Wedding!

In the wake of my last post regarding my wedding to Brett, I'd like to offer another view. This is the way I really remember the day, the view I want to bind to my heart and carry with me to my office, to the grocery store, through every moment of my day. This view of my wedding lifts me up and fills me with bliss and hope and boundless love for my husband and all the wonderful people who were able to come and support our union.

To begin with, the time I got to spend with my favorite ladies before the big day was really great. Since we all live pretty darn far away from each other, hanging out isn't really an option. To have a whole weekend to do all my favorite things? What could be better?
We spent Friday afternoon at the spa getting our nails done.

I'd been saving up tip money at the bakery to afford this treat so I didn't feel even a tiny pang of guilt for indulging. What a great feeling to be surrounded by happy best friends and family, relaxing and feeling pampered! I warned Brett that now that I've gotten a taste for it, we might have to put a line in the budget for monthly pedicures.

One of the great things about the wedding was treating myself to looking and feeling good without indulging guilty feelings about it being a poor use of my time. I took long showers, wore fake eyelashes, got lots of labor intensive curls in my hair, pretty toes and fingers, and soft skin. It was like I didn't work at on a farm! I don't usually take that much care of myself and it was a fun change of pace.

The morning of the wedding Kate, Chelsea and I woke up just after dawn to meet Katie and head to the Des Moines farmer's market. Katie is a market pro and she knew just when and where to go to get the most beautiful flowers. She even brought a basket for us to use!

We got bouquets and perfect little zinnias for boutonnieres at the first stand. Would you like to guess what we paid the wonderful creative florists who hand selected flowers with shapes and colors we liked? If you guessed six dollars you would be guessing too high. For three bouquets and flowers for three bouts, we paid twenty dollars! The magazines and even online sources were preparing me to spend about two hundred dollars per bouquet, so I was ready to have the best day of my life at that point.

We went to a couple other flower stalls to buy other flowers for decorating the church and the reception. As we four girls walked around downtown Des Moines in the beautiful morning light with buckets of the most gorgeous flowers I could imagine I kept thinking how lucky I am and how excited I was for the day ahead.