This is shawnamarie0509's Green Wedding!

I know I posted this last week, but Its been almost six months since I was married! I've finally almost finished my parent's photo album and stumbled across this site again. I miss you ladies! I realize I kind of disappeared in the middle of my recap of my wedding. I'm sure most of you don't know me anymore and might not care to much what my wedding, six months ago, was like. But I remember being in your shoes, and how helpful pictures and ideas were! I really want to finish a record of my wedding, just for the memories. Maybe it will help you out along the way! So, in the next few days you may see some posts from me.
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My ceremony was perfect. I loved the decorations, everything was really beautiful. I had a hard time concentrating because my freaking flowers were so heavy, my arm was shaking after a few minutes from trying to hold them up. Everything went by so fast, I don't remember to much, other than the flowers! I kept giggling though, I knew if I wasn't smiling I might start crying, especially if I looked at my parents! Our flower girls (two tries!) skipped out on us, so one of John's groomsmen threw petals as they pulled out the aisle runner. Everyone seemed to find that amusing!

Its been almost six months since I was married! I've finally almost finished my parent's photo album and stumbled across this site again. I miss you ladies! I realize I kind of disappeared in the middle of my recap of my wedding. I'm sure most of you don't know me anymore and might not care to much what my wedding, six months ago, was like. But I remember being in your shoes, and how helpful pictures and ideas were! I really want to finish a record of my wedding, just for the memories. Maybe it will help you out along the way! So, in the next few days you may see some posts from me.

Before I start up again I feel the need to rant about my honeymoon. If you're looking for a place to go, the island of Santorini, off of Greece in incredible. Definitely check it out! And don't be scared by my experience!!

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Where to start… Well, like I said before, our wedding night started the bad luck with the cops and drama and nonsense. The car ride to the airport was the start of our misery. It took us three hours to get to JFK, which is only about an hour from where we live. It was a miserable drive through traffic and made us super cranky, especially since my parents, sister and her boyfriend all insisted on cramming into a pickup truck to bring us to the airport. Nice of them to want to come, but seriously? Super squished, especially for that long. No offense, but we could have said goodbye to at least my sister and her boyfriend in the driveway. Love them dearly.

We got to the airport and were rushing, since we were running late. We got to our gate, only to find out that our flight was delayed a bit, which allowed us some time to grab food. What we didn’t realize was that we would sit in the airport in boredom for another hour until we could actually board the airplane. We were super happy when we finally got on the plane and were ready to start our honeymoon. Only to sit at the gate for half an hour. When the plane finally got moving again we were excited, only for it to stop and the captain to announce that since there was construction on the runways, they were only using one, and we were around 30th in line to take off. I started crying at that point. No joke. I was so tired and miserable, I just wanted to be on vacation.

We arrived in Heathrow (our layover stop) two hours late, with 20 minutes until our connecting flight took off. Our flight attendant assured us we’d make our flight. Moron. If you’ve ever been to heathrow you’ll realize how huge it is, you have to take a bus to get to any other terminals. So, we ran to the bus to the British Airways terminal, knowing that the chancing of making our flight were very slim. We got to the other terminal, where we were told our flight already left, we were sent to ticket counter to get a new flight. The woman there told us that British Airways was on strike, and they had no other flights to Athens that day, and that we’d have to go back to American airlines and they’d get us to Athens, since they messed us up in the first place. Back on the bus. And then, we had to go through security, just to get to the American Airlines desk. The woman there told us the next flight they could put us on was leaving in 5 hours, and that we’d get to Athens at 1030pm, but our connecting flight to Santorini (our honeymoon destination) was leaving at 9pm, and we’d miss it. The bitch told us that even though it was their fault, since we booked our flight to Santorini with Olympic Airlines they had no obligation to get us to Santorini, and didn’t have to find us a hotel for the night we’d have to spend in Athens.

At that point we didn’t freaking care, I was crying non stop as we boarded the bus to go to yet another terminal. There we got our tickets to Athens, and the guy at the desk told us if we wanted to get to Santorini first thing in the morning we’d have to actually go through customs to the ticket counter and get new tickets. With five more hours to kill we figured, why not. After getting the new tickets I called my dad, back in the US and told him about our nightmare. He called the hotel on Santorini for us, to let them know we wouldn’t make it that night, and he found us a hotel near the Athens airport, which was three miles away and had a shuttle….

