Our First Anniversary

Today marks our first wedding anniversary! Honestly, I can't believe it's already been a year. It feels like yesterday that we were organizing, planning and executing our big day.

 

We got married in Pleasanton, California which is about an hour and a half from where we live in Sacramento. We got married on a Sunday but we went over to Pleasanton on Friday. We wanted to settle into the hotel, greet a lot of our out of town guests and get ready for our big wedding weekend. Saturday was our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner (we had it an Italian place called Strizzi's). On Sunday we woke up to a horrible rain storm. The rain was coming down and the winds were high. The winds were so high in the morning that cars were having to pull over to the side of the highway. During the rain storm, our videographer went to the wrong Marriott BUT thankfully, the rain stopped before noon.

We absolutely loved our wedding venue. The venue was perfect for the look, feel and décor theme that we were going for. They also had some great Christmas options since our wedding was taking so place to the holiday. Plus the food was melt in your mouth good. Everyone raved about how the food was amazing. Our wedding was plated and we served three courses and of course cake!

During our wedding we exchanged our own written vows, tossed the garter, threw my bouquet, cut the cake, danced our first dance, smiled, laughed and cried. We also had a first look before the ceremony. Looking back on our wedding, I didn't realize how stressed out I was leading up to our big day. Once it was all over it was like this huge weight off our shoulders. The day went by in a flash. They say it always does but they are right! The day was here and gone before I could blink. I'm so happy we have our wedding video! I literally watch our short teaser wedding video at least once a week. I love it! (here you can watch it if you'd like) It's like walking down memory lane. I haven't been through the hard drive that has about 9 hours of raw footage. One day.... I'll sit and watch it all.

So here we are... one year later. I love my husband more than on our wedding day. I didn't think that could ever be possible but I do. During our first year of marriage we went through new life experiences, good and bad challenges and many memorable moments. The constant throughout the year no matter what the circumstance was the fact that we love each other. We know that we are in this together. I can't imagine never not having him by myself. I love you boo and here's to our first year and on to the next.

Our Wedding Tree

If you know me at all then you know that I am a huge fan of Christmas. It's by far my favorite holiday and I plan all year on the things that I want to when it comes to our decorations. So last year when we were planning our wedding, I wanted to incorporate as much Christmas as I could without it becoming too much Christmas and not enough wedding. One of the things that we did was instead of having a guest book we had guests sign ornaments.

Our videographer took this photo of our instructions to guests

 



We had multiple colors of ornaments and different color sharpies, set the baskets out and waited for the guests to fill them up. Our venue packed them after the wedding and they were boxed until this year. This year when we got them out of the box it was our first opportunity to see the ornaments. I thought this would be a fun thing to have instead of a guestbook that I honestly would probably only look at about once every 10 years. This way having the ornaments signed, we can take them out every year and look at them as we decorate the tree.

Our tree topper was actually our cake topper. I had it custom made on etsy and it worked perfectly as our tree topper. The ribbon was from a very large present we received.

Throughout the tree we have little wooden nutcrackers. These nutcrackers were a part of our wedding favors. We had these miniature nutcrackers on miniature champagne bottles. I kept a full set of the 8 different designs that we gave out.

I also included a copy of our program and our wedding invitation. Then I included ornaments that people gave us as presents. Everyone knows how much I love Christmas so you wouldn't believe the amount of ornaments that people gave us featuring our wedding date and names. I loved every one of them and I loved taking them out of the boxes. I'm sure I will for years to come.

I love how our tree turned out and I hope to put these ornaments on the tree for years to come. I'm trying to decide what to do for the tree skirt. I wish I had scraps from when they altered my wedding dress but the designer made it to my size and no extra material was available. I can't decide what to do for it. Hmm... any ideas?

Wordless Wednesday

Tomorrow marks 10 months of marriage for us!

Our Wedding Video

 

The final piece to our wedding came in the mail last week. We are thrilled with how it turned out. It was such a special day for us and we hope that everyone who was able to attend remembers the day with love and happiness. For those of you who couldn't make it, here is the video...

 

Here is a small glimpse into our special day.

Wedding Finale

Recapping our wedding has been something fun to look back on week. I tried to share all of the major details from our wedding using the photos from our photographer. Since he sent us over 1100 photos we will have those memories forever captured in them. The next thing that we've been waiting to share is our wedding video. Our videographer warned us that it would take about 6-8 weeks before we would see the final product. Plus with the holidays it could take a little longer.

 

Last week I finally heard from him that he was finishing up the footage and sending it to us. We should have it any day and I can't wait to see it. Our videographer is giving us all of our major moments un edited and then a 8-10 minute edited video of the entire day from start to finish. I just can't wait to see it! He is a genius when it comes to wedding films and that's one the reasons why we booked him. Once I have it I'll share it will all of you!

 

In the mean time let's take a look at some images that fell through the cracks of all the details of our wedding recaps...

Wedding Party

We kept our wedding party to four bridesmaids including the Maid of Honor and four groomsmen including the Best Man. We wanted our wedding to be really intimate and that meant keeping our wedding party small. The people we including in our wedding party have been a part of our lives for decades.

 His best man. They've known each other for over 10 years.

 His groomsmen Kevin has been his friend for years and is always entertaining.

His cousins are almost like his brothers. They do everything together from vacations to fishing to sporting events etc.

My bridesmaid who is also my husbands cousin. She flew in from DC for the wedding because she's in her senior year at Howard University.

 One of my three best friends. I've known Newt for over a decade and she's always been there for me.

My bridesmaid Cara was my little sister in Phi Mu during college and we've been friends ever since. She's so crafty and will do just about anything for her friends.

My maid of honor Erica helped me plan and listen to me wedding planning for over a year. She came in from Virginia for the wedding and was such a big help!

 The entire wedding party but minus our ring bearer. He was a little bit shy.

We were so appreciative of everyone who took time out of their holiday schedule to spend our wedding weekend with us!

Wedding Portraits

On our wedding day we wanted to maximize the natural light and take the majority of our photos before our ceremony. Getting married in California in the winter time means that by 5:30 p.m. you are in darkness. Our ceremony was starting at 4:30 and we didn't want to chance it and only have about 30 minutes of sunlight to do all of our wedding party, family and couple shots. I'm so glad we did this because we were able to get a lot of outdoor shots that we wouldn't have been able to get at night.

Northern California was hit with a huge wind/rain storm that morning so in a lot of our outdoor shots my dress was bustled in hopes of keeping it clean and dry for the ceremony and reception. This worked and we were able to keep my shoes from getting dirty (we were married on a vineyards property).

After the ceremony we took family portraits and a few more wedding party shots.

We also took some nighttime shots of just the two of us.