Wedding Pictures!

It seems like FOREVER since we got married and yet it's only been a little over two months!  I really cannot wrap my head around that.  We've just finally got our pictures back and I am so EXCITED to share them with everyone.  These pictures were done by the amazing Tessa Berg from Starling Studio located in Columbus.  If anyone is in need of a photographer (for anything, not just weddings) she is your woman!  I have two CDs full of pictures and it took me ages just to narrow it down to my favorites for this post.  I have no idea how I'm supposed to pick ones to hang in my home! (Also, as a bragging moment, I made my own veil so you should take note of how good it looks for a $5 veil.  The cheapest one at the dress store was $45)

I hope you all enjoy these as much as I do :)

These are all of the non-family members that came to support us.  Mostly friends from the ward.

Both of our families.  His side is purely his immediate family and their children.  My side is over half of my aunts, uncles and cousins...

The Smith Clan

The Tucker/ Koch Clan

These are my dad's parents.  My grandpa was the one who sealed us.

My parents and siblings.

We rock.

One of my favorites!

My wonderful bridesmaids.  Brittany and Alexis came from Utah, Whitney came from Washington and Heather (my first best friend!) came from Wisconsin.  And my sister came from the same place I did...

Me, my mom, my mom's mom.

Classic Pose

My lovely mother.

Okay this is one of my absolute favorites and I can't decide whether I like it better black & white or in color!

He's all mine ladies.  Back off.

Another favorite.  Thank you pinterest!

I love our rings so much.  They are classy...and they match!

The rest of these pictures were taken at the Garden of Roses in Columbus.

LOVE

One of my requests was to have a picture by a big tree.  This definitely meets that requirement.

Another of my FAVORITES.  Couldn't decide if it's better b&w or color...

We were trying to get a picture with us skipping and in the air...it sort of worked...sorta.

Did you actually make it through all these pictures?  That's dedication right there.  Dedication to what?  I'm not sure.  You must just be procrastinating something...

Tomato Bisque and Grilled Cheese

Sunday is usually the day we would have the most time to cook.  But today we went for a simple lunch/ dinner.  Nathaniel has been searching high and low for tomato bisque here in Rexburg.  The only place that we have found to have it is Broulims.  Sadly, every time we are in Broulims, we forget to buy some!  But I saved the day yesterday and remembered.

Honestly, I've never had tomato bisque OR tomato soup.  We never ate it growing up and even if my parents had, I doubt I would have tried it because I hated tomatoes.  Love them now...hated them earlier.  So through some pretty incredible teamwork, I toasted us some grilled cheese sandwiches (using the last of our 5th or 6th large block of cheese since we've been in Rexburg) and he whipped up the tomato bisque throwing in some cream cheese and topping it with croutons and shredded cheese.  

I can't say tomato bisque is my favorite soup...but I'd eat it again.  Especially if my husband makes it!

Pumpkin Carving

We've been pretty bad about having actual FHE but on Monday we actually had a real one!  We took a little trip to the store (we aren't quite cool enough to go to the pumpkin patch yet) and picked out the perfect pumpkin.  Actually, I picked it out all by myself.  It was the first one I laid eyes on.  We both knew if we tried to pick one out together it would take years.

While the picking was easy, it was not so easy to decide what to carve on it.  A face?  Ghosts?  Witches?  We decided (after quite a while...) on a haunted house.

Two weeks ago we watched some extreme pumpkin carving competition and all the competitors carved the pumpkin from either the back or the bottom...not the top!  We figured if it was good enough for professionals, it was good enough for us.  Nate took the bottom off, I scraped out the innards, and he did the carving while I picked out seeds and baked them.

Like the Christmas lights we shoved on the inside??

Public THANK-YOUS

Boy do I have a lot of people to thank with regards to wedding things.  Don't worry, I will eventually get around to sending real thank-you cards but I was hoping to get personalized ones with our picture on them and we are just getting our pictures back.  So in the mean time, here's a thank you to everyone who helped with anything!  I have felt so loved the past few month and am so grateful for two families that will look out for me.

