Here to encourage you on your own bold pursuit of intentional living as I live out my own. I’m passionate about running, spending time doing what I love and cheering others on to approach running with joy.
I cannot believe I’m sitting here writing about our wedding day!! We are MARRIED, y’all!! Like what?! I think almost every night one of us stops and is like “CAN YOU BELIEVE YOU’RE MY HUSBAND/WIFE?!” Marriage is the best thing ever and we’ve had so much fun simply being together. We love spending so much time together and getting to wake up next to each other, go to the gym together, spend our mornings together, have long dinners together...it’s all such a joy! I know we’re only a few weeks in, but we are both just giddy with excitement!Now - to the wedding! We are so beyond grateful to our families for their love, support and generosity for helping us bring our vision for our wedding day to life!! Our day exceeded all our wildest dreams and we could not thank them enough! All the photos I am sharing below, minus the few at the very beginning, are shot by the incredibly talented Vanessa Todd. Cannot recommend her enough as a photographer for your big day!! As many of you know, Dom proposed early in April and we got married mid-May! I have another blog post coming next week where I'll be sharing everything about planning a wedding on a short timeline, but we cannot recommend the short timeline enough! We loved loved loved it. We had SO much fun planning and think the timeline was perfect - we would not have wanted it any longer and think it was just the right amount of time to plan, too. Be sure to check back next week for that post with the details!! Now for this post, I thought I would make this post short and to the point and I realized I could not do that in any way, shape or form lol it was so much fun to relive the day. So, feel free to skim and just look at photos, or grab a cup of coffee and reminisce on one of our favorite days!!I want to quickly talk about our rehearsal dinner because it was truly a dream and that night alongside our wedding will be two of our most cherished memories forever. I was terrible about taking photos, but I have a few I want to share!!
Our rehearsal dinner was in my parents backyard and since we had a small wedding, we invited everyone to it, which we cannot express how glad we are that we did this! The entire night was so special. We loved seeing all our friends get to meet each other after they’ve all heard about one other for so long and get to finally meet our families, too. We hung out and talked, and ate for awhile and once it got dark, my dad made a speech, my sister followed and then anyone else who wanted to could say something. Of course Dom and I cried the entire time and we will remember everyone’s words forever!!The next morning, I woke up fairly normal like always, I went on a walk and Dom and I Facetimed the whole time! I feel like a lot of people don’t talk to their groom the whole day and we were both like …. I don’t want to go all day without talking!! It was so nice just to talk about all our feelings, and talk more about the night before, too! Then my entire family was up so we just hung out on the porch drinking coffee :) After that, my sister, Claire, brother’s fiancé, Audrey, and I went to Drybar for our hair and mine took TWICE as long as theirs!!! I feel like this is when I started to get a bit stressed out because the weather was bad at this point (thunderstorming, to be exact) and our venue was asking me to make the call on whether or not they should set up inside or out, and I felt bad my hair was taking a long time haha! We finished up finally, then our makeup artists arrived at home, I scarfed down some food and had to finish packing for our honeymoon (more stress on my part, I can't believe I hadn't finished packing haha!) and my friends arrived to get ready with me. Even though we didn't have bridesmaids or groomsmen, we both had our friends around us for the day, which was SO much fun and we both highly recommend that, too!Dom dropped off a letter for me earlier that morning (we’d said we weren't doing letters or gifts and of course he did something for me!! I should have known!) and I finally had time around 1:00 to sit down and read it. CUE ALL THE SOBBING. He included an old note that was his prayer to God when praying for his future wife (he said he wrote it around 2018!). I cried some ugly tears. I still can’t believe he’s my husband!!
The rest of the day flewww by because I had to scramble to get finished packing (oops), I was making sure everyone had what they needed and honestly I felt really all over the place! Especially with the bad weather weighing on me!! I got my makeup done by the amazing Kayla and highly recommend her if you need someone to do your makeup in the DFW area. She is THE kindest soul and most calming presence, too. I started to feel all my emotions build up inside of me while having my makeup done and started crying when I saw my mom react to her makeup!! Like what?! That is not normal for me haha! I have literally never felt so many emotions as I did on our wedding day!!!
