Early on Friday all of the girls went to get pedicures and manicures before the wedding. Here are 5 of us getting our pedicures. Kelsie and Krista didn't get theirs at the same time as the rest of us because there were only 5 stations, so Kelsie was going around taking pictures of everyone.
Steph and I.
Here is Hannah and I. We were sitting there smiling and posing because we thought Kelsie was taking pictures of us, and Hannah was especially doing it every time Kelsie pointed the camera at her. After quite some time Kelsie goes... "Oh I'm not taking pictures anymore I'm taking a video." Hannah and I started cracking up because here we are on video actively talking about posing for pictures. We asked her how long she had been recording for and she goes "Ohhh about 10 minutes" It was hilarious!!
Haha! Here she is getting her pedicure.
I can't believe it... but this was BOTH of our moms first pedicures ever!!! I can't believe neither one of them have ever gotten one. They both liked it a lot and said that they would go back for another one.
Kelsie and Krista getting pedicures.
My mom getting her manicure.
Here I am getting my nails done. My nails by far took the longest to do, but I had looked all over the internet and I found a design that I loved and I wanted them to do it.
In the end it was worth all of the time it took to get them done. I absolutely loved how they turned out and I'm hoping they will last for a while. Although life with fake nails isn't easy. It's been hard adjusting to them, and it is especially hard to blog with them on. I don't think that they scratch good so Cody doesn't really like them. But they sure are pretty!
Next we started getting ready for our rehearsal at Old Oak Bible Church. Our nails took longer than we expected so the girls didn't have a whole lot of time to get ready. Originally we were going to have Sam come over and do all of our hair and makeup, but there just wasn't time. I did my own makeup and hair as soon as I got home and I was still barely on time at the church. Krista had even less time because Davey got separated from the rest of the guys and she had to take him to get his tux picked up. She still looked good at the rehearsal though!
Unfortunately a majority of my pictures from the church came out blurry. My camera died and then my mom was using her phone. Anyways, here is Laura, Old Oak Bible Church's wedding coordinator, instructing us on what we were going to do the day of our wedding. We only had a half an hour rehearsal and we started a few minutes late. There was another rehearsal at 6pm so Laura really flew through the instructions of what we were supposed to do. She was like "then you'll do this, then that, put your hand like this, pivot with your foot like that..." and I was like holy crap someone should have taped this! I felt like I had no clue what she had instructed us to do. I actually felt extremely uncomfortable with what we were going to do on the wedding day. She took us outside to line us up and have us walk in, and she barely instructed anyone on what to do. I really thought that we'd do that and then take everything from the top... but nope... I felt like we were rushed out.
Here is the only picture that I got of Cody and I.
Daddy and me
Davey and Rick watching...
Here we are running through everything. I really feel like we needed more time to go through everything. I was actually a little worried about it for the next couple days leading up to the wedding. She ended our session saying, "and don't worry there are no mistakes on the wedding day" but after all the instructions she gave us it really didn't feel that way. She also told us that we weren't allowed to bring any drinks into the bridal room... and I thought she meant alcohol at first which was understandable but then she said that we had to buy any pop or water from the church. She also mentioned that the ceremony was a candle light procession so that meant that it was a formal ceremony and that no one could see the girls ahead of time and that we had to be tucked away before the ceremony. I was nervous to tell her that we were doing our pictures before the ceremony, because I thought she might have a problem with it. I figured if we all walked in on the wedding day together there wasn't much that she could do about it... so I decided to seek forgiveness rather than to ask permission, and I didn't tell her.
The girls and Cody.
All the guys
Next we went to Stancato's for our rehearsal dinner. I had heard that Stancato's had good food and I was excited to eat there. We had our own private room and it was nice. They had fantastic garlic knots and different breads that they served us.
But overall... I won't lie... I wasn't completely happy with Stancato's. Our bill ended up being twice as much as we expected it to be, and the contract was very misleading. The chicken that they served was good, but the beef selection wasn't what I was expecting them to serve. They only served pasta and potatoes as the sides... I thought that we had picked out a vegetable as well but it wasn't served. I also wasn't thrilled with the bar selections... it cost us money to set up the bar and then it was a cash bar and didn't have much on it. If I had to do it over again... I'm not sure that we would have picked Stancato's as our rehearsal dinner location, but on a plus side it was fun to hang out with our bridal party.
Here is a shot of the private room and most everyone at the table.
My mom and dad. They came straight from the rehearsal to the dinner along with Hannah, Steph, and Sam so they had been sitting there the longest. Everyone else stopped at my house to consolidate cars and grab a couple things.
Cody and I.
Deb and Neal
Tony and Erica
The Newman's
Sky
Amber, Chance, and Eric
Davey being cute!
The three amigas
Cousin love!
Cody and his mom
My parents and I.
My niece!
Eric and Chance
Cody and Kelsie
All the girls
All the guys
Cody and his dad at the bar
Finally a good picture of all four of them. The last time we took pictures with Rick either it was only Cody and Chance or Cody and Krista. Now we have one of the four of them. Now that I think about it I'm not sure if we have one of the three of them and Deb... next time we'll have to do that.
