wedding q&a part two

good thing i have a couple more engagement pictures i'd love to share - so here's part two :) it's fun for me to answer wedding questions because it helps me organize my thoughts and priorities and also makes me feel really excited and giddy. i just can't believe that we are twenty days away...ahhhhh!


do you wear your wedding dress the day of the sealing and the next day? 

in the temple, we wear very specific clothing, which must be all white, have long sleeves, and a pretty high neckline. for this reason, most lds brides do not wear their wedding dress while they are being sealed. i will be sealed in a simple temple dress (i am hoping to add lace from my mom's wedding dress!) and then will change into my wedding dress to come out of the temple and greet our friends and family (both those that were present in the sealing and those that were not). the boy will also change from his temple clothes (all white) into his wedding suit.

i feel lucky that i get to wear my wedding dress not just once but four times! i will wear it on our wedding day, the following day at our reception, and at the open houses we are having in both texas and california.

when do you first see your spouse the day of your wedding, when you enter the sealing room?

the boy and i will be meeting up a couple of hours before our sealing officially starts to walk over to the temple together (i will be getting my hair done downtown). we will be in just clothes that we'd regularly wear to visit the temple. we'll arrive before our guests so we have time to get situated, and there's a few things we do together in the temple (including taking some time to just sit together in a very peaceful place and reflect on what's ahead!) before the sealing attendees fill the sealing room. we enter the room together last, and then the official ceremony begins.

the boy will see me in my wedding dress (i'm a stickler on the groom-can't-see-before-the-wedding tradition) after we've both changed following the sealing. we'll get to have a moment together inside and then exit the temple together.

you have a big family and so many friends. is it difficult to decide who is in the sealing room? 

yes, it has been very difficult! we also want our wedding dinner the evening of our sealing to be very small, so both lists have been a little excruciating to winnow down. we came to a conclusion that we feel really good about, and we are optimistic that our loved ones understand. the boy and i have talked for a long time (since we first started talking about getting married quite a while ago) about how we want our wedding to not just be about us, but to really celebrate the people that have influenced our lives for good. we want to make everyone in our lives feel special to any degree that we can, because we are so so so grateful!

i've noticed that with so many lds weddings the bridesmaids wear skirts - would you consider that a lds thing or just something that's caught on. are you having bridesmaids and if so are they wearing skirts?

i haven't really noticed this! i bet it's a combination of: (1) just a general trend that has caught on, and (2) the difficulty many mormon women have finding dresses that are knee length or longer and have sleeves.

i am having bridesmaids! they are wearing dresses. i decided to do something a little funky with what i asked my bridesmaids to wear, and i hope it looks good all together! i know that i'll look back at my wedding in ten years and things will look dated pretty much no matter what, so although i think many of the elements are pretty classic, i'm taking some fun risks here and there :)

with so many gorgeous little nieces and handsome nephews, do you incorporate them in some way as flower girls or "page boys" as they say in the uk?

yes! combining the boy's and my nieces and nephews, we will have thirteen flower girls (and four honorary flower girls skyping in from china!) and sixteen page boys/ring bearers/little groomsmen -- not sure what to call them! the girls will all wear cream dresses and the boys will all wear matching bowties. really the only point, since we don't have an aisle to walk down, is to have coordinating pictures and an opportunity for these kids that we love so much to feel special.



i still really can't believe that this is happening -- that the boy came back, that he wants me to be his forever, that such a huge chunk of my fondest dreams are coming true with the best human i know. the boy and i are headed to utah tonight for one last weekend of wedding planning, and i'm very excited to hopefully see most of the details come together.



life is wild, but gosh life is good.