Traditions and special moments: Remembrance table and giving out flowers

During my ceremony I wanted to honor my mom, mother in-law and all the grandmas. I decided that after lighting the Unity Candle that I would hand them each a flower. We had our musicians (Alyssa Smith and Joshua Smith)sing the song "Love Never Fails" by Brandon Heath while we lit our Unity Candle and therefore I had plenty of time to hand out the flowers after that while the song finished up. We had bought some white roses for this purpose.


Unfortunately, confusion caused the roses to be misplaced during the ceremony, so instead of handing those out I simple took flowers from the closest vases (we had random vases all over) and gave those out instead.




Sadly, the other problem with being able to do this was that one person was missing. My mom's mom, Grandma Hawks. So to be able to give her a flower too, I set up a table at the ceremony site and placed her picture, a candle and an owl figurine on it. The owl was part of an extensive collection of owls that she had collected during her life. I will have a HUGE post about owls soon!!! Grandma Hawks died in January of 1986 and I was born 11 months after. I never met her but feel like I know her so well. I know the stories and have seen her pictures but more importantly I feel the love that my family has for her everyday. She was an awesome lady and I have been told a few times that I have a lot in common with her.

As the time came to pass out the flowers I swiftly overcame the problem of the misplaced roses and gathered the flowers off the wall so that no one was the wiser. I made the rounds to my mom and Grandma Nelson then to Micah's mom Jodi and his two grandmothers before I walked over to Grandma Hawk's table. I had placed a kiss on each of the other's cheeks so as I put the flower of Grandma Hawk's on the table I picked up her picture and gave her her kiss. I believe this was the only time I cried during my wedding. In that moment I knew she was watching from Heaven and just as proud as the rest of the ladies sitting with their flowers.



"Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality." ~Emily Dickinson

That quote was on the back of our wedding programs along with a paragraph explaining the remembrance table as I have above.




NORMA JEAN HAWKS- The best lady I never knew...

Love you grandma.

Traditions and special moments: "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue"

Well, we all know (or should know) this tradition. The tradition is that the bride is suppose to wear or carry an item for each of these categories. I had a few things for each category and some that doubled up.

First, my something(s) NEW:
My Dress
My shoes
My pearl earrings
My veil
My hair piece

Here are pics of some of those new goodies :)






Second, my something(s) OLD:
I wore a multi-colored bracelet that belonged to my Grandma Hawks (whom I mentioned in my previous post) and also had a brooch of hers on my bouquet.
I had my mother's sash on my bouquet.
I also had my Grandma Nelson's veil on my bouquet.
Another "old" item I had was sent to me by one of my husband's grandmas. She sent me a hankerchief that her mother had carried with her on her wedding day... so I had a hankie that was from Micah's great grandma and was just over 90 years old!!

Here are some pictures of my old items:







Thirdly, my something(s) BLUE:
My shoes and my garter.
A neat story with my garter is that it was made by my Matron of Honor and Best Friend, Brittany. The best part of the story is that for her wedding in August (just months before mine) I had made her a garter that was also blue. We made each other's garters as a special token. I was her Maid of Honor and placed her garter on her leg just as she did for me. I think its a very touching gesture and so did she. We each kept the ones that the other had made because we couldn't part with them. So on our wedding days we each had TWO garters on our leg!!! haha! We each had a smaller one that was a 'toss" garter and then the special handmade one that we kept. :)






Lastly, my something BORROWED:
I borrowed the brooch of my Grandmother from my cousin, Kelly and the bracelet of hers from my cousin Angie.

I won't post pics of those as I already have them posted above! :)



Thanks for reading!!
Trinity Bennett

Traditions and special moments: The flowers

I am a big fan of traditions... every Easter I must either hold or participate in an egg hunt, eat a cadbury egg and bite the heads off of some peeps; every New Year's Eve I stay the night at my Grandpa's house where we always eat out, watch the ball drop (my grandpa calls the Time Square ball the "Big Apple" instead of calling New York the Big apple, which I find extremely cute) and I ALWAYS draw my grandpa a poster with the year in numbers on it decorated in a fun manner.


So, why would my wedding be any different? I tried to incorporate several neat traditions and special details into my big day. I am going to talk a little about each in the next several posts, this one is about my flowers.

First off I made all my bouquets. I am not a huge flower person and didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars on flowers that were going to die. Especially, since none of my decoration ideas (centerpieces) were using particular flowers (I used some live flowers at the ceremony site but they were the cheap misc. bouquets from Wal-mart that cost 5 dollars). Instead I went to Hobby Lobby (one of my favorite places EVA) and picked out some of the real nice silk flowers from their HUGE selection. I created my bouquet, a small bouquet for me to toss, my 4 bridesmaids bouquets and a few bouquets to use next to my cake and gifts for under one hundred dollars. I had SO much fun doing this! I loved picking out the flowers, arranging them and wrapping the stems with floral tape and them ribbon. Here is a picture of them:


Another neat thing about my bouquet is that instead of just wrapping the handle in ribbon I first took a piece of my dad's mom's (Grandma Nelson) veil and wrapped it around the stems.

