Lex and I are MARRIED! - Part Two

If you read my first post about the week leading up to our wedding, you’d know we spent A LOT of time making this day a reality. And it was better than we could have ever imagined <3

Some fun facts about our wedding:
- We bought flowers at Costco and Schnucks for the bridesmaids' flowers and table decor. A friend of ours had her company, Flower Firm,  design my bouquet! She was also our day-of-coordinator. She was a TREMENDOUS help.
- All the decor was created by us. Or thrifted. We spent months collecting bottles, peeling, and spray painting. The lanterns were from Amazon and lights were serval places. Everything was assembled and hung up by us. Its amazing what you can do!
- The majority of the desserts were made by our mothers: sugar cookies, puppy chow, scotcharoos, mini cheesecakes, cake pops. The donuts came from Stan's, our absolute favorite place to get donuts!
- We didn't have a cake so we each took a bite of our favorite donut after our intros!
- We played a game called Around the World where you run to each table and get a photo with them while one song plays. It was AWESOME. and definitely got the party started. See the photos below! Highly recommend. We stole this idea from Jake and Maggie Austin’s wedding.
- The guys all took a pull of whiskey once they go to the hand table. We stole that from Danielle and Zac's wedding that we shot back in June!
- We reserved a patio at the apple orchard up the street so everyone could hang out, drink, eat sandwiches, and get some awesome photos.
- 90% of the signage was designed and printed by my brother and the company he works for. He created a TON of stuff.
-Mold-A-Ramas are a big thing in my family. Growing up, my Grandpa would always make sure when we went to the zoo we would get one. For our 2nd Anniversary, Lex and I went to Brookfield Zoo when it just so happened to be the 50th Anniversary of Mold-A-Ramas! We collect them so our apartment is full of them :) Well, my dad contacted the company and was able to get some a bunch! They don’t normally do something like this so it was an awesome surprise! We were able to give one to the whole bridal party and put one out on every table.
-We had bubbles during our first dance! For weeks Lex wanted to do something with ribbons for our ceremony exit but never made them. 3 days before our wedding I ordered bubbles. The morning of it was pouring so bad my family moved the ceremony under the tent. Then out of no where the sun came out and the rain went away! In the midst of moving the ceremony back outside, we forgot the bubbles on everyone’s tables and just decided to use them then. It was perfect.
-During the smoke bomb photos with our bridal party some of the groomsmen got a little too close and the things sparked on our backs. Lex’s jacket has some burn marks! Lex got his shirt from Nordstrom and his suit and shoes from Express. My mom picked out his bow tie at a craft show we went to and gave it to him for Christmas.
-I tore the back of my dress dropping it a little too low on the dance floor. WORTH IT. My dress is from BHLDN. Which has incredible more nontraditional options. Because I am a wedding photographer I didn’t want anything that looked like one of my bride’s dresses or was white. They had so many options. My dress was a 2 piece!

Our Wedding Video

We spent a lot of time trying to find the right videographer. We wanted something like felt more documentary and “homey”. After weeks of trying to search on my own, I put a message up in one of the groups I am a part of on Facebook. A bunch of really talented videographers commented on my post. As soon as I saw Josh and Tori’s work I knew they were perfect. They cam all the way down from Florida to capture this perfect day and we are so in love with it! See more of their work here.

Photos from our photographer

I stumbled across Christian’s work when I was checking to see what page my listing landed on in WeddingWire. His candid shots caught my eye and I immediately fell in love with his portfolio. His colors are vibrant (having red hair, I am SUPER picky how it looks in photos) and his ability to get these gorgeous in the moment shots were exactly what we wanted. Less posed and more real.

Around the World!

Play one song and run to each table at your reception and get a photo! It was the best way to get a photo with everyone there and really set the fun tone for the evening :)

Photos from Friends and Family 

Our friends and family took SO many photos through out the day. Every time I got on Facebook or Instagram more were being uploaded and I am just so in love with all of these and the the other photos I couldn't share. I currently have a folder of almost 500 photos on my hard drive from everyone. My goal is to add a bunch of these in with our photographer's photos for our wedding album so we can even better document the day. Clearly no one had any fun.

Zach the Instax Ninja

If you saw my brother that night, you would have seen him hopping around with some Instax photos in his mouth, camera in hand getting some awesome shots. We have a fantastic album of these at home now. Love you Zachary!!