I think cold and our wedding have become synonymous terms in my mind! It was so cold, beautiful, but sooo cold!) 

Our wedding really turned out beautifully, and I credit that completely to my mom, Grandma, Nana, and Penny (along with lots of help from extended family, good friends, and neighbors)! 

Here is a little re-cap of the planning process:

We picked 1/2/13 as the date. When we first talked about getting married, Sam asked me when was the soonest I would feel comfortable getting married...I said February. :) We ended up choosing January because it worked best for our out of town family and in regards to our school schedule. It worked out great! I wanted to have a normal Christmas (since I hadn't been home for Christmas since my mission), and we were totally able to do that. The holiday season was a little crazier than usual, but we were able to enjoy it and get wedding stuff done at the same time. 

Once we had the date in place, we scheduled the temple. I had always imagined getting married in the Salt Lake temple because that's where my parents and lots of extended family were married, but Sam and my mom talked me into the Timpanogas temple. It was close to home, was the temple we had both grown up with, and was also close to our reception and luncheon, which was especially important to consider due to the weather in January. It worked out great, and I was so happy with our choice.

Next, we picked we picked the wedding party. It was so hard to narrow it down (there are just so many people I love and consider close enough to be a bridesmaid), so we kept the wedding party pretty big. My bridesmaids were my sister, Tara, my sisters-in-law, Carly, Sophie, and Kori, my cousins Madeleine and Allison, and my friends Mandie (Maughan) Krause and Shayly (Terris) Levesque. The groomsmen were Sam's brother, Rick, his brother-in-law, Micah, and my brothers, Jake, Ben, Josh, and Danny. It was a big wedding party, but it was great!

 My mom has great taste and really should take all the credit for the decor at the reception. She also single-handedly picked the reception location, Fox Hollow Golf Course. We liked Fox Hollow because it was right between Alpine and Lindon (our home towns), had a warm, lodge-like feel, and had beautiful surroundings with not a lot of other establishments surrounding it. 

For the reception decor, we started out by going to Taipan to look for greenery to incorporate. My grandma ended up finding some beautiful lit wreaths online that we ordered to hang on each of the windows in the reception hall. Here are some pictures we took as we looked around Taipan, trying to narrow down what we wanted to get and figure out the look we were going for. 

One of the first things we did was pick my wedding dress. The first dress store we went to was a dud. The second store was AMAZING. It reminded me a lot of TLC's "Say Yes to the Dress." I had a bridal consultant and the whole deal. It was so much fun! I was very specific about what I wanted (lace, elbow length sleeve, etc.), and I found two dresses I loved. The only bad part was that they order all their dresses in there, and it wouldn't be done until early December and would need to have the sleeves rebuilt after that. We decided to think about it and maybe come back. On our way home, we stopped at a little hole in the wall bridal store in Salt Lake. Right on the rack I saw a dress that fit all my requirements (it even had the sleeves already!). I tried it on, and it fit! My mom started crying, and we knew it was my dress. We had to have some minor tailoring done, and it all worked out great!

Picking the wedding party clothes was so much fun. We knew we wanted the boys in black tuxes, so that was easy. I was pretty sure I wanted classy black dresses for the bridesmaids, and there were SO many to choose from. We ended up finding the ones we picked at H&M. It worked out great because my tiny, 11 yr. old maid of honor was able to wear the exact same dress as the other bridesmaids with only a little hemming involved.

One of the next big things we did was figure out our housing situation. Sam's apartment contract was easy to sell, but mine was trickier. It was more expensive and with so many girls going on missions, it seemed like everyone was putting up their apartment contract for sale. After a lot of poster making and word of mouth advertising, both of our contracts sold. Such a relief and such a blessing. 

As far as choosing where to live, there wasn't much debate over where we would live once we received an offer to live in the Lisonbee's (Sam's sister's in-laws) little house in Orem. Sam's aunt has described our house as "a little cottage on an estate." That is essentially where we live. It is amazing, and we love it so much. 

For our photographer, we chose Kristina Curtis. You can look at her website here. She did the photography for my friend Mandie's wedding last spring, and I just loved her pictures, so it was a no-brainer in choosing her to do our wedding too. Kristina is so much fun to work with and is so talented! If you are looking for a photographer for any occasion, I highly recommend her! 

We also chose to have a videographer, and I haven't seen our video yet, but I'll post a highlight video when we do. (We picked David Stauffer because we really loved the videos we saw that he had done. You can see his work here.)

 For our florist, we worked with a woman named Millie. She was the florist for Carly and Micah's wedding, and she did such a beautiful job. We even got to go with her to look at tons of flowers and pick what we liked. She has great taste, and I would definitely recommend her as well.

I did a lot of experimenting to figure out what I wanted to do with my hair and makeup. I went and got my hair done at Amara in an up-do for my bridals and then decided to do it myself and curl it for the actual wedding day. Carly helped SOOOO much in the makeup department. She went with me to pick out lipsticks and did my makeup three different times to try different looks before the wedding day. Then, she came over early the day of our wedding and did my makeup. She did such a good job, and it was so nice to have her do it and not have to worry about it! 

Our invitations were done by someone in Salt Lake. They were simple but beautiful and exactly what I wanted.

Rough draft version:

The picture we used:

 For bridals, we decided to have Sam come since we felt like the weather was going to be so up in the air on our actual wedding day. I debated about doing this because it seemed a little less fun to have him see me in my dress before the wedding, but we felt like the pros out-weighed the cons. It ended up being really fun, and we got some great pictures. I'll be sure to post a bunch when we get them all back.

We had a fun time picking Sam's ring. One of the last things we did before the big day. I think he's still adjusting to wearing a ring. Haha. He got a stainless steel band, and we both really like it, but it does get scratched pretty easily, so that's something to consider if you're looking to pick a ring.

I think my favorite part of the wedding was picking little details for the decorations. I was in school and didn't have tons of time to do this, but it was so much fun!