First, thank you to my parents.  Basically they gave me life so I could actually grow up and get married.  That's like the biggest thing ever!  But in seriousness, thank you for helping me pay for everything with the wedding and for letting my dreams come true.  Thanks for the behind the scenes work you did while I was at school, for finding addresses and organizing them, for getting the food together, for helping my friends find flights to Ohio, for supporting me in whatever I do, for loving who I chose to love.

Thank you to my grandparents who came from North Carolina.  Especially to my grandpa who was the one who sealed us.

Thank you to my extended family from Wisconsin, North Carolina and South Carolina for making the trip to Ohio to support me.  Special thanks to Uncle Ronny for being a diligent videographer and filming all of our special moments, to Uncle Harry for taking pictures at the photobooth and the reception, to Aunt Wanda and Grandma Koch for gathering weeds and flowers to use in the decorations and to Grandma Koch for sewing us a quilt, in our colors, for everyone at the reception to sign.

Thank you to the Smith family for working in their yard all summer to prepare it for the reception.  I know I can't even comprehend how much work went into it but I appreciate it all.  The yard was beautiful and the flowers matched perfectly.  Thank you for letting your house be a gathering place for decorations and miscellaneous wedding items.

THANK YOU to the Smith sisters for all of their hard work.  Thank you for throwing a bridal shower and making it beyond cute.  Thank you for your COUNTLESS hours helping and creating decorations.  For thinking of cute things to add, for making my ideas better, for purchasing supplies.  I seriously would not have been able to do a tenth of that without your help.  Thanks for working on stuff even when I was overwhelmed with how much there was to work on.  Thanks for loving me enough to want the reception to look as best it could.  Thank you for the honeymoon clothes that I love and wear all the time (ask Nathaniel).  Special thanks to Jennifer for heading up the cupcake team and making and decorating GORGEOUS cupcakes that not only looked fantastic, but tasted even better.

Thank you to all the Smith family for coming from Georgia, North Carolina, Utah and Arizona to be with us.  It was great to get to know everyone better and feel your energy.

Thank you to my college roommates who came from Utah and Washington to support me on my wedding day.  It was a blessing to have you all there.

Thank you to my very first best friend, Heather, for coming with her mother from Wisconsin.

Thank you to my AMAZINGLY talented photographer, Tessa Berg, from Starling Studio in Columbus for capturing our family, friends and the day as well as getting some stunning shots of the two of us.  If anyone is in need of a photographer for anything, she is highly recommended. (www.starling-studio.com)

Thank you to my friend Allison, for photographing the reception in Lima.  I am excited to see how those turn out and love what I have already seen.

Thank you to Kristen Topham for making a delicious and beautiful wedding cake for us.  It's just what I pictured and fit in perfectly with the rest of the reception.

Thank you to Blanca Aleman for whipping up her authentic Mexican salsa's for our salsa bar.

Thank you to the Ayers and Schades for letting my friends stay in your home while they were in Ohio.  It was a blessing to have them so close to me and not in a hotel 20 minutes on the other side of town.

Thank you to those who helped set up and take down decorations for us at the reception.

Thank you to those who came to the reception and supported our new marriage.  Your presence made us feel loved and special on our special day.  Thank you for the gifts you brought.  They have filled our home and we honestly use everything we got, all the time!  Thank you to those who gave us gifts of money and gift cards.  That money helped us get pots and pans for our kitchen, buy a mattress, get our stuff out to Idaho and pay for some of our rent.  Without your kind gifts, we would be either homeless, or living in a very empty home.

I am sure I'm forgetting people on here and I apologize for that.  Please know that everything everyone did was a huge blessing.  I probably don't even know all the sacrifices people made for me and I never will.  But I know you will be blessed because you have brought joy into my life.

