Weddingbee Blog

At this point in the morning, all we had to take care of was our pre-ceremony portraits. First, I delivered my mom’s bouquet to her, describing how my original plan to replicate her bridal bouquet for her had been substituted with a bouquet charm with her wedding date. She seemed to like the touch of personalization that came with her wedding flowers.

While we hugged, we both got tearful, so we only had one course of action.

I posed for a quick shot by myself,

and grabbed an extra hug with my dad before heading outside to start the official portraits.

When we headed outside, Christina really started to work her magic. Aside from the amazing photos she took, she was totally in charge of the situation, but never pushy. In fact, she was easily the calmest and most calming person in the whole bunch, which definitely served us well. Any time I was worried about the time or running behind schedule, she’d let me know that everything was going perfectly and there was absolutely no reason to stress. She was so peaceful in her professionalism and delivery that I had no choice but to believe her and soak in the moment instead of thinking about what the rest of the day held. We started with a few more solo shots.

In between the serious ones, I tried to squeeze in some looser, more relaxed photos to show off my less-than-dignified side. Thankfully, BM K lovingly captured these once in a lifetime images.

Photo by BM K

Photo by BM K

Once we were done featuring the attention sponge in white, my gals jumped in for some big group shots.

Christina flew through the portraits, which made them really easy for all involved. She had a pattern of asking whoever was in the picture to look at her so she could take the first photo and then look at the other people in the picture for a less posed second photo. No one really knew what to do or what facial expression to make for that “look at each other” picture, so we ended up with unintentional but truly candid photos like this one.

I think this group shot is one of my favorites of the day (get used to hearing that), because the colors really pop, and it’s posed but seems really comfortable. Love my ladies!

Then, we swapped the bridesmaids out for the grandparents.

I also snagged one with my Godmother, who is pretty much the classiest li’l lady on the face of the earth, bless her heart.

Finally, my parents got involved in the photo action.

By this point in the morning, Christina had noticed our little high-five shenanigans, so she asked us to perform our new trick for the camera. We happily obliged.

To cap off our portrait session, we took one of three generations of women—mom, me, grandma, sister.

After a shockingly efficient 40 minutes or so, Christina was done with the ladies’ pictures and scooted over to the church so she could tend to Mr. Snow Cone and all of his people. We actually had a few minutes before we needed to head over to the church, so all of us just kind of sat around my living room, passing the time with idle chitchat. It was a very surreal moment. Me, sitting in a white dress and veil, just hanging out, wondering when it was time to leave for the church. As I was preparing to walk out the door, I realized I hadn’t applied my makeup fixative, so Team Bride rallied and managed to find the spray, grab someone’s blouse to use as a smock to protect my dress, and apply the spray which only partially got in my eye and caused me to panic that my fake eyelashes and makeup would be goners. A tense minute later, I realized my eyeball wasn’t on fire any longer, so that crisis was averted. Now that pictures had been taken and eyeball fires had been extinguished, it was time to get into the car to head to the church!

All photos by the amazing Christina Garber unless otherwise noted

• We spent a low-key night with some of my friends and family.
• We ran some errands and received some one-of-a-kind brewskies.
• I had a moderate-sized freak-out at the rehearsal.
• I went toe-to-toe with the priest over a few significant details.
• We expressed our gratitude to our bridal party, without any tears (almost)!
• We dined and drank our way through our rehearsal dinner.
• We threw an after party with a birthday twist.
• We spent the morning getting beautified and relaxing.
• A peek into the details of my wedding day look.
• I had some private time with my mom, becoming a bride.
• I revealed my bridal look, twice!