All photos by Melissa McClure Photography :)

DH and I were married Nov 2nd at the amazing Atlantis resort in Nassau, Bahamas. Us, our two amazing photographers, Melissa and Mandi of Melissa McClure Photography (based out of CA), and 23 of our family and friends traveled on a cruise ship with us to get there. It was a 5 day cruise, very inexpensive and that price of course included food for the guests all week! We docked in Freeport, Bahamas first and we did our TTD session. Blog here with a few photos:

http://melissamcclure.net/2011/05/05/shawna-and-jason-bahamas-trash-the-dress-session/

The following day, we docked in Nassau (our wedding day)! DH and I got off the ship early, and got a taxi to the Atlantis resort to meet with our wedding coordinator that the resort provides with their wedding package. This includes a limo with escort to get our marriage license, our officiant, beach location, my bouquet, some additional flowers and more. The guys got ready in an amazing suite overlooking the ocean at the resort first and then the girls went to get ready.

Then we got MARRIED!!! on an amazing beach called "Cove Beach". The weather was beautiful...very hot, but there was a nice breeze at the ceremony location, coming off of the water. After the ceremony, we had a cocktail hour right there on the beach, along with our wedding cake and then we all headed back to the ship for a 6:00pm dinner seating! We were treated like a king and queen on the ship that night and it was so much fun!

Our guests can't stop talking about what a great idea it was! It cost them approximately $500 for a 5 day Caribbean vacation with food included all week. That includes air fare to get to the cruise port location. I DEFINITELY recommend this as an inexpensive way to have a DW. It is less stress on the guests, financially. We invited only 26 close family and friends and 23 came!

Here is the blog of a few of our wedding day photos:

http://melissamcclure.net/2011/05/17/jason-and-shawna-atlantis-resort-nassau-bahamas/comment-page-1/#comment-8628

and here is the slideshow that she put together for us, with a combination of more TTD and wedding photos:

www.melissamcclure.com/slideshows/morathwedding

Happy planning! :)

Here are a few TTD and wedding pro pic teasers by Melissa Mcclure Photography. All the rest are in the slideshow (link above) :) Enjoy!

I'm on here!!! Yay! :::::::

Congratulations to our early November Brides! ! ! 

Mon, November 01 - zeuster 
Mon, November 01 - resabug 
Mon, November 01 - < a rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration: none; color: #ad7d6c; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" rel="nofollow" href="/biography/list/Candie">Candie 
Mon, November 01 - sreeder 
Mon, November 01 - Cel 
Mon, November 01 - candicea21 
Mon, November 01 - vmr1727 
Mon, November 01 - ah3183&nb sp;
Mon, November 01 - CaitieFrance 
Tue, November 02 - *slm* 
Wed, Nov ember 03 - luckybride12 
Thu, November 04 - demyful 
Fri, November 05 - jessicark 
Fri, November 05 - Helena115 
Fri, November 05 - dinag 
Fri, November 05 - NICOLETTE26 
Fri, November 05 -  cad26 

We are taking a cruise to the Bahamas with some of our family and friends (and photographers!), which leaves on Halloween this year. We are getting married at our 2nd port of call (Nassau) at Atlantis, Paradise Island. We are so unbelieveably excited! It will be a blast!

Here is my little portable bridal planner that I can shove in my purse and jot things down as I think of them :)

I'm a 27year old mother of a 2.5year old little boy, Aiden :) He is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I am truly blessed to be his mother and to have such a sweet, well behaved, healthy little boy. I love him so much! I'm engaged to my childhood sweetheart, Jason, who is also the father of Aiden (yay!) lol...you can read our story below if you're interested ;)

I graduated from nursing school in May 2010 and I am studying for the national NCLEX-RN exam to become a registered nurse. I was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. Although I complain about how much snow we get there and how long the winters are, I still love it! It's my home. I love the change in seasons. Fall is my favorite! but by the time the summer is over, I really begin to miss the beautiful white snow and how the air smells.

We just moved from Buffalo, New York to Erie, Pennsylvania in July. FI was accepted to a few pharmacy schools in NY and a few different states but the one he chose to attend here in PA fit him perfectly. It is also an accelerated program so he'll finish a year sooner that the typical 4yr programs.

I just got a job offer to be a labor+delivery nurse at a big hospital here in PA!!! I am so excited. I start at the end of August. I always knew that I wanted to be an OB nurse. I knew before I started nursing school and when I delivered my son, I had such a great relationship with my nurse so it only solidified that decision for me. I feel they play a critical role in the new lives of the mom and baby.

