My Sister's Married!

It was beautiful. She was beautiful. The groom cried. I cried. I made a toast and cried some more. I made a Friends reference in my toast.

It is a love about having, and giving, and sharing, and receiving.

(Honeymoon portrait by the photographer on their cruise. Rachel hasn't gotten all the official wedding photos back yet.)

But let's be honest. What you really want to see is how her dress turned out. You may recall that Rachel went to school to study fashion design. And that she had planned to design and sew her own wedding dress.

She said she spent over 260 hours hand-beading the dress. And she looked like a million bucks.

All photos by me or via Facebook unless otherwise specified

From her bridal portrait session by Tyson Pough, pulled from Facebook. 

(It's the best photo I have of the detail, sorry if I'm not supposed to steal it, Rachel!)

I'm so impressed. Every time anyone asks me how the wedding went, I have to whip out my phone and show them her work. I keep telling her she needs to start her own business.

With our beautiful mom. Rachel didn't carry a bouquet; instead she won this dramatic bridal cuff.

I did a good job as Best Person of Awesomeness, if I do say so myself. I confiscated her phone pretty much immediately and fielded all the potential drama away from her. I did ridiculous things to try to keep her laughing. We watched/quoted the Friends episode with Monica and Chandler's wedding, because that's what Rachel wanted to do, and we probably destroyed my cousin's data plan with the Netflix usage.

Waiting around inside. It was cold and incredibly windy out.

Bridesmaid selfies! 

With my pretty cousin! 

The flowers were really beautiful. It's a shame I couldn't take them home, because Elliott likes to eat flowers.

The wedding was lovely, and the food was excellent. I ate a lot of dinner rolls and penne pasta, among other things, and Matt ate a lot of cake. We danced to Big Band-era music, with the occasional "Cha-Cha Slide" and "Cupid Shuffle" thrown in. My parents danced together quite a few times (!!!), and my mom was out on the dance floor almost the whole night!

I don't have any photos of Rachel's car, but we decorated it too, for the sendoff. (Matt thought of that. In that regard, I failed as Best Person of Awesomeness.) We got it done just in time for them to walk out among golden ribbon wands, and Matt threw some snacks and beers and waters in the backseat for them to consume later (since they left a lot of their dinner and cake plates on the sweetheart table, uneaten, FOR SHAME).

And once the wedding was over, we went back to my parents' house with some of our family members where I learned that my dad had bought not one, but THREE enormous bottles of moscato! (Regular moscato, pink moscato and red moscato! He's not a wine drinker, and I guess I didn't make myself clear when I requested red wine…) Surprise, they all tasted basically the same.

I'm so glad we had time to spend with the family and that everything turned out so beautifully. :)