Yes, you read the post’s title correctly! After three months of being married to the man of my dreams, I’m *finally* sharing some pictures of our wedding day with y’all! ❤

Note: For privacy reasons, I will not be sharing pictures of our wedding party, guests, or parents. However, to give y’all an idea of what it was like, I will say that Josh and I each had three wedding party members on our respective sides, and we had two flower girls and two ring bearers. We had about 200 guests in attendance, and our ceremony took place in front of a rustic barn in our home state of North Carolina.

The Decorations

Years ago, I found an idea on Pinterest for decorating the wedding aisle seats, writing out each aspect comprising biblical love as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13. My sister is a graphic designer, and has a Cameo Silhouette, so she customized most of our decorations for us. She’s very talented!

Here, we have our arbor/wedding arch. My daddy built the arch for us, and my momma decorated it with artificial flowers we found on Amazon. Behind the arbor, you’ll see our “A Cord of Three Strands” board (referencing Ecclesiastes 4:12), where, during the ceremony, Josh and I braided the knot on the cross together. Daddy also made the board for us, and my sister added the Bible verse reference to it. We are now displaying the board in our home. ❤

Pictures After the Ceremony

Our photographer is a local gem, and she was fantastic to work with! I’ve never considered myself photogenic, but she made us feel comfortable during our photo session after the ceremony. This shot involved her holding my veil over all three of us as she took the picture, which created a beautiful and unique shot!

Our venue was made for fall weddings! While the venue itself is beautiful, the fallen leaves brought an extra dose of fall vibes to the day, despite the temperature being 80-something degrees. But, that’s typical for eastern NC, even in the middle of fall. *Facepalm*

My absolute favorite part of the venue is the bridge and intimate wooded area off to the side of the property. String lights hang over the area (as you can see in the previous picture), making the area feel like an absolute fairy-tale. ❤

This shot is one of my favorites from our wedding day, because it captures our relationship so perfectly. Josh has always given me forehead kisses from the time we started dating almost 6 years ago, so I was super excited when we got our pictures back and this was one of the shots on the bridge!

The Reception

Because most of the pictures from the reception featured our wedding guests, and I want to respect everyone’s privacy, I won’t be including any of those. But, I’ll describe it for you. 🙂

Our first dance was to “You (Wedding Song)” by Jason Cassidy. My father/daughter dance was to “You’ll Always Be My Baby” by Alan Jackson. As some of you know, Josh’s momma passed away in 2019. So, in lieu of a mother/son dance, we played the song “Supermarket Flowers” by Ed Sheeran to honor her memory. Fun fact: Josh picked the song for the father/daughter dance, and I picked the song for his momma’s tribute.

Josh’s best friend (who was also a groomsman) is in a cooking group at our church, and the group catered the wedding. We had pork loin, grilled chicken, baked macaroni and cheese, corn, and his friend’s special wedding potatoes. For dessert, we had a cookie bar. For weeks prior to the wedding, my momma, my aunts, and I prepared cookie dough and froze it in preparation for the wedding. A couple days before the wedding, Momma and I had a baking spree, baking around 600 cookies in total. There were a wide variety of cookies, ranging from chocolate chip, to traditional wedding cookies, to my personal contribution of snickerdoodles.

After supper, my sister gave a speech that brought me to tears, because it was so sweet. Following that, we played something called “The Shoe Game” that we had previously seen at one of our friend’s weddings. The concept is that the bride and groom sit back-to-back, and each hold one of the bride’s shoes and one of the groom’s shoes. Someone asks the couple a series of questions about themselves, such as “who is more likely to fall asleep while watching a movie?”, and the bride and groom raise the shoe of the person they think best answers the question. It was really fun to watch the game on our wedding video!

Once we had tossed the bouquet and garter (which my sister and her boyfriend caught, respectively) we cleared everyone out of the barn, except for our photographer and videographer, and danced our final slow dance of the night to “I’ll Be” by Edwin McCain. It was one of my favorite moments of the night, because it allowed Josh and I to be alone and talk to one another without feeling crowded, and I had always secretly wanted to recreate the slow dance scene from A Cinderella Story. ❤

Finally, to wrap up the evening, the remaining wedding guests stood outside with sparklers, and we made our exit. I really wish I could share those pictures, because they were epic! The sparklers burned a lot longer than we anticipated, so our videographer had us run back in the barn and do a second take, which was really fun!

Happily Ever After

Three months later, our wedding day is now an amazing memory. I’m not sure if I mentioned this in a previous post, but we honeymooned in Highlands, NC for one night, and then drove to Nashville, TN from there, staying four more days. Best. Vacation. Ever. I’ve missed ole Nashville every day since.

As y’all know, preparing for the wedding stressed me out to the max last year. Looking back now, I can honestly say that, if you’re with the right person, living with your spouse is 1,000,000% better than the hype of the wedding itself. Not that our wedding wasn’t fun, because it was. But, being married has just been a million times less stressful than the day-to-day anxiety I was experiencing preparing for the wedding. Just trust me on that. XD

Talk to Me, Arrowheads!

If you’re married, tell me about your wedding day! If you’re not, describe your dream wedding!

Aim high, stay strong, and always hit your mark.

-Allyson 😀