The next day on Saturday we had a cookout at our house and invited everyone in the wedding and from out of town to come over and hang out for the night. We knew a lot of people wanted to see our house and that everyone didn't have things to do while they were in town. Here is Amber and Eric were so cute in their matching outfits during the beginning of the day!!
The guys were all playing a Frisbee game called.... Slam Can? Basically you through a frisbee at a target/can. If you get it into the slot it's game over. If you hit the can yourself on the fly you get two points, if your partner taps the frisbee onto the can you get one point, or if the frisbee goes into the can then you get 3 points. First to 21 exactly wins. Cody and Davey were killing it all day long.
Eric was outside playing in his play pin while the girls watched the guys play. It was more of a guy game than a girl game.
Aren't they cute!?!?
Dad and his girlfriend Elaine hanging out.
Uncle Ted manned the grill. He made some awesome shrimp and scallops on the grill. We had a ton of food for everyone. We made hamburgers, hot dogs, ribs, shrimps, and scallops before we even put the steaks on!
Cody and Robin.
Here is Kelsie and I being silly. I had to run out to the store to get a sleeveless shirt so that I didn't get weird tan lines the day before the wedding. I ended up leaving the party a little early to head to our hotel room for the night. It seems like it took me forever to get everything together to leave.
Here is my dress hanging up in my room ahead of time ready for the big day.
This was my something borrowed and old. The ring was my grandma Barb's that I borrowed from my cousin, and the pendant was my other grandmothers. I wanted to include them in the wedding so I pinned these tokens into my flower bouquet so they both walked down the aisle with me.
Here are all of the flowers laid out. Since my grandma died before the wedding I realized that I had an extra corsage as I laid out all the flowers, and I wasn't sure what to do with it. I later realized that I was short one boutonniere so we turned one of the corsages into a boutonniere. So you might notice that my dad's flower was a little bigger and different than everyone else but I felt that was appropriate anyway.
Here is my bouquet, garter, six pence, and wedding jewelry. My mom searched high and low for that six pence. She went to a coin store to buy it. She put it in my grandma's shoe and her shoe. She wants me to hold onto it and pass it on to my children someday.
This was Kelsie's jewelry and flowers. I noticed that Kelsie was sad that she didn't get a present with the rest of the girls so I let her in on a little surprise that I had for her. I had something blue, something new, something old, something borrowed, and a two pence to go in her shoe. Her earrings went with her dress and were two different colored blue crystals with a diamond row in the center. I gave her a matching bracelet to the one that I wore on the wedding day. And I let her borrow my anniversary necklace that Cody gave me. I also had a two pence that I had from when I studied abroad for her. I can not wait to see the pictures my photographer took of me explaining everything to her and showing her what everything was, because she lit up like a christmas tree... she was so excited. I told her that since she was the flower girl she was special and got to match the bride, and that is why she had an identical bracelet as me. I also told her that when Cody and I first started dating he bought me a necklace with one heart on it, but last year after we were engaged on our three year anniversary he bought me a new necklace with two hearts on it, because we were joining our lives together and our hearts were one together. I told her that I wanted the necklace to be apart of the wedding, but that I couldn't wear it myself so I asked her if she would wear it for me. She was SO excited about it. Cody told me that when she first saw him she went up to him and told him that it was her honor to wear the necklace for the day and that she would take good care of it. It was too cute and it made me so happy to see her so excited and happy.
That night at the hotel Hannah, Steph, Hannah, and Sam came over. We had a fun girly night. My cousin just learned in school how to do facials... so she gave us all a really nice facial massage, then a hand and foot massage. She even used the microwave to heat up towels to give us the full experience. It was super awesome, and I loved the massages. Sam set up a lip scrub with sugar and baking soda to make our lips smooth. She then french braided my hair to sleep in over night to help it hold curls better the next day. My cousin stayed with me all night but the other girls left around 11:30pm. Hannah and I tried to go to bed but neither one of us could really sleep. I had my eyes closed but I was just thinking about the next day too much. I was too excited to sleep. Around 2:15 I texted Cody and he was still up too. We talked about a few things we needed to do the next day and about how the party went after I left for a little bit. Then I tried to sleep again, but once again... my eyes were closed but my mind was open, and time really just flew by. I was trying everything to fall asleep... even counting sheep so that I'd stop thinking about other things, because I knew the next day was going to be long. I went to look at the clock because I felt like it was probably 4am and I almost screamed when I saw that it was 7:15!! I was like ohhh no! I didn't sleep the whole night!! Hannah woke up at the same time as me and said that she didn't sleep much either. We decided to just get up and get breakfast. Ironically... our room was 402 and Cody's mom was in 401. What are the odds of that happening??? She checked in a day before us and just had a regular hotel room, and we had a suite and she ended up being in the room across the hall from us haha. In the morning she came over with a bright red eye and said she thought she had pink eye and didn't know what to do because she couldn't miss her son's wedding. She didn't have any pus or anything so I figured it was just allergies. So I gave her one of my pills and her redness went right away, but it was wedding morning craziness!
