Our wedding day.

August 6th, 2011.

What can I say? Our wedding day was amazing.

The immensity of emotions on that day is incomparable to anything that I have ever experienced. Getting married is mind-boggling, soul-searching, heart-burning and life-changing. It's the day I will remember forever... it is etched in the tablets of my heart forever. The day I spoke vows to love and cherish my dearest one "for as long as we both shall live." The day I became a wife. No longer living for myself, but for another.

It was the happiest day of my life... with exception of the happiness I have found every day since our wedding day. It was my best-decision-ever. It was a day which I felt the presence of God surrounding me... with peace beyond my understanding, with joy unspeakable and a love that seemed to bubble from every pore of my being.

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

1 Corinthians 13:13

Brandon and I planned for an outdoor wedding. I had never had an emotional attachment to church buildings, as my church for many years met in a variety of non-traditional buildings. I remembered one author referred to the outdoors as "God's cathedral." What could be better than being married in 'God's cathedral?'' And then there's our romantic obsession with water. So it turned out that we settled on a lakeside ceremony at Bald Eagle State Park with a tented reception. And just didn't worry about rain.

I woke up on the wedding day to enormous claps of thunder. Pouring rain. We had a tent, but this was some crazy rain. I decided not to worry and went on to get ready for the most-important-day-of-my-life. I was blissfully unaware of the preparations by our friends & family at the ceremony/reception site. They worked tirelessly through the rainstorm, while the water flooded the tent site, to keep on setting up, preparing and making things beautiful.

And. By the hand of God.

Just moments before our First Look and subsequent photo session.....

the rain stopped.

And it looked like this!

*sigh of happiness*

(all photos by wonderful Kristen Leigh!)

Back to the bride's preparations. ;)

I wore the same silver ballet flats that I wore on our first date. Brandon definitely complimented my shoes on the first date. So I wore them again for the sweet memories + the addition of adorable shoe poofs crafted by my sis-in-law!... and the earrings? A wedding gift from my groom.

A phone call from my beloved. I'm still smiling... even though it's raining. Because we're getting married today!!

While traditionally a groom doesn't see his bride before the ceremony, we decided to do a "First Look" for a few reasons... First of all, we were having a tented reception just steps away from the ceremony site and we were doing a variety of appetizers, as opposed to a dinner, so we didn't want our guests to wait for an hour while we did portraits. However, photos were (as you can imagine) VERY important to me. And we wanted to have enough time to capture all the memories of our wedding day... and lastly, we knew that we would appreciate having a private moment to meet each other for the first time on our wedding day. So lovely.

Bride + Groom Portrait Time!!

Wedding gift to my groom? Engraved cufflinks.

I would say that we're having a "moment," but this day is full of precious, perfect moments.

Dancing together...

I just can't get over the beauty of this misty, foggy, glorious day...

Another moment with my beloved.

Can I just tell you about my ahhhmaaazing bridesmaids? Not only did they throw me the prettiest and most delicious bridal shower ever! They also spent hours and hours the night before the wedding putting together all the bouquets, boutonnieres and corsages!

I ordered cute little purple flowers from Etsy for the bridesmaids' hair... but they just didn't look right. So I sent them all to my sis-in-law, Chelsea, and she worked her magic on those and created matching shoe poofs. So cute, right? And my matron-of-honor made the flower girl's princess wreath. :) There's too much creativity in this family!