Aria’s Wedding! {Lots of Pictures :)}

Hello, dears!

AHHHH. As you can imagine, I am so, SO excited to be making this post! EEEP. For those of you who don’t know, I recently had the privilege to be in my best friend’s wedding with my sister Megan and oh my goodness, it was amazing, despite all the changes COVID19 made.

This was the first time I’ve been in a wedding, not to mention been a maid-of-honor, and it was a wonderful experience. I enjoyed spending time with the rest of the wedding party and seeing all the beautiful decorations and just the general excitement of it all, although MAN did it make us all exhausted.

I hope you guys enjoy this little “travel journal” post of flowers, dresses, spiders, cameras, friends, hymnals, steamers, and the best memories. Have fun scrolling through the weekend! 🙂

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Megan and I drove down to Aria’s the Friday before her Sunday wedding. Hmm… quick note of the “cast of characters” so this post will make more sense. 😉 Megan is my sister, Aria is my best friend who got married, Junior is her brother, Andrew was her fiance (now her husband!), Fleet is Andrew’s best friend/best man, and the rest of the wedding party will be mentioned as we get there. 🙂

Alright. We got to Aria’s about the same time that Fleet did, so the girls unloaded their stuff and then we all drove to pick up pizza. 😀 That was fun (and delicious). While Aria’s mom prepared supper, the rest of us went out on the patio to enjoy alllll those gorgeous plants. AHH.

All of us four (Megan, Fleet, Aria, and I) had DSLRs! There were seriously so many cameras at her wedding, oh my. Several times we unintentionally had a “camera war” where we all took pictures of each other, heh. It cracked me up.

The hydrangeas made excellent photo props. AHH, I love hydrangeas! They’re one of my favorite kinds of flowers.

We didn’t do a whole lot on Friday night. Mostly ate pizza and talked about sleep and sunlight and radios and waited for Andrew to come, after which he and Fleet and Junior went back to the guys’ house and we stayed at Aria’s for the night. The next morning, we started on some food preparation and then the rest of the wedding party came for a rehearsal, which was quite helpful. Then we all drove over to the groomsmen’s AirBnB where Andrew’s parents graciously had a tasty lunch ready for all of us.

That was fun, since it gave us a chance to get to know each other a little better before the wedding. Most of us didn’t know each other since we lived in various different parts of the country, but we all hit it off pretty well. 🙂 Also this picture of Sam just makes me happy. 😀 ❤

(Lots of B&W pictures since the lighting was meh.) We ate outside around the fire pit and had a VERY interesting conversation about cheerwine, disco balls, recycling, and nothing. It went nowhere. *winks* (Or was it somewhere? I forget what we decided…)

Also Andrew’s sister has an adorable baby named Josiah and… here he is. 🙂 These pictures… the sweetness… help. ❤

After lunch, the girls in the wedding party went back with Aria to help prepare the house. Her family already had it looking AMAZING, but I was glad we were there to help with some final tasks, like steaming tablecloths and dresses and cooking and cleaning. (Megan is holding my bridesmaid dress in the picture. 🙂 )

After we finished for the day, Aria and her mom gave us each a gift bag of the most thoughtful, beautiful gifts! They’re the sweetest, oh my. Thank you guys again!

We had the best waffles ever for supper (no, seriously) and then we decided to paint our nails with the polish in the gift bags. That was fun. 😀 Ha, Aria must have been concentrating pretty intensely. :’D

While our nails were drying, Aria had the genius idea to get a hymnal and sing around one of the terrace tables! It. Was. Amazing. And we sounded pretty great, I must say, especially with the harmony.

After that, Aria had the even geniuser idea to collect a bunch more hymnals from her granddaddy’s house and have a hymn sing with the guys at the AirBnB! So she called Andrew and we did just that. (Aria was proud of herself for coming up with a spontaneous idea, since she’s a planner, to say the least. XD) We drove over there at golden hour, through such beautiful country. Aria thought it would be fun to have a bonfire, but we said it would take too long… so she was over the moon when we arrived and the guys had already built one!

Honestly, that evening is one of my favorite memories from the whole weekend. Singing with friends is right on up there with barn dancing on my list of favorite things to do. It reminded me of Aria’s engagement and I still thought that singing hymns in that way was a taste of heaven. (Although I think heaven might have considerably fewer debates between songs. :’D) Ahh. ❤

We drove back after the sun went down, looking forward to meeting up again on the WEDDING DAY. The next day. *gulp* As a whole, I think we slept better than we expected, although I was still pretty tired. The morning of the wedding is kind of a blur, but I’ll see how much I can remember…

We started by getting our hair and makeup ready. Aria did my makeup and her hairdresser kindly came over to do our hair! That was a huge blessing. Sadly, the best pictures I got, I took on Aria’s camera. XD So you’ll have to make do with another blurry black and white from mine.

After a quick rehearsal, we did some MORE steaming (we were basically experts at it by the end), and then finished getting ready.

