Wedding planning

Ricky and Bethany got engaged late April   ~ keeping it calm, cool and collected, always using rational thinking they started planning the wedding. Ricky didn't want a long engagement. Bethany agreed. Let's do 6 month engagement giving us plenty of time to get things in order but not stretching it out too long. Ricky agreed. So a late October wedding was chosen.

I began doing the typical bride-to-be thing and started looking at dresses, picturing colors, flowers, choosing people to be in the wedding and all that stuff. We set up marriage counseling with our pastor and sometime in May began going to a weekly session.

Planning and planning and planning

 My Mom and I went dress shopping. While we were in Nashville we got to go and see Mrs. Lynn. She and her family have been friends with our family for as long as I can remember. I got to show her my ring and she was excited for me.

Mrs. Lynn checking out my new engagement ring.

I also got the chance to ask her if she and Mr. Paul would honor Ricky and I by setting on the pew with my parents and grandparents at our wedding. Since we live a couple hours from any of our extended family, through my growing up years Mrs. Lynn and her family had become like family to me, so I was very pleased when she said they would.

That day we found my wedding dress. Honestly I don't think I really cared all that much what I wore when I got married. I just wanted to marry Ricky :) But, we found a dress and I really did like it, especially the super long train it had. Once we found the dress I called Mrs. Lynn and she drove over to see it too at the bridal store. I treasure those moments with her, and my mom, they were so excited for me as they watched me growing up and starting my own family. (The film we used that day while dress shopping rolled over on itself- that was before digital cameras...and so we don't have any actual photos of the dress shopping that turned out).

After that, all the little details kind of started falling into place.

When we started trying to choose the exact date we realized that we needed to actually move the date back one month to the last week of September. So we did that. Then, one night at our second session of marriage counseling our pastor jokingly asked us if we had moved the date up again. We assured him that no, we had not.

BUT THEN - we left that session and Ricky told me he really wanted to just be done with it and be married already. His logic was that either we could drag out all the planning and showers and all that or we could just move the wedding up and be done. Blinded by his boyish good looks and temporarily taking leave of my senses, I whole heartedly nodded my head in agreement. And that is how our six month engagement was changed to 8 weeks of engagement bliss. LOL

I think our parents could or possibly should have slapped us and said no but they fell in with it and agreed. So, in that short amount of time we had 2 wedding showers,  secured the church, the reception church, the ushers, the decor, the music was chosen, food was planned, cake was ordered...ya know. All of it.

Haha! Ricky modeling a bouquet and the bridesmaid dress material

It got really rushed the last few weeks. But when you are living on love who cares??! Well, just ask my mom that question. She was recovering from surgery and I am sure would have preferred we waited till she was back up to speed before having to plan a wedding. But she was a trooper and everything somehow came in place.

We did alot of the details ourselves. Had a lady make the bridesmaids dresses, and me and Mom made all the bouquets and boutiniers, we also fixed all the finger foods for the reception and did all the decorating for both the church and reception ourselves. It was a rushed but kinda magical (yeah, I said magical) time.