I got married! Three years ago! Ish!

I feel like I've been looking at and reading about all kinds of gorgeous weddings in my reader these days. 

Of course, there was Holly's incredible wedding which the entire internet must know about by now because it was THAT FREAKING GORGEOUS.

Then there was this unreal Indian wedding that showed up in my Twitter feed and goshdarnit I spent about an hour drooling over those photos and wishing that I had married some awesome Indian man so that I could have had henna on my hands and feet and oh look she wore a ball gown at the reception and not a fluffy white dress - yougogirl stick it to the wedding dress industry with their thousands-of-dollars-dresses you wear for 5 hours.

SIGH. I love weddings.

Then I realized that hey!  I had a pretty awesome wedding too!  I also didn't have a blog at the time so I didn't get to share the photos with any of my internet friends.  I didn't even HAVE any internet friends back then. 

We got married in Maui in 2006.  I'm not even sure how we even agreed that we wanted a destination wedding.  Getting married at home wasn't something we considered for even a day. We knew that we loved Maui and it sounded like a really awesome idea to get married there.  So, we did. 

One thing you should know about the planning process is that I bought three wedding dresses.  That is not a typographical error.  THREE.  Now, it's not like I bought three $2,500 dresses or anything.  I bought the first two at this bargain basement dress clearance center in scary-ghetto-Dallas and I think we spent less than $500 for both of them.  The only reason I bought them is I felt pressured - you know, bargain basement price, there aren't any extras, my mom and I might have been a little overexcited about the whole situation...Anyway, those two dresses weren't The Dress.

The Dress was found crumpled up in a pile in the back of the clearance rack at David's Bridal in Austin.  When I walked into David's Bridal I thought, "Ew.  I do NOT want a dress from this place.  Just...EW."

But then I found The Dress I'd Been Dreaming About in a crumpled pile on sale for $499.  And just like that I turned into one of those people who says "You know, David's Bridal isn't so bad." 

We were married on a Wednesday in April, by a Hawaiian man named Kimo, with 24 of our closest and most beloved friends and family present.  It was amazing.  It was awesome.  It was the Best Day Ever, as any wedding day should be.  And now, picture overload.

I thought my shoes were fantastic. I found them at DSW the day I was having alterations done.  LOVE.  Big, big, big fan of the fun bridal shoe.

I did my own hair and make up, and I will not lie, it was kind of scary.  But, I didn't want to shell out big bucks for some random lady in Maui who might turn me into a lookalike from a soap opera.  I kept things pretty simple and left my hair down.  I bought all new make up after a refresher how-to at Neiman's.  Did it cost a lot?  Yeah.  But it was cheaper than hiring someone who might have screwed it up.  (Or, so I rationalized.)  I was pretty happy with how it turned out, but as you can see, I was Very Serious about my hair that day.

I saw Chris before the wedding on total impulse and I am so glad I did because our photographer took one of my favorite photos from the day at that moment.

THEN we got married.  And it was awesome.  I cried.  About a third of the way through the ceremony I had a very clear moment where I thought, "Oh wait. This is really beautiful. I SHOULD HAVE HIRED A VIDEOGRAPHER DAMMIT." Oh well.

My best friend was my only attendant.  I told her to go buy a dress she liked.  Really, that was the whole conversation.  She found one on sale at J Crew. I thought it looked awesome.

Here's Kimo, the guy who married us. At one point I remember looking down and noticing that he was not wearing shoes.  Huh.

 We took pictures on the beach while everyone else enjoyed the sunset and a cocktail hour.

 

 

We had a lovely evening under the stars on a lawn with tiki torches.  I remember not eating very much and only drinking white wine out of complete fear that red wine would end up on my dress. We visited and ate cake (which a cat tried to eat, so for most of the reception it was in the fridge. It only came out when it was time to cut it.  At one point I turned around and was like OMG WHERE IS THE CAKE?).

 

 It was over way too soon.  But oh man, was it the Best Day Ever.

 

Comments

[Courtney]

Hawaii is such an amazing place... if I had it to do again, I'd get married there too! Fun times and an absolutely beautiful wedding. Love, love love the pics (especially the one below the sunset photo of the two of you). So happy we were there!

[Arwen]

It looks like such a fun day! Our wedding was really more for our family and friends than it was for us (I would have loved a small wedding, but it turned out to be about 220 people) and I remember the day as a blur. It was our honeymoon (on the Kona coast of the big island) that was the incredible part for me. Wouldn't want to do the wedding thing again, but would relive the honeymoon in a heartbeat.

You looked beautiful, A'Dell! And the shoes are totally fabulous.

[Mel]

You made SUCH a stunning bride. And you really had the best back drop and photo setting EVER. Maks me wish I had done the destination wedding my heart really longed for instead of the big, messy hometown affair that I often look back on with frustration.