Wedding Photos -- Getting Ready

Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start.

(But don't make me sing, OK?)
That's me on the morning of the wedding. I was a little nervous. Even though I had gone to bed relatively early the night before, I didn't get very much sleep. So, after I'd showered and done everything I could reasonably do at that hour of the morning, I went out on our balcony and wrote a little in my journal. It wasn't very coherent, but it was a little bit relaxing.

For some reason, everybody (and by everybody, I mean Emily and Anne) thought it was really cute that I was sitting out there in my towel turban. I don't get it.

We had some breakfast in my mom and dad's hotel room. Everybody kept telling me to eat. I pretended like I cared.

Emily and I borrowed Allison's car and left to go get my hair done. Anne and Allison and the rest of the fam stayed behind to finish up the flowers and decorating the reception. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to everyone who helped. My cousins Cindy and Colette helped my Aunt Sharon make all the bouteniers and corsages while my mom handled the bouquets, and my cousin Olivia and my Aunt Leslie helped them gather greenery from the gardens outside our room to go with the flowers. No one could believe we had done the flowers ourselves, they looked so professional.


Em and I tried to relax in the bride's room at the church while waiting for everyone else to get there. Emily did my makeup and DAMN did she do a good job. I felt like a canvas, but in a good way. ;)

It seemed like FOREVER before everyone else showed up, but I know it was really like, twenty minutes or something. Mom and Allison and Anne arrived with the flowers and my dress, and then Leslie and Olivia came with lunch. Everyone tried to get me to eat. I pretended to care.

The photographer showed up at this point. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he had been with Brandon and Poppy (my granddad and Brandon's best man) for a while already, taking pictures.

When he had arrived, he presented Brandon with a print of a portrait he had made of me the day before. Brandon told me afterwards that he almost cried when he saw the picture.

Meanwhile, back in the bride's room, I was quietly freaking out. Luckily, my mom, my sister, and my dearest friends in all the world were there to keep me company. I was doing just fine until I put the dress on, then I started to lose it a little bit.
Emily was shushing me and trying to get me to laugh. She started singing, "Kumbaya my Lacy, Kumbaya!" I think because it was the only thing she could think of. It was great. Mom gave me an altoid to sober me up, and it worked pretty well.

Through all of this, the wedding coordinator at the church was absolutely fantastic. She kept checking on us, asking if we needed anything, pinning on corsages. She was calm and collected and really kept us going in the right direction.

And then she came to tell us it was time to go.

*gulp*