We got to Athens only to find out the hotel was half an hour away and there was no shuttle. I cried some more. We asked a taxi driver how much it would cost to take us to the hotel, and he said 70euro, more tears. We had already had to spend 180 on a last minute hotel, I couldn’t imagine spending that much more just to freaking get there. We went inside and spoke with one of the airport people, who was very nice, and she looked up the address and said it should only be 30 euro. Back out to the taxi drivers. We found a new driver and asked him, he too said 70 euro, John started discussing this with the driver when an Athens cop noticed us. He came over and asked what was going on, John tried to explain and then the cop started yelling at the driver in Greek. We were so confused, and of course I was crying. The cop asked to see John’s passport and wrote down his information, which really freaked me out. Then he got us another taxi and sent us to the hotel. By time we got to the hotel it was around midnight, and we had to wake up at 5am to get a taxi back to the airport to catch our flight to Santorini. We figured, screw it, and went to the bar. So basically we paid a ridiculous amount of money for a hotel room we spent about two hours in. And at some point during the whole ordeal I had messed up my foot.

We finally made it to Santorini. Our hotel was incredible, THE SANTORINI PRINCESS. No words to describe it. Go there!!! Seriously!!! The staff were amazing and got us an ATV that afternoon so we could explore the island and wouldn’t waste the day. We had a great time while we were there, wine tasting, seeing ancient sites, visiting the volcano, riding donkeys and swimming in hot springs. It was when we tried to leave that our luck caught back up with us…

We tried to pay for our hotel bill and our debit card was declined. It had worked perfectly fine all week. We called up the bank (ugh! @ overseas charges) and they said they didn’t know why it wasn’t working, and that they saw my note on the account that we’d be in Greece, but someone must have turned it off anyway and it would take a few hours to fix at the least. A few hours?!?! Our plane was leaving for Athens in an hour and a half. The hotel staff (who were awesome) took John out into the town so he could go to an ATM, where he was able to take a couple hundred dollars at a time. I stayed back at the hotel and called the airline to tell them we wouldn’t make our flight. They said in order to switch flights we’d have to pay 45euro per ticket. At that point, I didn’t even care, I was so freaking pissed. In the mean time I kept trying our card at the hotel while John visited every ATM on the island to take out enough money to pay for our hotel in cash. He finally returned, and we paid in cash, giving up on our card. By time we made it to Athens it was evening, and our entire day there was shot, leaving us with only one day in the city, instead of two as planned. The next day we tried to cram in as much sight seeing as possible. Me limping the entire time, with the foot I had messed up earlier in our trip. We did get to see a lot, but it would have been nice to relax more.

We left for home with a stop in Spain, where we were able to leave the airport for lunch and sangrias, which was nice. Unfortunately on the 9 hour flight home we were stuck on a super old airplane that had only one very large television, which they didn’t turn on until six hours into the flight. I read a lot, but John was super bored and annoyed the hell out of me! When we finally touched down in the US we just wanted to get home, but unfortunately John’s sister got lost on the way home, and it took us three hours, once again. We were so super cranky. After that, we just wanted a vacation from our vacation!!

After the honeymoon our luck took a while to turn around, my car broke down the next day, and almost a month later still wouldn't start, the hot water heater in our house broke, the starter on John’s car broke and tons of other miscellaneous things went wrong. Starting with the cops my wedding night, we couldn't seem to catch a break, but six months later we're happy to say we've had no major disasters recently!
If you’ve read this entire thing I love you. And I hope your honeymoon was/will be a lot less stressful than mine!
Enjoy the pictures of our adventure; we did have some fun in between moments of misery!

My flowers were really beautiful. I was upset though, since I had specifically spoke with my florist about having the handle thing of the bouquet wrapped in fabric so I could pin on a picture of my deceased Mommom. Instead it was this very awkwardly shaped, uncomfortable plastic thing. We ended up sticking the pin into the stem of a flower, not what I had hoped for.

The bouquet was so awkward that it kind of ruined the ceremony for me. The whole time I was concentrating on how painful and heavy the flowers were. Before we even said our vows my hand was shaking like crazy trying to hold it up.

My sister’s bouquet was also a little disappointing. Hers was a mini cascade, since she was my MOH, but when we got in the limo to go to the ceremony the flowers started falling out of it. We had to shove them back in all afternoon.

Anyway, what do you think of the flowers?

Well, our cake experience was also an adventure. Our cake was included in our reception venue package, so as the wedding got closer I called the bakery the venue uses to set up an appointment to talk about a design. The cake lady was so mean! She told me that she never meets with brides from my venue, and that I should just give my venue a head count and they’d pass it along to her. Seriously? I’m not a bridezilla, but I only plan on getting married once, and I’d kind of like to have an idea of what my cake will look like! I told her that I wanted to drive down anyway, and after some rude words she finally agreed. I told my venue about her, and they said I wasn’t the first to complain, and that they’d speak with her. She wasn’t much nicer when we got there, and she gave me hardly any choices on my cake, but it did end up looking pretty, and it tasted pretty good.

Of course I’ve told you already in my reception nightmare post about how my cake melted about an hour into the reception, because my crappy venue refused to turn on the AC until my little bride and groom cake topper took a plunge down the side of the cake. Oh well, at least we got the pictures in before it fell apart!
How has your cake experience been ladies? Hopefully you’ve had more success that I did!

