June Blogging Challege Day 11 - Our Wedding!

The June Blog Challenge prompt I was most looking forward to - our wedding day!

First of all, I will warn you that this picture will be extremely picture heavy. Our wedding photographer was amazing!

I feel like I should start our wedding story with our engagement story. On October 9, 2011, Keegan and I met up with a relator to start looking at houses. We had moved into an apartment complex surrounded by college students in May 2011 and were quickly getting sick and tired of the constant noise that came with living in a college town. Both Keegan and I were commuting between half an hour and 45 minutes to our jobs, so we wanted to move closer to our work. We spent the day looking at houses (including the one we'd eventually buy!) and stopping by Keegan's co-worker's house to play with her puppies.

After a day full of house shopping, we decided to get dinner at one of the nicer restaurants in town. Suspiciously, Keegan let me get dessert which he almost never lets me get. I questioned it, and he shrugged it off by saying he wanted to celebrate our first day of house shopping.

After dinner, we drove back to our apartment. I decided to take a shower while Keegan hurriedly went outside to call my parents for ask for my hand in marriage. He would have liked to have asked in person, but we were (and still are,) living 8 hours away, so a phone call would have to do. Keegan tried to call my dad's cell, but like always, he didn't pick up. He then called my mom and quickly asked to speak to my dad. My mom told Keegan that my dad was in the shower, but Keegan urged her to go get him. My mom realized what Keegan was calling about and ran upstairs to get my dad out of the shower. My dad gave Keegan permission to propose to me with a towel wrapped around his waist and water dripping from his hair.

All of this went down while I was blissfully unaware in the shower. I got dressed in some sweats and Keegan suggested that we go for a drive. Late night driving is something that we enjoy doing, so I didn't think twice about it. We drove out to a small lake about 20 minutes from our apartment and walked out onto the dock. I was looking out at the lake when Keegan said my name. I turned around and he was down on one knee, holding out a ring. He asked me to be his wife under the moon and the stars. Of course I said yes.

~

We quickly set a date for August 4, 2012. We decided that we wanted to have our wedding in Missouri where both of our immediate families are, as well as a good chunk of Keegan's extended family. We decided to have it in Columbia, my hometown.

We had the wedding at a local park and gardens. The ceremony was outside and the reception was inside the recreation hall.

My side of the wedding party was my sister, Bri as maid of honor, and the bridesmaids were Audra, Keegan's cousin, Sarah, a mutual friend and Caitlynn, my sister.

Keegan's side was his best friend, Brendan as best man, and the groomsmen were his brother Derek, and friends from college, Matt, Ben, and Ryan.

Our flower girls were Audra's two girls and they were absolutely adorable. 

Our colors were green, orange, cream and brown. Our "theme" was clovers and maple leaves. The school that Keegan went to was an engineering school and St. Patrick is the patron saint of engineers, so St. Patrick's Day is a huge holiday for our college group of friends. Clovers have made their way into so many aspects of our lives because of that. The maple leaves were in respect to my Canadian heritage. 

Our centerpieces were mounds of moss with our engagement pictures in the middle. 

Instead of doing favors, I made these cards that were placed on the tables. They explained that my father had been diagnosed with antiphospholipd antibody syndrome and Keegan's uncle had been recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. We had a jar for each illness and our guests had the option to put their tokens into whichever jar they wanted their portion of the donation to go towards. 

One of my favorite parts of the wedding was our candy bar. In the background were pictures of our parents and grandparents on their wedding days. 

Unfortunately we were pressed for time, so this is the only picture I got of my dress, but I love it! 

Audra did our hair at the hotel as the girls got their dresses on, but I didn't want to drive over with my dress on, so I had to get changed in the tiny reception hall bathroom. This is a picture of all of the girls and my mom crammed into the small bathroom, tying me into my dress. 

Keegan and I saw each other before the wedding so we could do pictures before the ceremony. This is right after Keegan saw me for the first time all dolled up. 

Our musicians were one of Keegan's friends from school on the cello and his brother on the viola. The wedding party and Keegan walked down to "Oh Sweet Child Of Mine." 

Both my mom and dad walked me down the aisle. I was also lucky enough to have my dad marry Keegan and I. 

Since our ceremony was short, our guests stood. Saved us a bunch of money on chairs! 

During our first kiss, Keegan tried to be romantic and dip me. My shoes got stuck in the dirt and I started falling backwards! What was supposed to be a romantic dip quickly turned into him trying to save me from falling on my butt in front of our guests! 

 As maid of honor and best man, Bri and Brendan both made a speech. Brendan is a sarcastic asshole (and I mean that with so much love!) so Keegan was a bit wary about what his speech was going to be. As you can tell from the above picture, it was very....Brendan-like. 

At the end of Brendan's speech, he called "community shot!" A community shot is a tradition in our friend group where if it's called out, everyone has to take a shot, whether it be of alcohol or water. We typically toast to St. Pats, unless something special is going on. When Brendan called community shot, all of our friends from the audience came up and did a shot with us. This is one of my most treasured pictures. 

We had salad, pasta and bread sticks for dinner and instead of cutting a large cake, we had cupcakes! Keegan and I had a small cake that we cut into for tradition's sake, but in my opinion, cupcakes we so much easier for our guests. You know the tradition of saving the top tier of cake for your first anniversary? Well, the next day my family ate the rest of the cake we cut, so we don't have anything for our first anniversary! I told Keegan we'll have to drive up to Missouri to get cupcakes. 

The topper for our small cake were two characters from Keegan's favorite movie, Cars. I made the little veil and top hat. 

Keegan and I danced to "I Won't Give Up" by Jason Mraz. I also danced with my dad and Keegan danced with his mom as well as mine. 

Then the real party started! Almost everyone got on the dance floor, including my dad! The glow sticks were supposed to be for our grand exit, but they somehow got passed out early. They made for some great pictures on the dance floor! 

 We also had a photobooth which was one of the best decisions we made. We have so many pictures of our families and friends that we treasure. 

One of our groomsmen got a little wasted and decided the grand exit was for him. We don't have any of us leaving, but we have a lot of Matt!

Our friends, being the lovely people they are, decided the glow sticks were fun to throw at us, so we had to run and dodge flying glow sticks all the way to the car. We got into Keegan's 'Vette where they proceeded to dump arm fulls of glow sticks into our laps. We found some while we were taking apart the car 9 months later! 

Keegan and I went to the hotel to clean up and get into comfortable clothes while our friends and families cleaned up for us. All of our friends then came back to our hotel room and we partied late into the morning. 

The next day, we had a "day after session" with our wedding photographer where he took some pictures of the 'Vette, Columbia, and the picture for our thank you notes. 

I hope this gives you some idea of our wedding. I could go on and on with more pictures, but I figured I should stop here. If anyone wants to see more, I'd be more than happy to oblige! We also had a wedding videographer, but we're still waiting for him to deliver our video (almost a year later!) or else I'd post that as well. Our first anniversary is coming up in two short months, so it was fun looking through these pictures and reminiscing about our special day.