Dare You to Muse: Picture Post Extravaganza

Many of you expressed interest in seeing pictures from my wedding (and engagement shoot) annnnd I got them back from my photographer last week. Weeeee!! Rather than inundating Twitter with them, I figured I'd stick them all in one spot. Voila!

Please bear with me while I proceed to be an excessively narcissistic goober.

ENGAGEMENT PICTURES

These are my favourite pictures from the engagement shoot. I know there are a lot, but considering we got 122 final pics, posting 15 isn't that bad for narrowing it down.

This is probably my favourite picture of the whole bunch.

Serious faces...

Not so serious faces. I don't even remember what was so funny, but it was a genuine belly laugh.

We're kinda cute sometimes.

I got my hair done for these pictures and I'm sad to say that it HAD been curled quite nicely to begin with. It was REALLY windy, cold and raining off and on throughout the entire shoot, so my hair kinda went limp. I was pretty sad about it because it was a good indication of what to expect on my wedding day if I went with my hair down, which I'd wanted to do. These pictures were taken 2-3 weeks before the wedding, so we could expect the same sort of weather. Seeing how poorly my hair held up within just a few hours for these pictures ultimately led me to decide that, even though I think I look a lot better with my hair down, that it had to be an up-do for the wedding. Boooo. It was just a kick in the pants considering my hair is naturally curly. Disobedient brat.

This one was PAINFUL! It was a bit of an overcast day, but looking straight up toward the sky like that was a whole lot of ocular owwie. That said, I really like this picture.

I was so happy when she told us to close our eyes!

This last one was a really cute idea. Our photographer took a Polaroid picture of us and had us hold it for a few. I thought it was pretty cute.

WEDDING DAY!!

I'll try not to post too many, but I have about 600 to choose from, so don't hold me to it. I do promise that I won't inundate you with bridal party or family photos though.

There were so many of you that I wish could have been there and some who I know wanted to be there badly, but couldn't make it. Then there may be some of you who, like me, are just nosy and like seeing these things. Hopefully these help a little in all cases. :)

This was my grandmother's watch. My grandfather gave it to her as a wedding gift in the late 1940s. She passed away in December 2012 and the watch went to my mother. Originally we were going to use some of the diamonds from it to make my wedding band and another heirloom piece for our family, but the jewellers didn't want to destroy it sooo it hitched a ride on my bouquet for the big day. Was my something old and something borrowed.

Here's a bunch of something new and something blue.

My sneaky brother, Jordan, dropped by the bridal suite that morning to give me this charm for my bracelet. It's a little bride and groom. So cute. I had a face full of sandwich when he stopped by so, through my tears and a "Mom, hold my sandwich", I gave my big brother a big hug. Thankfully my sister-in-law is a little picture happy and managed to catch the moment below.

I couldn't get my dress down. Had to stand on a chair. They were worried I was going to fall and break my face. Was all kind of amusing.

For those who haven't seen me in person, I've got booty for DAYS. Every time I'd put my dress on prior to this day, I'd scrambled up through the bottom. I didn't want to mess up my hair though, so I was determined to shimmy into it.

VICTORIOUS! Dress went on over the booty! Clearly proud of myself. Not that I'd lost any weight or anything, I just managed to shimmy the booty into submission.

Getting strapped in.

Still getting strapped in.

Annnd call in the reinforcements. Seriously, it takes a while to get strapped into a corset. And all that extra ribbon after... I got a lot closer to Vicki and JP in that they were all up under my dress with a face full of my ass. Sorry, ladies!

Still getting strapped in, but I thought this was a nice distraction picture.

Suit up!

My comment to my husband upon seeing this picture: Your wife has pretty spectacular boobs.

The last minute frenzy before we had to leave.

Touch ups because my tear ducts were being great big stupid girly girls that day.

Meanwhile, over in the guys' suite...

If only we could all be so photogenic...

I didn't know they had done this. Rob REALLY didn't want to. I started crying from laughter when I saw it. The facial expressions in particular. *ded*

Sneaking up on my soon-to-be husband for our "first look". We took our pictures before the ceremony because of the timing restrictions with the venue and daylight. Earliest we could have the ceremony was 6pm and the sun goes down around 5pm in November. Neither of us minded though. I know some people are sticklers for tradition.

We looked. Still liked what we saw. Okay, let's do this.

There was a Starbucks in the hotel lobby. This was another cute idea from our photographer.

Not sure what it is about this one, but I really like it.

This one is just...yeah, love it.

Loved, loved, LOVED our location: Steam Whistle Brewery, which used to be a train yard, hence all the trains. Also happens to be located right across the street from the CN Tower and ~~SkyDome~~ Rogers Centre.

This one makes me smile. She finally caught him in a belly laugh.

Those bridesmaids though!

Not a good picture of me, but I'll take one for the team here because JP looks adorable.

Customary wedding party shots.

For anyone interested:

L-R top row: Adam (my brother), Craig (Rob's friend), Keith (Rob's friend), Rob, James (Rob's brother),
Craig (Rob's friend/best man) and Jordan (my brother)

L-R bottom row: Stacy (my brother Adam's wife), Tash (Rob's/my friend), Vicki (my friend/MoH), me, JP (my friend), Christine (my friend) and Liz (my friend)

Attractive, I know.

More JP! You're welcome.

Getting to be about that time...

The guest favours were Steam Whistle glasses with personalized M&Ms.

There are no good pictures of me coming down the aisle. I was doing my best not to burst into tears (holy emotional Batman!), looked terrified and was reminding myself to breathe, breathe, BREATHE! Plus, I don't like being the centre of attention, so there was that to contend with. For those interested, my bridsmaids and I walked down the aisle to "Kissing You" by Des'ree. Beautiful song that I absolutely love. If you're not familiar with it, check it out.

We're married!

You may recognize these handsome fellows.

And this rather attractive group as well.

And let's not forget this beauty.

And these beauties too!

I made this within the hour before I had to leave for the hotel the day before. Pretty happy with the way it turned out.

I laugh every time. Every.single.time.

"I Believe in a Thing Called Love" by the Darkness was our reception entrance song. Because awesome.

Stole this one from my sister-in-law's perspective.

Cheers!

The Shoe Game! He thinks he's a better driver. PFFFFFT.

But we can agree that he drives a lot faster.

There was a miscommunication and our DJ didn't bring the giant dice to roll to make us kiss. We didn't like the idea of clinking glasses, so, if you wanted us to kiss, you had to sing a song about love.

Shmiggy and Beardy gave it a go too.

They were successful.

After "our" speech. I'd been bugging him for weeks about it and, of course, it came down to the wire. He started writing it the night before. He sent it to me around 11am on our wedding day to proof-read and add whatever I wanted. Erm, sorry, I was busy getting my bride on. So I had no idea what the speech said and didn't say one peep at the podium. I do regret it a bit, but meh.

First dance.

Again, that whole centre of attention thing... So I had the cake at the very back of the room and we cut it very discretely because STOP LOOKING AT ME! :)