Our Wedding Day, Part I

It's hard to believe that in just a few days Arsen and I will have been married for an entire year. It's been a wonderful year, full of ups and downs, happiness, stress, and lots of love. Although marriage is most certainly a challenge, I'm so glad we chose each other to take this crazy journey with. Since this post could be the longest thing you've ever seen, I've decided to break it into two parts to save your little eyes from an overload.

I woke up on September 17th of  last year surprisingly calm. I'm sure if you've been reading here for long that you know I tend to be a bit dramatic, and I get stressed easily, so I just knew I would wake up on my wedding day in a frenzy. But I really didn't. I showered, dried my hair, and calmly got ready to go have brunch with some of my favorite girls, my mom, and my uncles. We all went to a little bistro in Frisco, where we ate a yummy brunch and had mimosas. Then we walked a few doors down to my salon, where the bridesmaids, junior bridesmaid, my mom and myself were getting our hair and makeup done.

I sipped on a drink and tried to keep the same peaceful feeling about me throughout my hair and makeup. I'd been going to the girl who does my hair for several months at that point, and I felt totally comfortable with her taking charge and making me feel beautiful. Occasionally I would get up and walk around to see how everyone else was doing, and everyone was just so cheerful and happy. It really was a great way to start the day.

After we finished up at the salon, we went back to my house to gather our things and head to the venue. I think that's the point where I started getting some butterflies. It's such a surreal thing to know you will be married that day. It's something I'd been thinking about for years and years, and something I'd been thinking of specifically with Arsen in mind for a couple of years by that point, and to have all of my dreams coming true was just unreal. Everything is a bit of a blur. I can't remember who said what to me, who I rode with, or anything. But once we arrived at Fairy Tale Manor where the wedding would be, things got a bit more hectic.

Of course things have to go wrong. Of course they do. I knew it would happen, and I think that's how I handled things so calmly.

When we first walked in, I was blown away by how gorgeous everything looked. But two seconds later, I was hit with a shocking reality: none of my flowers were the right shade of pink. In fact, they all looked purple to me. Basically everything in the wedding was black, white, or two different shades of pink. And none of the flowers matched anything else in the wedding. I stayed quiet and walked around and said "Oh, it's all so pretty!", but my best friend Rachel knows me too well. She took me in the bride's dressing room, looked me in the eye, and said "What's wrong?". I kind of stuttered around and said "Umm, well...the flowers aren't the right color. They're purple. They're supposed to be pink". Rachel being the sweet little mama bear that she is said something along the lines of "Oh HELL no" and took off out of the room in .2 seconds. I felt absolutely awful, because the girl who did the flowers was the sister of one of the groomsmen and was doing this at a deep discount as a sweet favor, so I definitely didn't want to say anything. And they were gorgeous! They just didn't really match...

After that, everyone insisted that I go look at the cakes because they were so beautiful I just had to see them. I walked over, said my oohs and ahhs....and stopped short. The grooms cake was bright red and black. The one thing Arsen had cared about, other than the converse shoes the guys were all wearing, was the grooms cake. He wanted an OSU cake. OSU as in Oklahoma State. Where our colors are ORANGE and black. Not red and black. We are not Ohio State...not at all. I starting panicking, because I really wanted this cake to be perfect for him, and it was just SO WRONG. Our wedding coordinator is the most amazing little woman ever, and she quickly got on the phone with the bakery who made the cake, and someone was out to the venue and had re-frosted the cake to be a beautiful shade of orange before we even knew what happened. Whew, crisis averted!

After those stressful encounters, we headed back to the brides dressing room to get ready. All of my bridesmaids were getting ready before helping me into my dress, so I was sitting in a chair having a glass of champagne and watching everything that was going on. After a bit I noticed that everyone was whispering to each other and looking around nervously. I asked them what the issue was, and they quietly told me that one of the bridesmaids had two right shoes. Umm, what? How does this happen? She quickly called the David's Bridal where we got all of their shoes, and why yes, they had a box of two left shoes right there. I begged someone to go find my uncles Rick and Mark, and when they came in the room I asked if they could please save the day by running down to David's Bridal, which was thankfully only about a 10 minute drive away, to switch out the shoe. They raced off as quickly as they could, and my sweet little junior bridesmaid said one of the most hilarious things she could have said in that instance: "Well, I just don't understand why you wouldn't try your shoes on before today.". Everyone died laughing, and the tension eased a little bit.

After that, it was pretty smooth sailing. We finished up getting ready, I gave hugs to everyone who needed to go take their seats, and we all lined up to get things started. I remember being a little jittery, a little emotional, and very overwhelmed. When I heard the music start for my bridesmaids to walk down to (Priscilla Ahn, Dream) it hit me what was happening. And man, did the emotions pour out. I gripped onto my dads arm and tried desperately not to shake uncontrollably and to hold back the tears.

To Be Continued...