This is my dress:

And you want to know something amazing?  The bottom tier is detachable to reveal my cute lil' gams that will no doubtedly be covered in some quirky colored fishnets balancing on some fabulous heels.

I wore it with a wine bolero from Forever 21 found a few days before the wedding.  I bought it to wear with my rehearsal dinner dress, but since it was chilly on the wedding day, I brought it to throw on over my dress for the reception. 

The necklace is a Betsey Johnson, and the second love of my life.  No piece of jewelry has ever personified Bethany, until now. 

The veil was David's Bridal, the blusher style.  I wasn't going to have a veil, but DH seemed disappointed when he found out.  So I ran in on my break one day about a week before the wedding and picked it up for $24. 

And I wore flesh colored fishnets with plum patent heels.  I bought them at Wal Mart for my birthday last year.  Go figure.  I couldn't find another pair that I loved as much. 

Oops the seam in my hoisery is showing.

But for the last half of the reception, I took off the lower tier of my dress and put on these babies to really get down on the dance floor:

All my bridesmaids knew the plan to change into sneakers, so they brought their chucks too!

This was the inspiration for the quirky painted pumpkins I made for the reception.

For my version, we picked Long Island Cheese Pumpkins from our local pumpkin patch.  They are pale and more squat, like a wheel of cheese.  One of the few diy's that I took on.  They were great for our parents and family to take home after the wedding to decorate for fall too.

And I painted some little white gourds for fun too.

The most special part of our day was reading our homegrown vows in place of the stock, "I, Jane Doe, take you, John, to be my lawfully . . . ."  DH had everyone laughing, then mine had everyone crying as we spoke from experiences that were only ours and allowed guests to be a part of 'Bethany and Adam's wedding'--a ceremony that could truly have only belonged to us.  He shared an anecdote from growing up and how he knew he'd find a wife, and I thanked him for sticking around through all my health struggles.  I cried all the way through his, and all the way through reading mine, but despite that, I still recommend creating your own vows to any couple.  Mine were probaly a little long, but we had so many people share with us how special it was that we let them see our raw devotion to each other, that I am okay with my light editing hand this one time.

Mine:

Remember after we first went out together, I texted--while driving, which I shouldn’t have done, maybe--”Are we on the same page?”  You asked what book we were reading, and I thought maybe you were thinking of a class assignment and didn’t get that I knew.  Knew from the beginning.  That we would have a story, and I wanted to start in the same place.  And here we are, chapters later, inviting all of our friends and our family to crowd on the page with us, to see and hear and maybe even feel, the love that we’ve been experiencing these past two years and bless it.

Love that has been preparing us for today and all the todays onward.  You’ve given me a love that comforts me when I’m frustrated, first by trying to make me laugh (and sing me a Celine Dion  power ballad in precious, but miles from the key falsetto which usually is enough to dissolve my problems) and when I won’t smile, no matter how hard you try, you scoop me up and cut the box down around me to show me how big our world is.  Your love has proven from our very first days together that you believe in “in sickness and in health,” when you sat with me through bellyaches and painful diets, and drank that medicine I had that made my mouth foam up just to persuade me to drink more.  You’ve left parties early and come to get me when I’m too sick to drive.  I’ve wondered if it was too much, too much to ask for someone to take care of me when my body won’t work right, but you’ve always kissed teary cheeks and put your hand over a swollen, screwy belly to assure me that you gladly give up anything else you could have had, for what you do have here with me.

I don’t know if my love that I’m offering has been that sacrificial yet, but it’s learning from yours.  And I am willing to give up all my other possible stories for the one we’re writing here also. In this relationship, I have never had low expectations.  I want so many great things for our lives and for you.  And the more I want, the more we seem to get.  Even when life happens with lost jobs and crumbling health, you believe in bigger jobs and full recovery and adventures better than the ones we’ve had.  You never settle for mediocrity in your work or in your art or in your heart, and you won’t let me settle either.  So I am wanting big things from this marriage and this life, because I trust that our God and the love we get from Him and each other is what fulfills our hope.

I want to build a family with you that is an exception to the rule and a cluttered home that is a sanctuary from the real clutter outside.  I want to live a really good story with you, and I know that we will.  Because you are an amazing character, just as good as the ones in my books--better, because you love me back.  You let me come into your world and join your adventures as a partner in crime, not a spectator.  I want us to share what we have, little or lots, with whoever will let us.  I want to keep laughing with you and singing Christmas songs in August and talking in a high pitched voice to the dogs because that’s just joyful stuff, and we have made it through some pretty tough stuff by remembering how to smile anyway, after we cry and sometimes we smile and laugh while we cry, and I think that’s a pretty good practice.  I want to keep writing and creating, and I want you to do that too.  It makes us feel deep, sometimes too deep to be understood, but we try anyway.  Most of all, I want to keep pursuing you and our God.  I want to keep knowing you as you change and remember you as you are today.  I want a lot of stuff for us.  I will do a lot of stuff to make sure we get our adventures and we have a nest to land in when we need a break from them.  I do it, though, because I love and believe in this story we’re a part of.  I trust the author. 

