I am so happy to share a few of the pro shots from our day! As I said in previous posts, despite being what I thought was extremely organized during the planning process, as well as hiring a DOC, DJ, etc. to make sure "I didn't have to stress," a lot went wrong, and I was extremely stressed pretty much up until I walked down the aisle.
I've been thinking A LOT about why things didn't go the way I wanted them to, and what I could have done differently. Honestly, what it comes down to is that I was trying way too hard to have an expensive "pinterest" wedding, but I did not have the budget for one. I didn't have the budget to hire the photographer for longer than six hours, so I tried to cram in pictures before the ceremony, which ended up bringing so much stress because we were running late. I didn't get a lot of pictures that I wish I would have. I picked a venue that was just too small, and didn't normally do weddings and so the staff was just not helpful in terms of helping with thing that should have been no-brainers (finding linens to cover the cake table, putting out the groom's cake with the regular cake, etc.). I had the ceremony and the reception in different locations, which created a lot of issues for the DOC, although I feel like this isn't THAT unusual and I am not sure why it ended up being such an issue. All in all, I should have scaled down my wedding and just went with out certain things that were just not in my budget to have. I should have picked an all in one venue and gone without decor, linens, etc. All of the extra decor choices added up to what the venue fee would have been anyway. I also chose to have my wedding in my hometown, rather than where I lived, which created endless extra expenses in terms of travel, not to mention not really being able to be present when any real decisions were being made. I regret this. If I had to do it over I would have had the wedding where I live, or just done something destination with a small guest list.
All in all, we really did have a lovely wedding, and I couldn't be happier to be married. But I definitely fell into the "pinterest" trap instead of just trying to throw a fun party on a budget.
Also, I don't know why I can't get these pictures to be a normal size, but when I try to upload them it crops the pictures in a weird way, so enjoy these giant pro-pics!
