Raise Your Glass

One of my favorite details from the wedding was our set we purchased from Things Remembered. My mother and I headed over there to pick out champagne flutes and ended up buying a whole set.

There were champagne glasses, cake cutters, picture frames, and a Christmas tree ornament in the set. It was the Christmas tree ornament that really sold me because I love Christmas. I look forward to decorating our first tree as a married couple and getting that ornament out.

Because of our purchase, we got our monogram made for free. We slapped that monogram on everything! It appeared on our STDs, on our wedding day, and especially etched onto all our purchased items. See for yourself!

Image via Things Remembered with a sample monogram

Wedding Image showing our wedding program featuring our monogram.

Wedding Image showing our monogram on our sweetheart table at the reception.

Wedding Image showing our champagne flutes with our monogram.

Wedding Image showing us toasting with our champagne flutes!

Guess What Mrs. Kettle Has?

I decided not to leave you guessing. I've got pictures!! I'll be finally finishing the posts from pre-wedding land and then launching into my recaps.

Here are a few more photos to whet your palate. All photos have been released to me by my fabulous photographer Jolie Images. So all captions on pictures will be my commentary on the wedding moment, not a reference line.

Sneaking outside for a quick pic in the snow.

A lovely detail shot of our seating chart.

This is one of my favorite pics of all 1500 of them. It's Mr. Kettle and his 10 attendants.

Getting ready to put on my dress; it went so differently from how I pictured it.

Getting married, having prayer, feeling close.

Mr. Kettle and me with my immediate family.

Mr. Kettle and me with his immediate family.

Getting Married Once or Twice, Part Three

When I left off, Mr. Kettle and I got our wedding license in a county other than the one we were supposed to get married in on our wedding day.

We had one more meeting each with our two officiants. At this meeting, we let them know of our intentions to get married early. They were both a bit taken aback, but in support of us doing it as long as it wasn't some faux-elope attempt on our part. When we said we wanted our parents and immediate families involved, their relief was palpable.

Once we had a day picked out, a wedding license, and the cooperation of our officiants, we told our parents. My parents were not okay with it at first. They didn't advise against it, but their displeasure was obvious. If you had shelled out thousands of dollars for someone's wedding, you'd be pretty upset that they chose to have a different wedding too.

Mr. Kettle's parents were more okay with it, but their general response to him is usually okay. If he thinks it's a good idea, they do too, generally. My parents weren't thrilled, but they were on board. All that was left was inviting our siblings, my grandmother, a couple of close family friends, and a musician to play the organ.

I told Mr. Kettle I wanted 12-20 people there. Including us, there ended up being exactly 20. It was very intimate and private and special. We just wore whatever and my maid of honor got us flowers on the way over for the day.

We had a simple ceremony. Vows, exchanging rings, communion, and a lot of tears. When I get around to re-capping the ceremony on Saturday, you'll see it was such a different atmosphere.

After the ceremony, everyone looked so happy. My parents were wiping away tears and so were his parents. It felt so rigth to me to be getting married with just those people. There were a lot of family and friends who weren't there that Wednesday who were there on Saturday, but I was okay.

I looked forward to Saturday after that. All I'd wanted Saturday to be was a big party and a celebration with a lot of people we care about. Now that's all it was in my head. No more 600 eye nightmares. Just looking forward to wearing a beautiful dress and eating some fantastic food.

Our first of two wedding days.

There is an extra benefit to getting married earlier. We chose our wedding day because of it's proximity to Mardi Gras. I wanted our anniversary to fall before Mardi Gras every year. By moving it up 3 days, we will have that now. Since Mardi Gras is an important holiday to us as a couple, I'm pretty psyched by this development.

Okay, before I start my recaps, I'll finish with the DIY projects I completed before going into my guest-list funk.

Did you chosen wedding day change for any reason?

Getting Married Once or Twice, Part Two

Where we last left off, I was having nightmares about the size of my wedding. Sure I wanted 35 people in my wedding party, but I didn't want 10 times that many people eye balling me out in the crowd during the ceremony.

So I just stuck my head in the sand and avoided all wedding talk I could. They didn't try to talk to me about it, but everyone from my parents to my maid of honor and definitely Mr. Kettle could tell something was wrong.


About 10 days before our wedding, I asked Mr. Kettle, "Do you really want to get married next Saturday?" That question, understandably so, freaked him out. After a confusing 15 min or so, he figured out that I wasn't trying to suggest I didn't want to marry him, I just didn't want to get married on that day.

