Hello friends!

Well, here it is: one final, massive wedding day post with a compilation of my favorite pictures from our photographers. This post is going to be record-breakingly long, but… you guys asked for it! Hehe.

If you haven’t read the first wedding day post, you can do that here before you get started. Otherwise, enjoy this review of a marvelous, beautiful day. ❤

getting ready

Note: photos taken by Fredericks Photo & Films (@fredericksphotoandfilms). I collaged the pictures in order to share the maximum amount from the thousands they sent us, resulting in some photos differing slightly in composition from the originals. Also if you’re reading this on your phone, the smaller photos may be harder to see vs. viewing on a computer screen. Okay! We’ll start off with getting-ready photos from the girls’ room. 

My bridesmaids were amazing. Two sisters, two sister-in-laws-to-be, two cousins, and one best friend. By the wedding they were all friends and it made me so happy to see, well, this:

Once I put my dress on and showed the bridesmaids, I did a first look with my parents which was really sweet.

Mom had to fasten dozens of buttons on the back of my dress, phew! But I’d say it was worth it. The details in the back of the dress were one reason I chose it. (See this post for links to wedding attire.)

Just a few pretty detail shots.

For some reason it took quite a while to put my heels on. My veil was pretty easy though. It’s one thing to wear a wedding dress, but when you add a veil… that’s when it feels like you’re getting married.

After a bit of confusion, Sully and I did a letter exchange. Sully didn’t realize we were doing it in the morning so I think he had to write another one because he left his original at home, oops! It all worked out and the letter was, of course, very sweet. ❤

They took a few shots of me before the ceremony and I love how they turned out! It was so special to capture these portraits (and all the pictures, really) at my family’s house.

There are significantly fewer photos of the guys getting ready, hehe. There’s a reason the girls came a lot earlier in the day than the guys did. But I love the pictures they did get – including the one on the bottom left of one of the groomsmen taking a nap on the floor. 😛

A few of Sully reading my letter to him and getting portraits taken.

ceremony

These detail pictures aren’t part of the ceremony but I wanted to put them in somewhere. I had a lot of fun designing my own stationery, being an artist and all. I love the ring shots and how Sully’s ring is so much bigger than mine. 🙂 

Now for the ceremony! I think I posted earlier about making the welcome sign, and another thing we used was some cute Polaroid photos one of my blogger friends printed and sent me as a gift.

String lights and flowers everywhere? Yes please!

Look at that arch. *heart eyes* My talented granddaddy built it for me and it was just what I wanted! My mom and her “florist assistants” (actually mostly Mom’s friend and my aunt) created these stunning floral arrangements to attach along with pretty draping fabric. 

The guests started to file in as the wedding party finished preparing, singing hymns, waiting around impatiently because we’d already been ready for a long time, etc. I absolutely love the picture of my granddaddy and grandpa at the bottom. 

We started the ceremony a little late because a bunch of the guests were still driving in. Finally everything was set and the procession began! The ring bearer and flower girl – Sully’s nephew and niece – were definitely the cutest part. I love how everyone’s smiling at Caroline in the third picture.

I’m not going to show everyone walking down the aisle but I had to include a picture of my brother Jeff escorting my grandmother. Jeff is practically a giant and the height difference always cracks us up. Anyway, then it was finally time for Dad to escort me!

I felt surprisingly focused and matter-of-fact when I was walking out; not exactly the floaty feeling I expected. That didn’t stop me from being incredibly happy though, of course – especially when we got to the tent and I saw everyone smiling back at me. It was a beautiful moment.

The best smile was Sully’s, of course. 😉 He managed not to cry but he told me he came close at this point. We didn’t have a first look so this was the first time he’d seen me in my dress.

Then the ceremony began! Other than being scorching hot even in the tent’s shade, it was lovely. In Sully’s pastor did an excellent job on the sermon and on helping everyone know what to do.

A few sweet moments. 1) Sully just looking at me for a long time after I finally arrived. 🙂 2) Dad kissing me on the cheek before he sat down. 3) My family bringing out the tissues under cover of the first prayer.

Skipping forward to the exchange of rings. It took me a bit to get Sully’s ring on his finger which made me laugh.

The first kiss! I love the pastor’s grin in the first photo and our smiles in the second. 

Happy faces because WE DID IT! My piano teacher played for the whole ceremony, including the recessional.

I didn’t cry at all before the ceremony – in fact, I was surprisingly not stressed out at all – but something about our families coming inside after it was over to hug and congratulate us… that brought the tears. It felt surreal that we were actually married!

family & wedding party

We took a bunch of photos after the ceremony while the guests headed over to the reception barns behind the house to enjoy some appetizers and games. These pictures of our entire family (siblings, parents, grandparents, and nephews/nieces) make me feel so honored to be a part of these wonderful people’s lives.