In case you guys wondered what my hair and makeup looked like, here are a couple of selfies. I was so grateful to Aria and Crystal (the hairdresser) for doing it because I am not exactly a professional in either area. XD I think it turned out quite nice!

While we waited to see Aria in her dress, we agreed that we needed to take some group selfies to document the occasion. Here’s the one from my phone – blurry, but it makes me happy. ❤

Soon after, we got to see Aria in her dress and OH MY, SHE LOOKED STUNNING! Like a princess. ❤ I have a few pictures of her coming up, but you’ll have to click on the link at the end of this post to see much better ones from the wedding photographer. I obviously didn’t get pictures of the wedding since I was in it, but here are a few of the decorations. *jaw drops* It. Looked. Incredible. I have nowords. So much tulle and flowers and beauty. ❤ ❤ ❤ (The second picture wasn’t quite the end result, though.)

And then the wedding happened! It all went by so fast after the days and months of preparation and excitement. My face was about to crack from smiling so widely. 😀 I was also much relieved that I didn’t 1) trip over my dress (which was actually a little too long – that NEVER happens when you’re 5′ 11″!) or 2) mess up my small part in a semi-complicated exchange of bouquets and Andrew’s wedding ring. But it all went very well and ahh, I was just so happy for them!

After the ceremony, Aria and Andrew came back up for a time of many pictures. 😛 I got a few without getting in the way of the wedding photographers (I hope!), and these just make me grin. They’re so Aria and Andrew. :’D ❤

Also can we just appreciate how absolutely stunning they both looked?? (But especially Aria – sorry, Andrew. 😉 ) I MEAN. GAHHH.

We all went outside for more pictures, and I, again, sneaked some in from the sidelines while Aria was getting her professional portraits taken. It was amazing to see my best friend getting married after all the months (or years) she had been dreaming about it. Especially since I got to hear and see her ideas for the wedding from the beginning and got to create the invitation suite and such. It was surreal that all that planning was finished, and my best friend was MARRIED. Good gracious.

Isn’t her bouquet gorgeous too? It was just what she was hoping for! And the bridesmaids got to take their bouquets home too, which was absolutely lovely. (Can you tell I like flowers? XD)

Since Aria, Andrew, Megan, Fleet, and I all had DSLRs (three of which used to be or currently were Aria’s), we decided we just had to get a picture of all five of us with the cameras. So we had another camera war. Again, I’ll have a link at the end where you can see the results!

I believe Megan took the one of Sam and I, but it could have been Fleet? No, I think it was Megan. Too many pictures to keep track of, but anyway, I didn’t take that one. XD I took the others, though! Isn’t Josiah adorable and Abigail beautiful? ❤

Heh, this picture expresses what it was like for Aria to go anywhere. She said she was awfully glad to have a wedding party because she required, like, 3-5 people (including Andrew, obviously 😉 ) to go anywhere without tripping. *facepalm*

Many bugs, bewildered by all the commotion, took refuge inside a handy white cloud nearby and refused to come out. O.o Earlier that morning, I had helped the photographers hang up the dresses for a picture and we had to get a spider out of Aria’s dress. WHY. WHY. Thankfully Aria is an excellent sport and wasn’t much disturbed.

After pictures, we were finally ready for the “afternoon tea” and reception. Let me tell you guys, the food was incredible. Aria’s mom and grandmother cooked all the food and they are some of the best cooks I know. Oh my. And there was an extremely talented harpist and more friends and pretty decorations and it was lovely. Fleet and I both gave toasts, as did Aria’s dad and granddaddy, and I… neglected to take more than A SINGLE PHOTO of the reception. How??

Well, I guess I did take pictures with the Polaroid that was there, but yeah. Zoie kindly sent this picture home with us. I love it. ❤

Oh! And I don’t have any pictures of this, but just before Aria and Andrew were about to leave, we pranked their truck! We came up with a bunch of great ideas, but ended up only having time for one and a half. XD I brought 100 balloons that Junior and Fleet blew up, which we then shoved into the cab of Andrew’s truck while Aria and Andrew got ready downstairs. It was STRESSFUL, let me tell you. :’D And hilarious. Especially when Aria needed her shoes AFTER WE PUT ALL THE BALLOONS IN. *facepalm* We did manage to get them out and they came up and Aria laughed SO HARD. It was a success. Phew. Andrew took the keys in his hand and popped them in record time. That was great.

Overall, it was a chaotic, memorable, exhausting, glorious weekend and I am so grateful I was able to be a part of it. I am absolutely thrilled for Aria and Andrew… there are no words. So I will end with one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken. I took this in one of the rare, quiet moments when we weren’t racing to do the next thing and were able to just breathe. I’ve stared at it so long; there’s so much peace and love and trust in it. This picture kind of sums up my prayer for their marriage in a way I can’t put into words.

The only words I have left are… I love you guys! ❤

I hope you guys enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed making it! If you did, pleeeease go check out Jackie the wedding photographer’s post for so many more gorgeous pictures of that day. I may have scrolled that post three or four times… Now it’s five. Oops.