Our wedding day

It's been nearly two weeks since our wedding, but the plethora of crazy emotions is just starting to die down. I think Brian and I are starting to settle down into married life (although it's still weird to think of myself as a WIFE - does that ever become normal?).

When people ask, How was your wedding? Well, it's just really hard to describe. And I'm kind of a realist who doesn't like to give fake answers like, It was absolutely perfect!!!! Kind of like how I grew to hate the expression, It's YOUR day. Give me a break! It's probably the least "my day" that I've ever had in my life!

Anyway, here are some words/phrases describing how I feel about our wedding, in no particular order:

• Intensely beautiful, modern yet classic, and very, very wet
• Expensive, frustrating, overwhelming, and in some ways, disappointing
• Surreal, magical, and extremely emotional
  

Essentially, how I feel about it is this: in some ways it was way better than imagined, and in some ways, it was not how I imagined it would be at all. It took me about a week to swallow the fact that it's over, and in many ways it wasn't how I imagined it would be at all (mostly, the rain part).

The better than imagined part had all to do with my wedding planner, Steve Moore of Steven Moore Designs. In the beginning of our wedding planning process, I questioned whether or not we should hire a wedding planner (I plan events for a living, after all), but he was honestly the best decision we made.

I learned something about myself through this process: that I'm not very good at rolling with the punches, when things go wrong. It started raining - a torrential rain storm brought on by a monsoon in South Asia - just 20 minutes before the ceremony. I flipped my lid - I'm still embarrassed at how I handled myself! But Steve Moore was my saving grace. Initially we gave him some vague ideas of our style and how we envisioned our wedding. Things like, orchids, modern but not cold, fancy gold accents mixed with organic details like wood and leaves. He took what we said and transformed it into something even more amazing than what we could imagine. The part that I am most happy and content with is how stunningly beautiful -- magical -- Steve made our wedding.

I've also been incredibly impressed with our photographer, Michele Waite. We haven't gotten all the photos back yet but the few that I've seen have been stunning:











Some of my regrets are, not spending enough time with certain people, especially those who travelled from out of town. Not getting more pictures with my family - especially grandmas.

All in all, though, our wedding day was kind of a metaphor for life. Some parts (days) are better than others, and it's not always going to go exactly how you planned. Somebody told me this before our wedding day and I wish I would have taken it to heart, but there was a certain part of me that still held out for the lame, perfect, sunny, fairy tale wedding day.

I'm sure I'll have more to post about the wedding soon - including advice for those planning their own weddings - and hopefully more fun photos of the party.