Hehe, aren’t these pictures with our parents so cute? 😀

All my siblings! ❤ One of the most incredible blessings God has given Sully and I is that we both love each other’s families. It’s something I hope to never take for granted. I also wanted to include this picture with Sully’s amazing pastor who pulled off the ceremony perfectly. Thank you, James!

Now some pictures of the wedding party. We’ll start with my beautiful bridesmaids. ❤

I love all the individual shots, but these especially make me smile. Aria had been waiting for this picture since her own wedding two years ago where she used the photo of both of us then as her phone wallpaper. Jianna and I had to display our double-jointed-ness – her fingers and my elbow. 😛

Me with my sisters and my cousins who I also basically grew up with. I love.

These are some of my favorite pictures from the day – the colors and happy faces bring me so much joy. This was just what I was picturing when I chose the colors for the dresses!

Now for the groomsmen photos. Lookin’ sharp, guys! They wore bowties in the same shades as the bridesmaids’ dresses. Haha I love how Jeff is smiling fondly down upon his new brother-in-law in the second picture.

Multiple pats on the back for Sully.

Okay but these photos are so good though?? Like, they could be in a wedding magazine or something – in my totally unbiased opinion. 😀 The poses, the suits, just everything. Love it. And you know, the uneven number of bridesmaids/groomsmen didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.

Okay, enough being serious. My word, looking through the many pictures of the guys being goofy made me laugh so much. 

Look at our beautiful wedding party! I love these colors but I love these people even more.

Seeing these guys having such a good time made the day extra happy for Sully and I. Get yourself a good wedding party when you get married, okay?

Like I said, they had a good time. There were lots of goofy photos, but this one is my favorite – Chris, one of the photographers, just chillin’ in front of everyone and two of the groomsmen acting out a proposal. It absolutely cracked us up. :’D

Had to get a picture with our flower girl and ringbearer. ❤

Bride & groom

Now for bride and groom portraits! These seriously made me so happy to look through and I kinda want to get prints of all of them, help. We’ll start with a few individual shots. These pictures of Sully were taken with a film camera!

Sully didn’t get nearly as many individual shots as I did, but he was quite alright with that. 😛

Guys, isn’t my bouquet gorgeous?! It’s perfectly wedding-y and romantic and beautiful.

I clearly had a lot of fun twirling in my dress. So many layers of tulle!

Okay, now for the good part. 🙂 Sully’s wearing his classic “ah help I’m melting” expression in the second picture. He was so happy and cute. 

Very happy. 😀

If you don’t like kissing picture… you might want to scroll down a ways. Hehe.

It’s pretty fun, if a little nerve-wracking, to be picked up and twirled around by your husband while wearing a wedding dress.

Hands. ❤

It’s special to have a picture of us with the house in the background since I love my family’s farm and house and don’t live there anymore. (Only 20 minutes away though.) The second picture is one of the few where neither of us has a huge smile on our faces. A moment of rest.

We took these later on in the day. The cloudy sky, pretty green wheat field, and pond make for such a peaceful background.

Of course we had to get some pictures with my Dad’s vintage Chevy truck that my mom also uses as a flower truck/stand! I adore the luxurious vines on the barn with the mint green truck in front.

Remember the picture Sully’s grandma took at the end of this post? Here’s the photographers’ version. It makes me so so happy. Both of these do!

Guys! I’ve been waiting to show you these! The whole day was cloudy except for a glorious bit just before we left when the sun broke through and we got these magical golden hour photos in Mom’s flower garden. AHH. HELP.

I can’t explain how, well, glowy these photos make me feel. It was nearly the end of an exhausting, beautiful, perfect day and we were both just over the moon. 

You guys know how much I love golden hour light, so getting these photos felt like such a gift from God, over and beyond His holding off the rain. (Although it actually was sprinkling a tiny bit as you can see if you look closely at the background.)

I think I’ll make the one on the left my new profile picture. Ahh.

reception

To finish out this post, we need to go back in time a bit from the golden hour pictures to more glowy pictures from setting up the reception! I was looking forward to seeing these pictures since I had a team of friends and volunteers setting it up and didn’t get a chance to look very closely at the decorations during the day.

The reception barns and table set-ups were one of the parts I spent the most time dreaming up decorations for. I tied in the wedding colors with the flowers and purple napkins – I was originally going to only use the lilac shade, but we made a mistake with the rentals and they ended up having to supplement those with two other shades. It ended up being really pretty!

I wanted a table runner of greenery, some of which we foraged from the woods on our farm. We interspersed the greenery with tea light candles and tiny bud vases featuring flowers in purples, pinks, blues, and whites. 

This is the doughnut board I was telling you guys about! This is all from scratch. My brother Jeff made the board with plywood and wooden dowels and my sisters and mom and I made the doughnuts using our family recipe and glazed some of them with purple to match the color scheme.

