This is mrsmorrisoninjuly08's Pink Wedding!

Today is our 10 month anniversary! I was just browsing a local radio station's news blog and I came accross this entry. These dresses are HIDEOUS!!

So just to give you a bit of a shock and a laugh, I thought i would return to this wonderful blog to post it....I know the ladies on here will get a kick out of this!

I posted a question about a month before we were married asking if you guys thought that if you're already living together, will anything change after you get married?

Well, it's been my experience that YES it feels different and we act differently.

For one thing, I took his name, so i've gotten a sense of pride being a Morrison :) And his family treats me differently. His parents refer to me as one of their 'kids' or when there are pictures of me and his sister, they say 'those are our girls'. Things like that. I no longer feel like a seperate part of the family but considered THE family. Now his parents HAVE ALWAYS welcomed me and were always there for me whenever I needed them, without question. I just feel it more now I guess.

Everything feels permanent. We've been living together for the 2 years before we got married and there's always the thought, what if something happens between us and we end it? Not in the front of my mind or anything but in the back, just the i dont know what's going to happen 100%, u know. But now, i actually FEEL the commitment. When we just lived together, i would think to myself, "well if he ever wanted to move out of the country, i'd have to put a stop to that, i would be able to handle it", now i think, well he's my HUSBAND, and therefore, i will follow him wherever he needs to go. I'm not sure if that's old-fashioned thinking but we made a commitment, and i've taken that much more seriously then when we lived together....

So my experience is that marriage is MUCH better then just living together....cant explain it completely. but it feels GREAT and I love it! So get ready ladies! It's an exciting feeling!

When I thought that I could plan a wedding, I was confident and excited. Come to find out, I’m not very good at planning weddings. Let me give you a little bit of background first:

BACKGROUND:
We were engaged in June of 2007 and quickly started planning as all the books/magazines told us to do. We began following the time lines like pros. We were visiting sites, talking with caterers, booking photographers, etc. I was working part time and going to school full-time. My fiancé’s income was enough that I didn’t have to work full time. However, he worked in the housing industry, construction. That market took a huge dive in October and was laid off in November. I couldn’t find a decent paying job fast enough and had to settle for retail. Same as Collin. So wedding planning and anything that required deposits came to sudden halt in November. We finally got back on our feet in April. However, we had to switch reception sites in January, but we already sent out the save-the-dates. So we couldn’t cut back on our guest list which made our needs for a large reception hall harder to fit. We found something suitable but we had a ceremony place and a rehearsal place separate. This caused a lot of extra planning. So finally we had the funds in May to start paying for big items, caterer, reception/ceremony site, gifts, decorations, etc. I basically had to re-plan everything to fit our smaller budget in 3 months. And you CANT plan a wedding for 200 guests in just 3 months, work and go to school.

DAY BEFORE:
The reception hall was an event room made mainly for meetings, not wedding receptions. So it had ugly pictures on the wall that could only be removed for a short period of time, then had to be put back on the wall during the event. The coordinator said she had one lady who was throwing a Christmas party wrap the pics in xmas wrapping paper. We thought we could easily figure something out. So we bought TONS of tulle to cover the walls. Well day before-day to decorate rolls around and we don’t have enough because we needed about twice as much tulle to cover the ugly drawings. It was too sheer. So that looked ugly. Then we had been given table linens from a local church that was donated in boxes with the linen clean, but folded up in bags. We brought a steamer to get out the wrinkles. Turned out the steamer was picky and didn’t want to steam 20 linens. My soon to be sister in law put the glass jugs of Sangria wine meant for the cocktail hr in the freezer. We found out the hard way that jars of wine explode in the freezer the morning of. We had to get more wine before we would start photos at the ceremony place at 11. We had water jewels/crystals for the centerpieces. Turns out, I miscalculated the water/jewel ratio and we didn’t have enough jewels to fill vases to the top. So it definitely looked quite budget because they weren’t filled to the top.