So, Adam Peterson, Luke to my Lorelai, if we’re on the same page, will you be my husband.  I will be your wife.

For autumn, black opaque tights with black shoes are the chicest thing and just about as flattering as it gets for any shape of leg.  I knew I wanted SHORT dresses for my bridesmaids, so the tights were an obvious choice to cover chilly little stems and maintaining modesty in a place of worship.

I love how Zooey does it.

This is how my girls did it.

For the boys,  DH had a very fun style in mind.  A combination of styles really.  As a dj, he had been choosing the music from the very beginning to set the mood and present our personalities from the very first moments of the ceremony.  Instead of tuxes, he asked his guys to wear black suits of their choosing with a white shirt.  Then we provided skinny ties for a Reservoir dog look.

However, he wanted his walkout to be just as dramatic as mine.  So he chose to make his entrance to the theme from Top Gun, and we got all the guys aviators INCLUDING THE OFFICIANT!

Here's how it came out:

DH's little nickname for me is 'cupcake,' and cupcakes have been my favorite treat for a very long time.  And everyone jokes that although I cannot cook anything, I can bake a mean cupcake.  So the cupcake tower was one wedding trend we could embrace.  I didn't search for any inspiration pics.  I just went to my favorite cupcake shop and talked flavors.  We settled on 6 flavors including caramel apples and pumpkin with cream cheese icing for our fall affair.

And then for the groom's cake, DH had his heart set on A Christmas Story themed cake, a leg lamp.  That didn't work out though.  So I had an idea for our dry wedding.  For awhile, DH was bringing this amazing rum cake from a local bakery to me and my boss at work every Friday.  So I had an idea to have spiked cakes for the groom's cake.  He loved the idea; so we asked the bakery what they could do for us.  The result was some very stout pieces of cake, spiked with rum, amaretto, and grand marnier and covered in chocolate and white chocolate.  We called them "caketails."  A big hit with our guests too at our dry wedding.

I am against the "must have" list for the photographer, because a professional should know what he/she is doing and you want pictures of your unique wedding not a replica of someone else's.  HOWEVER, I didn't have a professional-professional photographer, and no one thought to get a picture of my bouquet.  It was 'me' and different and special, and I wish someone would have captured it.  Oh well.  Que sera sera.

Here was the inspiration:

This is what I made with the help of my mom and aunt:

Obviously, not a great picture of it as I hold it ever so gracefully.  It is dried lavender (which smelled heavenly and had a calming effect) wrapped in cream satin ribbon, wrapped again in animal print ribbon (fierce!) with a lacy-looking vintagey button and a locket of my mom's with a picture of me as a little girl in it.  We had a toss bouquet that was just a simple lavender bundle.  This one, we will take to DH's dad's gravesite.

Moms' flowers

All the boys had the same bout:

The girls just carried fierce faces and lavender bundles wrapped in cream satin ribbon and crocheted lace ribbon:

We did all the flowers ourselves for less than $200.  We ordered lavender wreaths also, but there were problems with that vendor.  We never got them.  :(  My mom did do some pew markers to distinguish the family pews though:

And instead of rose petals, our flower girl dropped skeleton leaves which have a whimsical feel and float a little as they drop:

We wanted to make our wedding a real family event, because we were, after all, beginning ours that very night.  So we made a conscious effort to make families feel welcome.  We have friends with kids, and I just don't understand the "adult only" events anyway. 

Flowergirl and Ring Bearer:

We had face painting for the little ones (and some not so little ones too).

We did all of the paper designs ourself.  We are the creative types, and DH is very handy with the graphic design.

This was our Save-the-Date.  Notice the red letters across the bottom spell out "dream".  Magical.  :)

This was our inspiration for our invitation, to let everyone know from the start that we are not concerned with wedding tradition, only with loving each other and throwing a kickass party.

We asked a friend of mine, who does comic style illustrations for commission to do our invitation.  We showed him our inspiration and told him that although we love zombies, we wanted a less gruesome graphic.  This was our comic book style invite:

The inside was like a traditional invitation, save for the quote from Gilmore Girls' Lorelai.  :)

And for postwedding papers, this is our thank you card.

I made my garter, using some Razorback fabric, our state's college team that DH loves.  It's not my style, but he requested it, and he thought it was so cool when it was finished.

I was horribly sick the night of my bachelorette party, and I actually decided to lay down for about five minutes after work before going and fell asleep and ended up being over an hour late to my party.  It was a perfect, chill way to celebrate though.  Just cupcakes, panties, and Miley Cyrus for the girls night.

I had nothing blue, so I got little blue A's for Adam, DH, painted on my big toenails.