Weddingbee Blog

I decided to title my recaps “Love’s Valley of Dreams” because they are lyrics from our song, Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller. Thus begins the recaps!

About a month before the wedding (or 6 weeks ago, whatever), my photographer and I got together and did my bridals.

Apparently, this is a Southern thing. I didn’t know that. I learn something new every day. Anyway, we decided to do bridals instead of another engagement session, since Mr. CC and I had one engagement session already and I couldn’t convince Mr. CC that we needed another. I actually wanted to re-take our engagement pictures since I wasn’t very happy with the original session, but Mr. CC was not seeing the point in that. In the end, I’m really glad I got to do bridals. It gave me an opportunity to try everything out together, including finding the easiest way to get into all that nonsense, lace it up, etc., etc.

Kristian and I decided that we would visit Callaway Gardens and do most of the session there. The night before the session, we chatted about the weather, since rain was in the forecast. It had been raining for 7 days straight and was supposed to be clearing up some, but it wasn’t looking good for our particular day. We decided that we would go for it anyway, since the wedding was closing in on us and it was too late to reschedule my hair and makeup appointments. There were some areas inside the Gardens that were actually indoors, so we figured the worst thing that could happen was that we’d be confined to those spaces.

On Friday morning, I got a bright and early start. I was up at about 7, dressed, and out the door with Mini in tow by 8:15. My appointments started at 9 and I needed to get her to school before heading to the salon. She was terribly upset that she didn’t get to go with me, and I had to bribe her to get her to go to school quietly.

When I arrived at the salon, there were some nasty looking thunderclouds above, but no rain yet, so I crossed my fingers, said a quick prayer, grabbed my veil and hairpiece, and ran inside.

I brought my new hair inspiration collage with me and showed my stylist. She seemed to think I had plenty of hair to pull the style off, and got to work curling my hair. Getting my hair done took about 40 minutes and then I scooted over into the makeup artist’s chair. I tried to tell her what I hadn’t liked about my last trial and she got to work. Unfortunately, she over-corrected and I ended up with less makeup on than I wear on a normal day. After dropping more money than I had paid for the first trial (I assume this was because there was a new makeup artist and therefore prices had changed, but I was a bit miffed anyway), I ran like a bat out of you-know-where to my mom’s house to get changed. It was 11:30 and I need to drive 15 minutes to my mom’s, get dressed, and get to Callaway (30 minutes north) to meet Kristian at 12 noon. I was going to be late. Very, very late.

Mom and I hurriedly threw my dress on and ran out the door for Callaway. On the drive up, the rain started. It was just a little rain, but nevertheless, it was raining and I was not happy. I got a call from Kristian letting me know that she was running late too, so at least I was able to relax about that.

When we got to Callaway, we hit a roadblock. There was some sort of National Water Skiing event happening that day, and Kristian’s corporate pass wasn’t going to get us in. We would have to pay full admission, which was $20 each. After mulling it over, we decided $60 was way too much money to spend on admission to the Gardens, especially on a day that was rainy and there was no guarantee the sky would clear up enough for us to make for any good pictures.

So we left. Kristian knew of a good field that was just outside the gates and should have been full of flowers, so we headed over there.

On the way, we found this nice big patch of magnolia trees, and decided to stop there first. Mind you, for each different place we went that the ground was wet, Kristian and my mom would put this giant piece of plastic down to keep my dress from getting wet, so there was a lot of set up and break down for each background change. Once I was settled on the plastic, they tucked it in under my dress so it wouldn’t show.

I quickly made a fake bouquet out of some silk peonies I bought last summer to use in our centerpieces and a couple of silk hydrangeas from this season’s silk collection (all at Pier 1). It actually turned out quite nicely for a girl with very little bouquet making experience. Even the florist bridesmaid was impressed when I showed it to her.

We took a few pictures in front of the magnolia and then moved along to the field. Honestly, the bulk of the good pictures were taken here. We put up with a lot of dribbly rain, some nasty looking weeds, and some sticker bushes to get these pictures, but they were totally worth it.

Seeing these shots really made me glad I dyed my crinoline. I was really happy with how well everything came together.

The rain was getting a little heavy, so we packed up and headed towards Uptown Columbus. By the time we got down there, the rain had moved on. Yay!

I had spotted this beat up pink airstream months and months ago, and knew we had to stop to take pictures with it. I’m so glad we did; the pictures turned out great.

Y’all have seen that one!

On the other side of the airstream was this busted up old phone booth.

I really wish these would have turned out better. They are still pretty awesome, though. We didn’t really want the street in the background, so it limited our angle possibilities.

Kristian uses these old suitcases for her baby sessions, but brought them along on my request.

I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about climbing onto the railroad, since it’s still active, but it was so worth it!

These are just a handful of the images Kristian took. I’m really glad I had the opportunity to do this. My hair and make-up survived the wind and the rain fairly well.

Now, I just have to decide what to do with them. I put off the decision because I didn’t show the images to Mr. CC until last night and I wanted him to have some say in the decision. I can either purchase the prints I like, or buy a CD with the images on them. I’m leaning towards the CD. I don’t know what I want to do with them right now, but I’m sure I’ll want to print them again later and I would hate to not have that option.