NIGHT BEFORE:
Picture having to call the police for a domestic violence case the night before your wedding! Can I first say that my family NEVER has issues like violence but every family has a few skeletons I guess. Ours just came out during an unfortunate time. My sister’s husband has, I guess, been having issues lately and came to the rehearsal drunk. Noboday really noticed until the end. They were arguing and split up. He left (who knows where) and my sister returned with us to the hotel. My sister and her husband and daughter had a separate room then me and my bridesmaids who were all staying in together. He came back and as I’m in the shower and everyone is getting ready for bed, I hear, ‘call the police’ so I jump out, call and well nobody was actually hurt but my sister was afraid he would take my niece in a car. So she yelled to call and I did. They came after he left (he didn’t take my niece) and we had to do a whole police report. So I didn’t even get to bed until 2am, and of course, with all the drama, couldn’t sleep, and had to wake up at 5:30 to start on hair and makeup. At the ceremony, they forgot to put out the isle runner that I had painted a monogram on before the guests started to arrive. So they did it ‘elegantly’ and had one of the groomsmen roll it out. But they had it upside down….

WEDDING DAY:
The caterer which was a family owned company totally screwed us. She was supposed to come and start setup the day before, but didn’t get to the reception site until after 12 the next day. We were serving food at 2:30. I bought milk and cookies to be served for dessert along with the cake(surprise for groom) and she put the cookies out during cocktail hr instead. So my surprise for my groom was ruined. She didnt pick up plates as guests finished, my uncle who was the DJ, his wife was doing it instead. My uncle is an amazing dj who flew out from CA to DJ for us, SAVED the reception. Everything else that the caterer did wrong, he jumped in and he and his family took care of it. The caterer didn’t even fill up the water/lemonade so I heard complaints from the elders who didn’t want sangria, were thirsty because there was nothing to drink. OH my moh, never made enough time to learn to do the bustle, so when it came time to do it, it wasn’t done right and broke! So I was holding my dress for nearly every dance. I was trying to explain how to do it but so many ladies jumped in to try and help her and they didn’t want to listen to me. They just kept saying, oh its fine, its fine, looks pretty. In the pics I’ve seen from other’s cameras, it looked stupid.

I had an out-of-body experience while the clock was quickly moving towards show time. I had my vows in my hand while everyone was moving around, people were running late and nothing was going right. I know everyone says at least on thing will go wrong, but NOBODY warned me that EVERYTHING would fall a part! Well at that point, all I wanted was Collin to hold me, I just wanted to be with him because when I’m with him, everything is ok, the chaos stops and all that matters is us. So I sat there and waited quietly, saying, “whatever works” over and over again when people kept telling me about the problems. I just read and reread my vows and pictured Collin waiting for me. And when I finally did see him waiting for me at the end of the isle, my heart stopped and I became the happy bride I was supposed to be. I KNEW that this moment was all that mattered. I was finally with him and nothing else mattered. I had a blast with everything that followed-excluding the problems with the caterer, the reception was a blast, I had a ton of fun with my family and my husband ? No it didn’t go as planned, but I became his wife, and that’s all I needed.

TWO RECOMMENDATIONS:
-ALWAYS keep in mind what the wedding is really about, no matter how bad it gets, so long as you become MRS, you’ve done what you both promised you would do when you became engaged.
-HIRE A PLANNER who CAN tell people “NO, that’s not right, lets re-do it”. I wish I would’ve gotten a day-of planner who could be everywhere I wasn’t to check up on everything. I was too busy with hair/makeup that morning to double check the reception hall was good to go, or yell at the caterer for screwing things up. If I was there to help, I could’ve saved some of the mishaps. So if you can, make room in the budget for that, or deem someone you can trust to do it for you.
I think that’s all. I don’t want to scare brides, I should have delegated details to people, even my bridesmaids, so it wasn’t all up to me to do every little detail, I couldn’t be in 20 places at once, and that’s why things fell through the cracks…
BUT ITS OVER! And I’m so happy it is! It was fun planning but I cant handle that stress!! And I’m happy to finally be Mrs. Morrison. Now we have the rest of our lives to enjoy and I plan on doing just that!

