Up And Away-Getting My Hair Did

So, where were we? Oh yeah!
All of the girls started arriving at my mom's house at around eleven. The original plan was for Sister-Friend to tackle hair while I did makeup on each of the girls, leaving me until the very end so that the photographers could get some good getting-ready shots. Yeah, that didn't happen.
Sister-Friend, bless her heart, is not good with time management. She woke up a bit later than everyone else and spent a lot of time dithering around, so while I got makeup done for MOH Cartman and Bridesmaid AZ, she was still talking about showering. I quickly started styling hair and panicking. It didn't help when Katie, our photographer, called to tell me that she was running a little early and would be at the house...SOON. LIKE, REALLY SOON. I quickly did Bridesmaid Mary's makeup while Sister-Friend showered. AZ, Cartman and Mary left the house in search of lunch and before I really knew what was happening, Katie and her second shooter, Tish, were knocking at the door.
Sister-Friend started styling my hair after I gave her some very vague instructions about what I wanted, and Katie and Tish snapped away.

I told Sister-Friend that I wanted something up, braided, and still kind of low. 

So This Is The New Year...

Happy New Year!
I am a horrible blogger, I know. My last post went up on December 5th and I'm still not even half-way through my recaps. Time started quickly running away from me after the wedding, and I'm still desperately trying to catch up.
Our lives have been pure madness. Happy, wonderful and fast-paced madness. We made another addition to our family in the form of Nacho, a dog that Sister-Friend bought right after my nephews were born. I initially started training and caring for Nacho and he kind of became my dog, and while Josh and I had always intended to bring him out to Texas with us, it only happened right around Christmas.

Our two kids showing their Christmas spirit!

It took some time for us to adjust to the new arrangement, and it's going to take a bit longer to get Nacho fully trained and used to living inside of a house, but it's been really eye-opening for us, how it might be to have kids someday. I know having dogs isn't exactly the same as having children, but it has been REALLY similar.

Up And Away-Breakfasting and Boozing

When I last posted, I left off right as I arrived at my house after my ugly-cry fit.

My mom woke up shortly after I had finished unpacking my groceries, and the two of us sat down to breakfast together. To try to calm myself, I had one of my most favorite breakfast combos ever-a Starbucks skinny vanilla latte and a yogurt and berry parfait. I was too nervous to eat, though, so most of the parfait went unfinished.

It was so pretty, but I couldn't eat the whole thing!

Up And Away-I Start My Day

The night before the wedding, I slept like a baby. Like a rock. You could have dropped a bomb on my bed and I wouldn't have rolled over.
JUST KIDDING.
I slept horribly, in short little spurts.
This might have been due to the fact that I chose to sleep at my mom's house that night while Josh stayed at his dad's. Or, it could have been that I was really nervous. It doesn't really matter, but what does matter is that I woke up nearly every two hours after falling asleep, freaking out about all of the things I would have to do the next day. I finally gave up trying to bore myself into a sleep coma at around five.
The house was completely silent and still, and I had nothing else to do, so I decided to go shopping for essentials and pick up some breakfast for myself and my bridesmaids. I made a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts, then to the grocery store for fruit and champagne. On my way back home, I had my first meltdown of the day. I was stopped at a red light at one of Santa Fe's busiest intersections when I started ugly-cry sobbing. I'm sure it looked like something straight out of REM's "Everybody Hurts" video. It was bad.

Yup, this was playing in my head as I choke-sobbed

I'm not really sure what brought the tears on, but I do know that they didn't stop for a while. Every time I thought I had gotten a grip on my weird fit, I'd start crying again. 

I started feeling better once I got home, but no one was awake yet. Now, I just had to wait for everything to start.

Did anyone else have a weird crying jag on the morning of their wedding?

The Day Before and The Day Before THE Day...

Josh and I spent, I would guess, about an hour alone together in the two days before the wedding. On Thursday, after meeting with Father Richard and going over our ceremony, he stayed at his Dad's house to tackle a few landscaping projects while I tried to do as much as I could. Father Richard let us know on that visit that he'd be marrying another couple on Friday, so there was no way he'd be able to make it to our rehearsal. I freaked out a little bit, but somehow managed to convince myself that we could figure everything out going by the very detailed instructions he gave us.
Bridesmaid Mary and I went to Sam's Club with my sister and picked up a ton of flowers for our centerpieces, then spent a couple of hours at my Mom's house baking six dozen chocolate chip cookies for our candy buffet. We dropped Mary's dress off at the dry cleaner's to be steamed and did a Wal-Mart run for miscellaneous crap like bobbi pins and clear nail polish, and then ran and got pedicures. I stupidly insisted on waiting until Friday to get my nails done, not realizing that I had a million other things to do that day.
On Friday, feeling fully exhausted, I dragged myself to my trusty tattoo artist Scott. I told you guys about my Grandma's passing in my PWC post, but what I didn't tell you was that I found another way to carry her with me on our wedding day.

It's incredibly awkward to try to photograph your

wrist at this angle!

It's Recap Time!

But before I get to jump into all of the pretty pictures and stuff, I have to tell you what happened first.
My original plan was to leave Texas on Wednesday before the wedding, but my mom really was not happy with that plan. She kept repeating that there was so much to do, simply too much to be done on Thursday and Friday alone. She talked about it so much that, with two weeks left to go, I changed my schedule at work and planned on leaving Tuesday. I knew that if I was running errands on Wednesday I would be doing it alone, because only Bridesmaid Mary and Sister-Friend would be in Santa Fe to help. My other two Bridesmaids wouldn't be getting into town until Friday night.
I spent the weekend before the wedding locked in our house, finishing last-minute DIY projects and packing up. Josh was going to leave a day after me, and I enlisted him to transport my dress and his suit along with a couple of decorations. The majority of things that needed to go with us were packed into my car on Monday night, and early (I mean 5 am early) Tuesday morning, I hit the road.

Personal photo via Instagram, taken after crossing the Santa Fe 

County line!

Hooray For Mail!

After obsessively checking USPS' tracking page, I ran home on Thursday to find a package from Katie in our mailbox. I opened it up and found this:

I always love getting pretty packages, but I didn't expect our wedding photos to come wrapped like a present! As I go on with our recaps, I'll definitely be singing Katie's praises the whole way through. She was wonderful to work with!