Wedding Q & A + Wedding Pictures Part 2!

 

 

 

The second part of our wedding photos are in! We want to thank Jenn Wagner for being such a great photographer again! In case you missed Part 1, you can read it here and you can read my master post of wedding tips here. Married life has been utter bliss. Josh will turn to me at random times with a huge grin on his face and just say, “wife”. It absolutely melts my heart! We’ve gotten several questions from you all over the weeks, so we’re going to hop on here and answer some!

HOW DID YOU AND JOSH MEET?

We met on a leadership retreat for our parish the spring of our freshman year of college. I was super embarrassed because I didn’t look remotely attractive! (Or not homeless) I graduated from an all-girls high school where “retreat” meant wear what you wore to bed, don’t worry about brushing your hair, and UGGS. I at least put on a pair of jeans, but everything else was a hot mess! He’s sweet and says he thought I was beautiful anyway 🙂 We didn’t really get to talking until a couple weeks later at a hike put on by that parish. We talked the whole hike; it was like we’d been friends for years! We decided to date before committing to an exclusive relationship so we could get to know each other first. The rest is history!

WHEN DID JOSH PROPOSE? HOW DID HE DO IT?

Josh proposed on February 18, 2016. A couple weeks before, he surprised me by saying he booked a weekend trip to Sedona! I love Sedona in the winter and I hadn’t been able to go the last few years because of school. My family and I had been going to Sedona every year since I was 10 months old!

He got a gorgeous hotel room, complete with a kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom! It was huge! It also had a good size balcony with an amazing view of the red rocks, especially at sunset. He also went to (more like braved) Lush and got me a bath bomb! I love Lush and thought it was so sweet that he was pampering me. He told me to go take a long bath because he will have a surprise for me afterwards. I was in there for AN HOUR because I was loving covering myself in glitter from the sparkly bath bomb (yes, I’m two).

When I came out (mind you, extremely sparkly), I opened the door to a beautiful set up! The only light was the candle light (and there were lots of candles!). Rose petals were scattered everywhere. On the counters and the floors were picture frames all containing photos of Josh and I over the years! (It’s hard to explain in words, so think Chandler and Monica proposal from FRIENDS.) I sat in a chair he pulled off the side and he got down on one knee! We spent the rest of the weekend exploring Sedona as an engaged couple!

WHERE DID YOU GET YOUR…

• Dress: Prevue Formal + Bridal (Designer: Mori Lee, Dress #3182)
• Shoes: Betsey Johnson Wedding Collection
• Earrings: my grandmother!
• Veils: Prevue Formal + Bridal
• Rings: Robbins Brothers (my set and his gold band are all from Robbins Brothers, but I think my engagement ring may have been limited edition…)
• Tux: Men’s Wearhouse
• Nail Polish: Essie “Mademoiselle”
• Makeup: done by me! I did an in-depth post about it here!
• Hair: also done by me! With the help of my best friend/maid of honor because my hair loves to misbehave 🙂
• Flowers: Sedona Fine Art of Flowers
• Cake: Sedona Cake Couture (which was amazing; we got white buttercream with chocolate and espresso inside!)

DID YOU ELOPE?

Yes and no. In the Catholic Church, you have to be engaged for a minimum amount of time (6 months) before getting married. You also have to go to premarital counseling and an engagement retreat along with some other things. We had all the requirements for a Catholic wedding done by September. So, in a way, we didn’t truly elope.

However, we had a completely different wedding planned than the one we went with. The original wedding was going to be in Feb. 2017 in San Diego, CA (my hometown). It had a guest list of 180-200 people. As the date got nearer, Josh and I realized we didn’t want that wedding at all! We were planning a wedding to be sure everyone had a good time, but never stopped to asked if we would have a good time. It was getting too stressful and taking away from the joy of being engaged, so we scrapped it.

We switched to Sedona a couple months before the actual wedding and only invited our closest family members (which was hard because we both come from huge families, I still see my 3rd and 4th cousins yearly!). We also invited our friends that we had already asked to be in our bridal party. It was hard to cut the guest list so drastically because we love everyone we were going to have at the original wedding! But having an intimate private wedding was the best decision we ever made.

YOU’RE SO YOUNG. WHY GET MARRIED?

Josh and I are coming up on the 5-year mark of being in a successful relationship. We were engaged for 10 months. I think a lot of people just see a number (aka our age) when asking this. What they don’t see are the challenges we’ve tackled as a team, how much we adore and love each other, and how we’ve grown as a couple.

WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE KIDS?

Josh and I are open to kids as they come. Currently, we’d like a few kids, but we’ll see how that changes once we have the first! Josh is incredibly excited to be a dad when the time comes and I’m open to being a mom! We don’t have a timeline, so we’ll see as time goes on!