I'm so sorry I havent posted more pictures. We just got them last week and we had to wait to show our family before we showed the world :)

And I brought the CD to work to upload the 300+ pictures, but, unfortunately, my work computer doesnt seem to like the DVD-R cds so I only have a few more I can post today, tomorrow (if I have time to kill, I'll post more) Dont worry, I wont post all 300 pictures, that would take me another 88 days!

And tomorrow, I will try to share how the wedding went. I have lots of advice to give brides with a small budget like ours-where to splurge and where to save if possible.....

In the year it took to plan the wedding, all I heard was 'at least one thing will go wrong, so be prepared' but nobody told me what to do when EVERYTHING goes wrong!

YIKES! yes, there was drama! I'll tell you all about it tomorrow!

i'll post more pics as soon as our photographer gets the rest done. so here's a preview :)

i have tons of final projects i have to post for u ladies! i'll be back with pictures and more! good luck to all the other july 19th brides, it's gonna be a fun day!!

Oh well, they had them in all 3 sizes we needed and they were WAY cuter then the others, and only $40!

Here's my baby sister in hers. I wish I could post videos because i have one of her in her dress and she wouldnt take it off! She just kept saying NO! She's a yr and a half but she's in 24months dress here! She's getting so big!!

(sorry pic is so dark, it was taken with my phone)

the Best advice i was given, so far, was by the lady who did our Passion Party oddly enough lol She had everyone go around and give relationship advice and sex advice. She started the game and she told me: You will fall in and out of love with your husband. He will do the same. But the key is to make sure that it doesnt happen at the same time. If he's pulling away, know that it's just a time he needs his space, but dont let hem get too far away. Keep in mind that he'll fall out of love with you, but he'll just as easily fall back in love. And if you stick it out through those hard times, you'll succeed to when he falls back in love with you. and the same goes the other way around"

i think that's SO true. in the last 6 yrs, i've always loved collin, thats for sure. but there are times when i just cant stand to be around him or i need space, and the same goes for him. but we always find eachother. mostly because we always stick it out. i dont know if i explained it right, but it makes total sense to me!

And for the worst advice! My aunt, who has great intentions, suggested that during the reception, the Bride is 'kidnapped'. I know some people have probably heard of this but I HATE that! I want to be around my guests during my wedding, I dont want to 'disappear' for any amount of time just to get my guests to give MORE money to us, after the gifts and the dollar dance, its like what do you expect? your guests to pay for the wedding? its not mandatory that you get anything for your wedding! so that was a definite NO!! I'm NOT doing that!! lol

how about you guys?

if you have, i wish to live vicariously through you for the experience!

PLEASE tells us about the experience. I'm in CO so there's no way I would be able to go to this store, but it looks AmAzInG! my FH gave up cable for the time being to save for the wedding, so i havent been able to watch the show. i saw the first season, but thats it, and i MISS it!!

one of my bridesmaid's sister is getting marriend and she lives in NY, i'm trying to convince her to go to this store, even if she cant afford their prices, i want her to go anyway haha

I went in on May 17th for the first fitting. It was a little big around the bust, so she took it in on the sides.

Only 5 wks later, I go in last saturday and it wont zip up! I get it around my ginormous hips easily, it zips about half way up. The lady who was doing the alterations couldnt even snap the top of it. I felt HORRIBLE!! i dont know what happened. I dont think i gained that much weight in 5 wks, is that possible without me noticing right? I mean all my clothes fit like normal. She was trying to get to go and she just stopped and looked at me and said, "Did you get...." then she stopped cuz I just shook my head, almost in tears and said 'i have no idea what happened". she even said, 'i thought it was gonna be too big', i was horrified.

She broke out the scissors and undid everything she had done. It was still too big so she thought she'd go in half way so we'll see.

Has anyone heard of that, gaining 2-3 inches in your chest (thats where it started to not zip up) in 5wks? how can figure out if she made the mistake so i dont have to pay if it wasnt my fault? I really dont think i gained so much weight that she cant zip it up, i mean thats a BIG difference!

what do u think?