Wedding Recap: Smile Pretty!

When I shared our First Look photos, I mentioned that we had planned on doing all of our wedding party portraits before the ceremony and the family portraits after the ceremony. Why? Because our ceremony was later in the day and there wouldn't be enough light for all of the pictures that we wanted. So as soon as we were done getting ready and the First Look shots were complete, we started snapping our wedding party portraits.

We started with just me and the hubby....

This is probably one of my hands-down favorites!

Then we told the hubby to get lost so that us girls could have our moment. (Not really, but it's fun to imagine anyways.)

All of the flowers are silk flowers purchased from Michaels. I made my niece's gerber daisy ball. A friend of mine made my bouquet (fun tip: we used a toilet paper roll to help beef up the handle of my flowers) and my bridesmaid made the two white bouquets.

After we were done with our pictures, we got the large group pictures.

And then things got a little crazy...

Yeah, we know how to have some fun. If you notice, the main culprits are the hubby and his brother. Everyone else just fell victim to "white boy dancing."

While the adults were playing games, the little ones were also getting their pictures taken.

Ok, so maybe our silliness was wearing off on the children.

Then it was time for some individual shots.

Before we moved on to the car photos (the boys were more than just a little excited about the car!), we got some more pictures of us walking along the railroad tracks.

And now for what the hubby had been looking forward to for months...the car!

This has been the #1 favorite of all of our friends - especially the guys!

While the guys were getting their group shots, I went and took some family photos with my Dad who was going to be leaving right after the ceremony (he can't see well at night, so he had to get on the road right away). After those photos, I was tucked away inside the reception site to hide from guests - even though most of them had already seen me during the car photos. While I was inside, the boys went back to the railroad tracks to snap a few more shots before the ceremony.

At this point, we continued the fun and laughing throughout our ceremony. And then we got some family shots done. For the most part, we tried to keep it very close family and saved the pictures of the aunts, uncles, and cousins to be done throughout the reception.

My Dad, little brother, older sister and her two children.

Our former youth pastor. He's been trying to marry us for years! Every time we'd go up to the panhandle to visit him, we'd get at least 2 offers to be married. We're glad that he was able to be the one to walk us through our ceremony.

My grandparents.

All of my siblings and all of the nieces and nephews (minus my stepbrother and his little ones who live in California).

The hubby's parents and my Mom & Stepdad.

The hubby's side of the family.

I threw in an extra one of the hubby's family. Why? Because I'm continuing the laughing theme. Well, that's sort of the reason. At this point some random guy was driving by the venue and shouted out the window, "GAME OVER DUDE!" Needless to say, it took us all a while to quit laughing.

The hubby's extended family. Since he has a much smaller extended family then I do, we took a couple of pictures with his aunt and cousins who came down from Connecticut.

As you can see, it was starting to get dark outside pretty quickly. I'm really glad we decided to take our wedding party shots earlier in the day, because there would have been very few pictures if we had tried to squeeze all of them in between the ceremony and the reception.

Right before we headed into the reception, our photographer stopped us for one more shot. Once we have the time (and money) to put together a photobook, this will be the cover page! And I must mention - those are my real nails! I've had a nail biting habit since for as long as I can remember. But I worked hard to make sure that my nails had grown out for both our engagement photos and our wedding so that I didn't have to have fake nails.

We're one step closer to wrapping up this whole wedding recap. We've already seen us getting ready, our First Look, and our ceremony. All that's left is the reception. And if you thought this post was full of pictures, just wait until you see the reception!