Here is a pic of my Grandma Nelson on her wedding day:


After wrapping her veil around the bouquet handle I then took the ribbon sash from my mother's dress and wrapped that around the handle. Here is a picture of my mother on her wedding day:


Then as one final touch I borrowed a brooch from my cousin that belonged to my other grandmother (Grandma Hawks). This was my mom's mom and she actually passed away in January 1986 and I was born in December 1986. Here is a picture of Grandma Hawks:


I used her brooch on the top of my bouquet's handle and then finished off the handle by securing the ribbon with pearl topped pins. Here are two photos of my bouquet's handle:



I really liked what I ended up doing with my bouquets... not only because I got to have hands-on control of how they came out but I was pleased with the overall look and most importantly the special details that went into them. By adding my Grandma Nelson's veil, my mother's dress sash and my Grandma Hawk's brooch I was able to carry with me a little part of each of them on my big day. :)

The only thing that could have made it a little cooler was if the brooch from my Grandma Hawks had been one she wore on her wedding day. However her and my grandpa got married a long time ago and actually just had the wedding at the minister's house. I think they only had about 5 or 6 people there too! It was a different time and its crazy to see how weddings have progressed since then. But all in all it was still a blessing to carry with me something from my Grandma Nelson's wedding day, my mother's wedding day and a cherished brooch from my other grandmother.

Wedding Photo Booth!

When it came to my wedding I wanted our guests to enjoy themselves and not just make everything about Micah and I. I wanted something more than just dinner and dancing. So one of the ideas I used at the reception was a Photo Booth type of guest book. I bought a dry erase board with markers for guests to write messages on and hold up in the pictures. I also bought several fun props as well as made some props. The props I made were funny mustaches, lips, googly eyes and more that I put on rods for people to hold up to their faces (you'll see them in the pics). I then set up a camera on a tripod and made a sign directing our guests to the booth area. The sign directing them there was fun to make because I took a plank of wood, painted chalkboard paint onto it and wrote the sign in chalk. I made signs like that (with the chalkboard paint) for several other of the extras I had at the wedding (family table, candy bar, etc). Once we had the camera up, sign set and props displayed, we made a background out of extra tulle that I had and the following pics are some of the results!

From what I can tell our guests REALLY enjoyed it and Micah and I got a kick out of the pics too. In total we have 94 pics but I will just share some of my favorites now. To view the pics bigger just click on them! :D

Have a great day!!!

Weddingpalooza is over... but the memories remain :)

Hello All, (assuming more than 1 reads this, if not then hello YOU)
Well... its official, I am a MARRIED WOMAN! The planning, the showers, the parties, the stress, the rehearsal, the ceremony, the reception and the honeymoon are all done. It feels so weird that something that consumed my life for months is done and ended just like that. The next day I was joking with my HUSBAND and said "What will I worry about now with the wedding done?" haha BUT, even though its over I am not completely sad about it either. It turned out fantastically! Everything thing I had planned on doing, every detail I wanted to include, all the decorations I wanted to use... everything got done. I seriously couldn't think of much that didn't get done... one of the only regrets is that I didn't get to dance "The Electric Slide" at my reception because I had went to the restroom! haha I think if that is one of the biggest regrets/problems that my wedding day was pretty much perfect. :) I had so many awesome friends and family who helped out so much or even just attended and they made the day that much more awesome! I seriously owe SO many people right now!!! haha

I plan on writing SEVERAL more detailed posts about the funny things of the day, the actual events, the details, the traditions, the honeymoon etc. later on but I just wanted to write up a quick post to get things started and to official start blogging under my new name... MRS. TRINITY BENNETT :D

For now I will leave you with the promise of the other posts along with the video I made that was shown at Micah and I's reception. :) Please feel free to comment!!!

Love,
Mrs. Bennett

Happy Halloween!!!

Besides carving some awesome pumpkins this year:







I got to spend this Halloween with my family back home. It was a fun time with all my crazy cousins, aunts and uncles. Its a pretty big deal with my family and most everyone usually dresses up. This year I dressed up as Red Bull, it gives you wings you know. LOL





It is tradition that my family ALWAYS hangs out at my grandpas and of course we have lots of good food and candy!!! This year we had 2 pots of great chili for dinner and then the trick-or-treaters started arriving. Grandpa got nearly 120 this year. He lives in a senior citizen independent housing facility... pretty much all these little apartments in a neighborhood that are specifically for senior citizens. So you can imagine how hard this place gets bombarded by those candy seeking kiddies! It is always a great time because not only do we get to see a lot of cute little kids in costume but because we live in a small town we know like 80% of them. :)


Other highlights of our night included our little cousins sharing the candy they scavenged with us older cousins and then grandpa putting in fake vampire teeth for some pictures. :D