I love a lot of things! I love my family. Family is the most important thing to me. I love my friends, and chocolate, singing and shopping. I also have a weird addiction to post-its, school supplies, stationary and organizing! I can spend hours in Office Max! :) I love pasta, bread....all the Italian favs ;) I love Presque Isle state park peninsula here in PA. I love taking pictures, Reese cups, reading books with my son, going for walks, watching movies, going out to dinner, Christmas, learning, fresh flowers, Tim Horton's coffee every morning (a northeastern US thing) ;)

One thing I wish I could change about myself:

I love starting new craft projects but I never finish any of them :( Ughhhhh! So frustrating!

***Some of my bio is friends only, just so that the big details don't leak out! But please friend request me to see the rest!*** (If one of your photos is on my page, please let me know so I can credit you and your photographer!)

     I am proud to say that I am a strong believer in "love at first sight"....because it happened to me! I was 11yrs old and just moved onto a new street. It was a 2 family home and there was a girl my age that lived downstairs from me. I was downstairs at her apartment when her doorbell rang and it was the paperboy collecting money! I went to the door with her and it was him! We both looked at eachother in a special kind of way. He smiled and had these adorable dimples. He walked away and I said to Amanda "WHO IS HE?....WHERE DOES HE LIVE?...I'M GONNA MARRY HIM SOMEDAY...I HAVE TO SEE HIM AGAIN!" Well, his name was Jason and he actually lived about 12 houses down from us!!!He's been her paperboy for quite awhile.

     So that night I begged Amanda to take a completely unnecessary walk around the block with me, hoping to see him again...and I did! He was down the street playing basketball at a friend's house. Everyone kind of knew everyone on that street. All the kids played games outside together and hung out, so Amanda stopped to introduce me to everyone. Slowly, I became part of their "click". Eventually, I found out that Jason was saying those same things about me to his friends. He felt the same way. We lived our childhood years spending all day, everyday together, until our curfew at night! I walked with Jason to deliver papers everyday....sometimes even carried them for him! :) He would come to my house to see if I could come outside...He protected me..I knew we had something so special, even at such a young age. He was the one who made everyone laugh....the popular kid on the block if you will!

     Eventually, I inherited his paper route when he moved on to bigger and better things! It was wonderful. I kept this diary under my bed and I would come home with butterflies in my stomach everyday and write out our whole day together. Exciting things he said to me, if he reached out to hold my hand, if he kissed me! I was in love. At first it was probably puppy love, infatuation, whatever....but I KNEW! I knew we were meant to be. We enjoyed life and it was a storybook romance!

     We both began highschool, then began college and Jason was then deployed to Iraq. We never lost contact. When he got home, I became pregnant!!! We had our miracle baby that I was told I couldn't have without help from a fertility specialist. A little boy named Aiden that looks just like his daddy! and I hope one day that he will have Jason's dimples to melt the heart of a teenage girl oneday :)

     As cute as this sounds, I found out recently that Jason's father was his mother's paperboy years ago! and that's how they met and fell in love!!! They are still happily married! I thought it was amazing!

     We decided that we should take a much needed 1st family vacation. I had just finished my half-way mark through nursing school and Jason had just graduated with his degree. We wanted to get away with the baby so we took a road trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We stayed in a beautiful cabin in the Smoky Mountains. The first day there was kind of crazy because we had just finished a 13 hour drive with 15 month old! His naps were out of whack so we stayed in and enjoyed the view off the patio!

     The second day, we went to an aquarium and when we got home I realized that I was missing one of my diamond earrings that I was wearing. I was so upset because 1.) they were diamonds 2.) they were a gift from Jason 3.) Jason bought the matching necklace for me for my 1st Mother's Day and said it was from Aiden. So the whole situation really sucked! We tried to backtrack and we never found it. We searched the grounds outside from where we parked, all the way to the aquarium....nothing :(

     Jason decided the following day that we should take a bike ride on the Gatlinburg Trail together because I was so upset about losing my earring. So we did and it was beautiful! There were butterflies landing on me, gorgeous streams of water and pretty flowers everywhere. He wanted to stop and take a picture at a nice spot so he told me to pull over because he saw a nice backdrop for a pic! It was near a waterfall. He asked me to stand alone so he could set up the timer on our camera to take an auto-pic. He walked towards me which I thought was so that he could pose with me for the photo, but he began to tear up and got on his knee to propose!!! He said the most beautful things to me and of course I said YES!!! Later to find out that he wasn't really setting up the timer on the camera to take a picture....he had set the camera to video mode and he recorded the whole proposal!!! Our son was right underneath the camera in his Schwinn bike trailer eatting his Goldfish! It was such a precious moment there by the water, with the love of my life who asked me to be his wife, and our beautiful toddler sitting there watching us with a smile on his face! It was the best and I couldn't have thought of a better way to propose!

