After nearly three weeks, I am home again, sitting at my desk at work, getting back into routine, a married woman. Our trip to Colorado for our wedding and our honeymoon to Antigua and Disney World were awesome, and I have a ton of pictures to go through. For now, the highlights from the days spent preparing for our wedding:

Wednesday, we drove from Lawrence to Black Forest, my parents a few hours behind us. The one thing I ended up having forgotten was the blue cardigan I had spent so much time and effort picking out, and my parents were able to get into my house to grab it for me as soon as I called them from central Kansas, while we were buying sunflower seed cookies from Kansas Originals. (My dad, Nat, and I had seen Morrissey at Liberty Hall the night before we all left. It was incredible, of course, and so worth getting very little sleep the night before an 8-hour drive for. It was my third time seeing him in ten years of undying love, and as usual, I spent the entire first half unable to control my emotions/feeling a lot like the ladies in this scene in Top Secret.) When we got in to the Forest, we were surprised by the “field of sunflowers” Grandpa Floyd had made us. They were definitely a hit throughout the weekend.

Thursday morning was foggy and gorgeous. My dad put together a table, Nathaniel and I went to Grandma Soucie’s to get some things we wanted to borrow and pick flowers on her property, Nathaniel and his parents transported the picnic tables we were borrowing from a school down the road, and we went to a laughably bad dinner with both sets of parents and Nathaniel’s sister. We can certainly tell you one place not to eat in Colorado Springs…

Friday, we picked up our order from the wholesale florist’s and got our marriage license. Nat’s mom helped us ice the cake she made for us, and Nat and the ladies in his family put together flower arrangements while my girlfriends and I went for manicures/pedicures. Despite terrible traffic on I-25, all the girls made it and it was so nice. In the evening, all of our closest friends came over for a pizza party. Friends helped put flower stems in jars, helped paint signs, helped by putting Clue on TV and hanging out. I was stressed trying to make this giant chalkboard sign last-minute, but super happy. I’ve known almost all of my friends for 15+ years (that picture with Megan, Alisha, Aubrey, me, and Ian is the elementary school gang), and seeing everyone together again was truly wonderful.

What I remember about Saturday before the wedding was Therese, having spent the night on the couch, sitting next to me at the kitchen table while I tried to eat and finished directions signs, driving around the forest helping me nail them into the ground and try not to make them too ugly, hanging out in the bedroom while I showered; my mom and Rachel making a salad; my dad putting water in bottles of flowers and helping me hang collages while Cody made his dog-bird nest under the crabapple tree. And then it was time to get married. And I don’t have those pictures yet, but soon :)