We also bought some gluten-free doughnuts for guests who couldn’t have the others. And I made the small but cute wedding cake, decorated by one of my volunteers with abundant flowers and greenery. It was rather a leaning wedding cake after sitting in the heat for a while, but to be quite honest, I didn’t care about the cake that much and I think it still looked pretty. 😛

Here’s an outside view of the reception barns. Don’t the string lights add such a magical, cozy touch? The first picture was taken early in the day – we didn’t want to rent twice as many chairs, so we asked the guests to carry them from the tent in front of the house to the barns in the back after the ceremony. 

My dream was not to decorate with a bunch of those wedding knickknacks you can find, but instead to just fill the day with flowers. My mom grew some of them, we bought some of them, and all the many peonies were donated by friends, including these pails at each barn post. Aren’t they stunning? I love how they put the extra flowers in pails on the flower truck too. (The tailgate also doubled as our guestbook table.)

The reception begins! I think the top picture was actually taken a bit later after the wedding party rode back from decorating Sully’s car (more on that later). Anyway, after the bride and groom portraits Sully and I made our entrance to the reception area and my granddaddy said a prayer before the food was served.

We followed the meal with our first dance! The dance floor was centered between the two reception barns so that everyone could see. Visit this post to watch a video of our first dance!

This was one of my favorite parts of the wedding. We had taken dance lessons from a friend so we entertained the guests with some simple choreography. 

We had so much fun doing it and the guests had so much fun watching! It was one of the most-complimented parts of the day. What I’m saying is… if you get a chance to slightly choreograph your first dance, do it! It doesn’t need to be complicated, but something a little extra makes it a lot more special in my experience.

We ended the dance with Sully picking me up and spinning me around. ‘Twas fun and made for good pictures too.

Next it was time for the father-daughter dance, which was much less choreographed. We had still practiced a basic step and Dad got to twirl me a couple of times.

Things that make me smile about these photos: 1) Dad’s grin 2) glowy bokeh from the string lights 3) the fact that he has a black fingernail in the second photo because #farmerlife. :’D

Then it was Sully’s turn to do the mother-son dance. It was so cute to watch them. And his mom’s laughter and smiles!

My dad and Sully’s mom both enjoyed the dances but got a little teary-eyed too. The black and white photo… ❤

After dances came the toasts – my parents, Sully’s parents, the best man, and the matron of honor. They were all SO sweet and so special. I will treasure their words for a long time. Side note: one of my friends asked if she could bring her beloved pet rabbit to the wedding and I said yes. 😀 Can you spot her in the top picture? 

Harrison, Sully’s brother and best man, gave the funniest speech. I wish you guys would have heard it! It made everyone laugh so hard, as you can see. 

Another of my treasured memories from the day was my sudden popularity with little girls, hehe. Caroline, Sully’s niece and our flower girl, had decided I’m one of her favorite people while Sully and I were still dating, so she was overjoyed to see me again at the wedding. One of the cute little girls from church came up to me during the toasts and wanted to be held and to inspect my dress. And another adorable small friend who is obsessed with Cinderella came up to me while we were cutting the cake because, as her dad later told me, she kept asking “to see the princess.” HELP, MY HEART. That about melted me. ❤ 

Speaking of cake cutting – here you go! It was a success and we were nice to each other and didn’t get too messy.

Then there was a happy break where the guests talked and danced to the playlist Sully put together. I didn’t dance much as my wedding dress got in the way, but Sully and I did manage to join the kids for a short round of 4-Square. That was fun.

A few memories from the end of the day: 1) there were just enough sprinkles for a rainbow to appear. The photo doesn’t do it justice. People kept coming up to me and excitedly pointing it out and I was like “I know I know it’s so beautiful ah yay!” Such a special touch to the day. 2) This picture makes my heart full. The best part about having 300 people at your wedding is seeing all your friends so happy and having the best and most joyful team of volunteers to help everything run smoothly. If you were there – thank you for making our day the happiest one! 3) Finally it was time to leave. (See the sparkler pictures in this post.) Sully and I waved to everyone before getting into the “getaway truck.”

It was a little easier to climb into the truck after having changed out of my wedding dress. It did take a while to get the truck started – partly because it’s a stick-shift but mostly because we couldn’t find the keys until Dad showed us where he’d put them. :’D I waved goodbye out the window as we drove off down the lane.

There were a few things we had to do before driving away: undecorate the car (including lots of balloons and streamers inside along with a random empty pinata), and collect my purse and phone which I forgot to get from the house before we left. Oops. Sully’s brother kindly drove them down for us. And then we got in Sully’s car and drove away as husband and wife! What a beautiful, magical, wonderful day. ❤

Congratulations – you made it to the end of this post! Thanks for sharing these happy memories with me. We’ll treasure our wedding day forever but so far marriage is wonderful too! Although we will face days with far less joy and far more sorrow in the future, I also know we have so many more happy memories up ahead. I look forward to sharing snippets of them with you. 🙂

Thanks so much for reading, and have a lovely day!

***Allison***

P. P. S. Check out my wedding series below, featuring more photos and stories not in this post.