He then suggested, "why don't we get married before that day?" He knew I didn't want to call off the wedding. He knew eloping wasn't an option. He figured we could just get married a couple days before Saturday. That was on Saturday, we'd be married and I wouldn't have to feel like I was sharing such an intimate moment with all these people I didn't even know.

As soon as he said the words, I felt a million times better. I didn't even know I could feel better. I had resigned myself to feeling more anxiety and resentment than anything else. And with one short sentence, Mr. Kettle made everything better.

I knew it wasn't that simple. Our parents were probably not going to love the pre-wedding idea. We'd have to pick a day when our immediate family would even be available to come to a pre-wedding. We had two officiants, and we wanted both of them there, so that had to be worked out too.

Oh, and there's the marriage license dilemma. In Illinois, you must get your license in the county you'll get married in. Saturday was in Will County. But everyone lives in Cook County. We hadn't gotten our license yet because of timing and business, so that kind of worked out. We just went to the Markham Courthouse, which was much easier to get to, and got our license for Cook County.

Next, I'll talk about breaking the news to people, and getting married for the first time.

Getting Married Once or Twice, Part One

I know I went M.I.A. right before my wedding, and I'm sorry about that. I didn't intend to, it just kind of happened. If you know my posts by now, you know there's a story leading up to this, so I'll just dive right in.

In the weeks leading up to my wedding, I really began to resent the wedding. I didn't want to talk to Momma Kettle about the guest list. I didn't want to talk to Mr. Kettle about the honeymoon. I didn't get any work done on my last few DIY projects. I never went to pick up my wedding dress.

I didn't have cold feet. I had an ever-growing resentment towards all things wedding that was only getting worse. I didn't want to blog about it because I didn't want to be a Debbie Downer. Who wants to read about the bride who's about to have the most fabulous wedding ever being resentful of it? No one, that's who.

What was I so resentful of you ask? Well, mostly the guest list. There were a lot of people on the list. Waaay more than I wanted. Before we were even engaged, I told Mr. Kettle I wanted a small wedding of no more than 75 people. After talking with his mother, he realized the guest list would have to be way bigger than that because his family is so large.

Then my parents agreed. The guest list went up to 150. Then 250. Then 350. It just kept going up. The final guest list kept inching up and up. Even after all the RSVPs were in, the list kept going up. One day it was 286. Then it was 289. I was furious that everyone kept adding people.

The final straw was when the pastor at the church where my brother is youth pastor invited himself to the wedding. I've never met this man and wouldn't know him if I saw him on the street. So all the talk of how grateful I should be because so many people love me and want to share my day seemed like a load of bull.

I kept imagining how this intimate moment of exchanging our vows was no longer that. My 75 person wedding had quadrupled. And every final decision that had to be made was out of my control. When it came to the things I really cared about, I was being told my opinion didn't matter or was wrong because there was a certain way things had  to be done. When it came to tiny details I could care less about (like the color ribbon on our jumping broom), I was told I was being ridiculous for not wanting to make decisions.

I was miserable. I wasn't feeling elope-y or anything like that. I just had lost all my enthusiasm for this big ass wedding I was about to have. The parts I wanted to be big (i.e., the wedding party, my dress, the fanciness of the venue) weren't enough to outweigh how I was feeling about the guest list.

I started having nightmares. I would be walking down the aisle with my dad. Then he would disappear and it would just be me standing there, with 600 eyes all staring at me. I couldn't recognize anybody, and I couldn't even see Mr. Kettle past all the eyes. Those nightmares were pretty unbearable.

I'm not sure how all this sounds, but I'm just telling my story in case someone else went through anything similar. There are compromises and decisions you make in the planning process that aren't your ideal. But what do you do when you're faced with those decisions ballooning out of your control later and feel trapped?

In the next part, I'll explain the solution Mr. Kettle came up with to our problem.

Mrs. Kettle Reporting In

Hi Hive!!

I've missed you all so much. So much happened in the weeks leading up to my wedding, there was just too much to say. I've gotten married, gone on a fabulous honeymoon, and I'm back!

I've got to de-wedding my apartment, finish the paperwork to get my name changed, and send-out thank you cards. It all feels a bit overwhelming, but I'm glad to be married, and all the rest is just extra duties to get over the no-longer-single hump.

My fabulous photographer already has our pictures online, but I haven't gotten my disc yet so I can't put up photos just yet. I've seen a bunch of pictures on Mr. Kettle's Facebook page that are pretty amazing. I will leave you with one photo that is currently my wallpaper on Google and my Blackberry until I can deliver more.