The Wedding Day Journal

Our wedding day was absolutely PERFECT.  The weather, the people, the everything.  The ONLY thing I would have changed would have been my hair.  And I sort of did change it because I didn't like how the stylist did it so I touched it up.  Thankfully you can't really tell in the pictures.

We were married in the Columbus, Ohio temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 10:00 am.  We were blessed to have my grandpa from North Carolina come and seal us.  It was truly special to have him there.  We were also surrounded by many of our friends and family members.  It made me feel so special to have family and friends that traveled from Arizona, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina there.

The ceremony only lasted about 20 minutes.  This temple just has one bride's room for the bride to change in and there happened to be another wedding that day after us.  I must have been changing really slow because the ladies kept coming to ask if I needed help and how much longer I would be.  Little did they know that my dress has buttons all up the back and it took two people like five minutes to button them all!  Plus I hadn't done make-up yet and I redid my hair some more.  It takes time to get everything together!

Walking out of the temple I felt so special because I walked past a group of youth their to do baptisms and was all done up and will admit, I loved the stares.  I thought to myself "that's right!  I just got married!  Look at me!"  And that's how I felt all day.

We stayed at the temple for about 90 minutes taking pictures.  The only picture we missed that I REALLY wish I had was all of the women dressed up in our colors.  We have ones of the boys and then just didn't get the girls right after...really??  How did we miss that?!

Nathaniel and I were the last ones there taking pictures and everyone else left to eat.  As we were getting stuff ready to go, I realized I didn't have my bag with street clothes in it or the vase for my flowers.  Talk about a mini freak-out.  I did NOT want to wear my dress and hold my flowers for the 1.5 hour ride back to Lima.  Thankfully, my family was eating at Chick-fil-A in Columbus still and my dad brought everything back to me.  When I went back into the temple to change out of my dress I forgot how many buttons there were to undo.  These two old ladies offered to help and, bless their hearts, it took them twice as long to undo them as it did to button them in the first place.  I felt so bad for their poor fingers!

On the way back to Lima we got a little hungry and decided to stop at Subway.  I told Nathaniel we should tell them this was our first meal together as husband and wife.  He was embarrassed and said I couldn't do that.  So I met him in the middle and said we would tell them if they asked why he was all dressed up.  My hair was done but I was in jeans by now.  He still had on his suit and boutineer (sp??).  Well we ordered and were checking out and no one had asked anything!  So I took matters into my own hands and said "Hey, you should ask him why he is wearing a flower."  The cashier (an older guy) asked.  "BECAUSE WE JUST GOT MARRIED AND THIS IS OUR FIRST MEAL AS A MARRIED COUPLE!!!!!" I responded.  Turns out he must have been the manager because he gave us our meal for free.  ShaBAM.

We drove the rest of the way home and were able to hang out at my house until the reception started.  I think all we ended up dong was taking a nap in the basement though because we were both so exhausted from the morning!

Here I have to give a huge thank-you to all the people who helped set up the reception.  I can't even describe how wonderful it was to just get there and have everything looking beautiful and just as I imagined.

But before I get to the reception, I have to mention our Pony Keg sign.  My parents got the sign put up for that day as well as the previous one.  Even though it meant being later to our reception, we stopped to get a picture by it.  And yes, we were quite late to our own reception.  Oh well.  Hopefully no one was offended.

The reception was PERFECT as well.  It looked just how I wanted it to look.  The food tasted fantastic.  The people were my favorite.  The gift pile stacked nice and high ;)  But in all seriousness, I couldn't have asked for a better reception.  We opted to not have a line (highly recommended!) and instead just walked around the whole time, trying to talk to everyone that came.  It was great to see old teachers, friends from high school and families from the neighborhood and church.  Gosh it was fantastic!

Our goal was to leave right when the reception ended because we had to drive up to Detroit that night but of course that's not how it happened.  We didn't leave until 10:00 or so.

Well, that was the wedding day!  Pictures of it to come soon!