Like I said yesterday, My photographer was amazing, and there are so many fantastic pictures, so I'm posting them in segments! This post is favorite pictures of my gown :)

Overall my gown shopping experience wasn't that great. I found my gown when I stumbled into a random tiny bridal store after being treated like shit at a different store. I tried on a private label by g gown and fell in love with it! I drove two hours away to try on the dress in ivory, and then returned to the tiny bridal shop, since it was the only store in my area that carried the designer. I ended up customizing my gown, making the top full of crystals and designs, instead of just around the edges, and adding a corset. My gown came out incredible! I absolutely loved it. Unfortunately the woman who owned the shop was really really rude. She never even bothered to pretend to learn my name, and just ordered us around, shouting "Bride!!" and "Mother!" She took all of my girls dresses up to much, to the point that my sister had to get a shorter heeled shoe. She flat out refused to take in my cousin's gown, so she had to take it to another seamstress and she did such a crappy job on my friend's that the seams were splitting before she even put it in! I wouldn't recommend The Bridal Path to anyone, but I'm so glad I went there because I found the gown of my dreams!

Regardless, we fixed all the dress catastrophes, and we all adored our dresses!

What do you ladies think?

There are so many! Yikes! And my photographer was amazing!! They're all so perfect. I've decided i'm going to post them in sections. This first section will be pictures of John & I. Since thats what its all about, right? Stay tuned for ceremony & reception decor, cake & first dance!!

[p.s. let me know what you think of the pictures. pretty please!]

Wow. What to say about my wedding. Unfortunately my reception hall made my experience very disappointing. There were only some minor issues during my actual reception that occurred. The bridal party was given a separate room during the cocktail hour, where the waitress forgot us. My DJ had to go and find someone just so we could get drinks. The reception was so unbelievably hot, everyone was complaining like crazy, it wasn't until my cake melted and my cake topper tumbled down the side, ruining a whole part of it that they turned on the AC.

The rest of my reception went smoothly, it was afterward that left me in tears. First off, when we booked the hotel a year prior we were put under the impression that they would open up their bar, which was usually closed on Sundays, for us. Not exactly how it went. The bar was opened up for the whole hotel, and it was packed. We were pretty disappointed, even more so when my cousin had her camera stolen. Second,there had been a domestic dispute somewhere in the hotel, so cops were there. My friend, who had had alot to drink attempted to take his drink from the reception into the hotel bar, when he was told by the "bouncer" or whoever they had posted at the door, that he couldn't take his drink in he attempted to sweet talk the guy, the guy called the cops over, and after some arguing my friend was arrested. I understand my friend gave them a hard time, and should have been kicked out of the bar, or maybe even the hotel, but ARRESTED?!? My dad got really pissed that the cops would do this at my wedding, and that the hotel had caused it in the first place. The cops then tried to ARREST MY DAD!!! DH's cousin, who is a cop in a different state was able to talk them out of it, thank god. After that whole fiasco we tried to just hang out in the bar a little bit. My friend, who had flown in from the Netherlands, and didn't quite understand much innocently tried to walk into the lobby with her drink. The door guy screamed at her, loud enough for all of us to hear. Perhaps he was worked up from the prior incident, but when Vera's husband came over to try to translate and explain the doorman told him "put your beer down and get the hell out of my bar".

It was at that point that my mother demanded the manager come to the hotel. The manager was somewhat apologetic, she offered us soda, and let us hang out on the hotel steps. Seriously? Thats the best you can do? After what you did to my wedding? I would NEVER EVER RECOMMENDED this place. Looking back now its a pretty good story, and my ceremony went perfectly, and the minor issues during the reception are to be expected. After all the tears we decided to hang out on the stairs until 4am and enjoy friends we didn't see that often. Despite everything, I was able to realize that one day, we'd have a good story to tell our kids! Not to mention the nightmare our honeymoon turned into.....

I know, I know, its been two weeks! Honestly, my wedding was amazing, but as soon as the reception was over my life turned kind of sucky. The honeymoon was a nightmare, and things have been going wrong like crazy since then. But we're still in love, and its just a test at the start of our marriage! I promise I'll tell the whole ridiculous story later, but for now I just wanted to show off some wedding pics!! I miss you girls!

Thank you all so much for the ideas and support. I'm so glad I was a part of the WBC family! I wish I had posted more often, but I promise there will be tons of pictures to come! Best of luck to those of you getting married before I'm home from my honeymoon!

I made this super cute shirt yesterday. I just bought iron on letters from Michaels, and then a really comfy tank from Target. It ended up being 9$ and totally worth it. I plan on wearing it on the super long flight to Greece, so I can be cute and comfortable! What do you ladies think?