My FI is AMAZING!!! ;)

and here is the matching wedding band that we will get!!! Ahhhhh! :)

Here are a couple of pictures (below) that I found online of the

same ring I have. They were taken with really good lighting.

           and this is FI's wedding band: by TRITON

                                         A mother's day photo shoot :)

Lazaro 3750!!! IT'S FOR SALE!!!!! Here is the link to my listing:

http://www.preownedweddingdresses.com/dresses/23327/Lazaro-3750-Size-4.html

Please email me at this address if interested: aidensmommy1213@yahoo.com

My shoes:

My jewelery:

FI bought a necklace for me to wear at the wedding. It's from Haute Bride.

My Mom bought the matching earrings from Haute Bride as my "something new". Love them!!!

We are taking a Carnival cruise to the Bahamas with our guests. FI and I are getting off the ship on 11/2 when it docks in Nassau and:

8:00am- Going to Atlantis to check into our room which we will be using to get ready in! We can drop off my dress, FI's suit, Aiden's suit and all other wedding day items at this time.

9:00am- Atlantis will escort us via limo to the Registrar's Office to get our marriage license.

10:00am- Atlantis will escort us in a limo back to Atlantis.

11:00am-Starting to get ready!!! ;)

1:30pm- The guests will leave the cruise ship and start their travels to Atlantis to meet at a designated location for the 3:00 ceremony.

1:45pm- The guys will be at the bar and the girls will arrive at the hotel room  to get dressed. Hair and makeup will be done already so we just have to slip on our dresses and enjoy a small snack  that will be waiting for us in the hotel room, before the ceremony begins :)

2:15pm- The guests  and the guys will be escorted to the ceremony location by Atlantis.

2:30pm- The girls will leave the hotel room and begin their travels to the ceremony location with the wedding coordinator.

3:00pm- The ceremony begins on Cove Beach :)

Atlantis:

Immediately after the ceremony, we will be having a cocktail hour with music while we take our pictures by the famous Melissa McClure and her assistant Mandi :) Then our wedding cake will be served and we can all enjoy a little bit of dancing! After that, everyone will head back to the cruise ship to enjoy dinner!!! We will spend the rest of the night in Nassau!    

We put a deposit down for Melissa McClure Photography!!!! She is so talented and we are so excited to have her shoot our wedding. Also, she is doing a bonus TTD session the day before the wedding in the Bahamas. She and her assistant Mandi are cruising with us (her cruise is booked! YAY!)...This is the photog that our lovely Tovaqt (Tami) used for her wedding in Maui and I fell in love with her pics. She recommended Melissa to me when we spoke on the phone and I am sooooo grateful for that! :) So excited!!!

http://www.melissamcclure.com/

                                   I love this personality!!! I can't wait to meet her in person :)

Our lovely photog is going to do a bonus TTD session for us the day before our wedding in the Bahamas. She will probably do some shots over and under the water :) Here is the beautiful dress I will be wearing by Galina:

UPDATE:::::::

Peonies are out of season when we are getting married :( :( :( :(

I really love peonies. These are my favorite inspiration pics for my bouquet!

A bouquet comes with our Atlantis wedding package but we can only pick from certain flowers. My bouquet will be white casablanca lilies, white roses and light peach roses.

We will also have pale yellow petals on the aisle for some color (no aisle runner).

Jason will have a matching boutonniere and I will probably be DIY'ing the groomsmen's boutonnieres.

Theses are their dresses in the color Clover from DB:

I gave them the option to wear any shoes in either silver or gold. Well, that posed an issue when I was looking to buy them all jewelery as a gift! I didn't want to get gold jewelery is one had silver shoes and vice versa. SO, FI brainstormed and thought that we should throw in a fun color, like PURPLE!!!! :) So this is what we ended up picking out for them. I think it will look great! A purple Coach wristlet and purple pearl necklace, bracelet and earrings. I bought the matching wristlet in silver for myself ;) I'm a Coach addict. I just had too!

and FI and I DIY'd the bouquets, since the florist in the Bahamas wanted to charge nearly $100 per bouquet! and the thing was, we are going back to the cruise ship after our ceremony at Atlantis and flowers can't be brought onto the boat. That was clearly a waste of money, so we DIY'd                                 

I would love something loose and romantic... Here are some of my ideas!