After that, everything started moving so fast. We ran upstairs, put my dress on, had a really fun “first look” with all my friends and then we were off to the first look with Dom! We decided to do a first look for a number of reasons: we were nervous about the weather and if it would be pouring later in the evening, it would us give us more intimate time just us two together before being with everyone, and Dom was worried about being a mess if he saw me for the first time walking down the aisle with my dad (true story) hahah. We are SO glad we did one! I started to tear up and cry as I was walking toward him, and he told me he started to cry when he heard our photographer say “ok Molly you can come at any time now!” I was so excited to see his reaction to my dress and flowers (more on these in my next post because Taylor did literally the most amazing job EVER!) and he had the cutest and best reaction!! It was so fun to have time just us two before the day got crazier and we were able to take more photos, too!
We always say we pinky promise to love each other forever haha so we LOVE this photo so so much!!![/caption]
Soon after, we headed to the venue and we were supposed to take a lot of our family photos before, but it started raining andddd it got chaotic haha! I watched our arch with the most amazing flowers ever come crashing down, slamming all the flowers to the ground and coming off the arch as we all stood hiding from the rain. :( I thought, “well….we are still going to get married, but I am going to be really sad if we can’t find a way to have that in our ceremony!!” Lucky for us, the guys in our family and our amazing coordinator with our venue, Magdalena’s, didn’t mind running out there in the rain to find a way to get the flowers hanging back up there! By then it was pouring and guests were arriving, so I ran upstairs at the venue to hide haha and the only spot where no one would be able to see me was in the bathroom lol so I was chillin’ up there and Claire and Audrey came to join me!We had the door closed and couldn’t hear anything and none of us had our phones so we had literally NO idea what time it was and after what was probably 30 minutes of us talking up there, I was like “it sounds really quiet down there” and we looked out, the music was playing, everyone was already seated and Dom was up there haha! They had to hurry out there and I ran downstairs to my dad! I started to get emotional again, naturally he cracked plenty of jokes and then it was time to walk down the aisle!
Dom and I, of course, both cried the entire time I walked down the aisle haha and we couldn’t stop smiling the entire time! We were so honored to have Dom’s family pastor marry us and the ceremony was so special. Here are a few of our favorite moments from the ceremony:
Afterwards, there was a short cocktail hour before dinner and OH MY GOSH the food could not have been better! Magdalena’s was a dream come true to get married at (more on them in a later post, too!). The outdoor space was perfect, the staff was beyond kind and literally. The food. Oh my gosh. Everything was absolutely incredible. From the appetizers to the meal to the drinks, everything was divine. Since we didn’t have a DJ or a dance floor, we hired one of Dom’s friends who is such a talented musician to sing and play guitar during dinner. We definitely regret not hiring him for longer because he was SO good!!
My best friend Brandy made our signs and card placements and we have them in our apartment we love them SO much!! Next up was our cake cutting and I cannot brag on our cake enough: Dom’s mom MADE THEM!! We told her we wanted a giant cookie cake and omg they couldn’t have been more perfect!
Then, Dom and I had gone back and forth on whether or not to have a sunset portrait session and ultimately decided to because we knew having those moments for our video and photos would be SO special. Shooting these photos and videos were some of our favorite moments of the entire day!! We’ve always dreamed of having photos like this and are so excited about them and cannot wait to frame them! Here are some of our favorites:
Once we returned to the venue, we did our dances, which I had been sooo nervous about haha I love dancing, but I'm awful at it and didn't love to idea of 50 people staring at me dancing! Dom and I danced to ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand' by The Beatles and I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest I was so nervous. We pretty much forgot every move we somewhat practiced beforehand haha! My dad and I danced to “The Best Day” by Taylor Swift and we kept saying "what do we do next?! What move comes next?!" and Dom and his mom and stepmom danced to "In My Life" by The Beatles and it was perfect and SO sweet! We then did our last dance with everyone around us to “Clear” by Needtobreathe and then we were outta there!! We drove to Hotel Drover only a short drive away!!
WE STILL CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE MARRIED!!! No wedding day is perfect and of course we had hiccups, but our wedding was truly the wedding of our dreams!! We wouldn’t change a single thing about our day (ok - maybe the rain, for sure wanted more time with our guests and definitely would request more empanadas because YUM) and I would tell myself to stop being so anxious about things out of my control! I definitely felt more range of emotions on our wedding day than probably any other day in my entire life haha! Weddings are the BEST. To have all your loved ones in one place celebrating you and your person is truly one of the best gifts, so my advice is to not overcomplicate it and stress about all the little things that legitimately do not matter. We have the biggest grins on our faces when we talk about our wedding and could not be happier with our decision to plan things the way we did and with the timeline we had!!
I have a blog post coming next week with all my advice for how to plan on a short timeline, so be sure to stay tuned for that!! Any other wedding-related posts you’d like to see? Let me know below! Thanks for reading!