                           l

and here is my hairflower, made by princessallure of Etsy:

Again, if your pic is here, please let me know so I can credit you ;)

I would love to have this bracelet from Etsy seller Mikandesigns but it's way too pricey!!! I am trying to DIY it. UPDATE: DIY was a dIsAsTeR!!! :)

I opened my mailbox today and I saw a pkg from Paloma's Nest. I thought, "Oh my goodness, I won that contest on PW for that free ringbowl I wanted so badly!". I opened it up and there was a thank you card to FI and I from our photographer, Melissa McClure, for choosing her as our wedding photographer. Along with it was this beautiful custom ring bowl that says "Shawna & Jason - November 2, 2010". Wasn't this soooo sweet of her? I just love her!

FOR SALE!!!

I origionally bought these to use for table number holders. Now that we are having a small DW, we aren't having a sit-down reception so we are using them to hang on the chairs at the beach ceremony. We also might hang them on all of our guests cruise ship doors, saying "Morath Wedding Party" or something like that :)

This is an example of how they were used in a wedding I saw in a magazine (left):   

These are mine :)  Qty:25  

I purchased these OOT boxes at .50 per box!!! Me and 2 other PW gals split the cost of these since they come in a case of 100.

           Gottem' !!!!   

I plan to put an OOT Welcome brochure in it that I made for FREE on Vistaprint (picture it folded!)

Inside fold (left): The poem reads "First romance, First love, is something so special, both emotionally and physically, that it touches our lives and enriches them forever-Rosemary Rogers"

Back (middle): Itinerary

Front Cover (right): Welcome and thank you from FI and I

This is what the guests will see when they open it up completely:

(left): Info about our Freeport, Bahamas which is our first stop. Local attractions, good restaurants and things to do. This is where we will be taking our TTD pictures!

(middle): A little bit of a story about our love story and how happy we are that our day has arrived. It also includes what will be happening the morning of our wedding etc.

(right) Info about Nassau, Bahamas which is where we will all be the day of the wedding.

I also plan to put some snacks, a notepad and pen, advil or motrin, and rehersal dinner invitation in there :)

These were fun to make!!! They will go into the guest's OOT bag with two wine glasses, since we are only haveing a cocktail hour. My inspiration came from our lovely Tovaqt ;)

Here are a few items I have for sale (yes, even before my wedding!) :) Since we are having a small DW, we don't have a need for these items...Buyer pays shipping costs. Paypal only. Please PM me if interested :)

• I also have a Pronovias wedding dress for sale on preownedweddingdresses.com -Below is the link to my listing. NAME YOUR PRICE and FI and I will decide if we would accept your offer!!!!!!

• http://www.preownedweddingdresses.com/dresses/11942/Pronovias-Rio-from-San-Patrick-collection-Size-4.html

4 packs of Gartner Studios "Print Your Own" Place Cards-each pack has 48 place cards (white with silver lining)

1 of the 3 packs was opened, only to feel the texture of the paper-all 8 sheets are inside. We have no need for placecards for our small DW. I purchased for $5.99/pack. I will sell for $2.50 per pack.

Flower girl basket: will sell for $10.00

This was never used but we are not having a flowergirl due to the DW :( This is so pretty. It was handmade by a good family friend and she asked me to pass it on to a friend ;) She would just like to sell for the cost of materials used. It is made of white satin or silk material with white/silver ribbon sewn around the edges and the handle is tied with silver ribbon. There are a few minor small marks (you can see in the bottom photo) from storage. They won't be seen at your wedding since they are on the bottom.

Wedding Library Photo Album 4 piece Set: I purchased this for $24.99. I will sell it for $15.00

I do not need since I won't be having a bridal shower or rehearsal dinner to fill those albums with photos.

It is a white set with silver album titles and contains 4 albums. Each fits 3x5 inch or 4x6 inch photos. Each album holds 52 photos, total holds 208 photos.

Album #1) Bridal Shower

Album #2) Rehersal Dinner

Album #3) Wedding Day

Album #4) Honeymoon