Last weekend, Alex and I celebrated six months of marriage! And coincidentally, this week I finally got into the DMV’s office to officially change my last name 😉 We both can’t believe just how quickly the time has gone since we said our “I do’s,” but we thought this would be the perfect time to sit down together and put together our wedding album. We have a few days off from work around Thanksgiving, so we’re going to use that time off to go through all of our photos together and choose our favorites.
We’re making our album with Artifact Uprising — an amazing printing company whom I’ve used many times in the past for all kinds of prints and gifts. I saw the lay flat wedding album on their website, and knew that it would be perfect for us. I love the crisp and clean white pages.
But in the meantime, I’ve been having the best time going through the photos on my own and picking out some of my personal favorites! That’s when I realized, I never shared much about our wedding on here! Throughout my personal wedding planning experience, I utilized a lot of blogs from brides offering their advice and thoughts, or sometimes just their photos, and so I thought I’d add my own experience to the mix! Since wedding things all-encompassed can get pretty overwhelming, I thought I’d share things about our day in a small collection of posts. And so here is the first 🙂
We got married on April 28 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at The Cork Factory Hotel. The Cork especially appealed to me because many of the greater details are included in a “one-stop-shop”…which was important to me as a bride planning her wedding from across the country. We chose a Friday primarily because all of the Saturdays were completely booked up until November 😉 and because who doesn’t love an extra day added to their weekend!? We appreciated that all of our guests took time off of work or switched their schedules around to be apart of our day.
The photos I’ll be sharing were all taken by our wonderful and amazing photographer, Vince Ha and his wife, Amy Ha, of Vince Ha Photography. Vince shoots weddings with both his wife and his sister, and although I can’t speak for his sister, Vince and Amy are incredible. I think us girls especially bonded with Amy, as she spent the entire day with us from morning til’ well into the night. I cannot stress enough how important it is to create a bond with your photographers…it makes such a difference! I had spent lots of time on the phone with Vince beforehand, and he even came out to LA for another shoot, and took the time to meet with Alex and myself in-person! Photos are the glue that holds all of your memories together … when you look at your photos, so many things you may have forgotten about the day come right back to you. We couldn’t be happier about ours ❤
One of the best decisions that I think Alex and I made, was to do the First Look Photos. We chose this option because 1) we didn’t want to rush our photos between the ceremony and reception. 2) we didn’t want to extend the cocktail hour too long. And 3) we wanted to have that special moment of seeing each other for the first time to be private and sentimental (and maybe also to get the tears out of the way before the ceremony)! 😉 I loved doing the First Look. It’s such an intimate moment. We also utilized the extra time before the ceremony to take all of our Wedding Party Photos. I was so happy with this decision, as our wedding party got to enjoy themselves at the Cocktail Hour…and so did we 😉 The thing about your own wedding day is that it goes by so quickly…and so I wanted to spend as much time with everyone who was there for us as possible.
I was originally going to share both Wedding Party photos and our First Look Photos in this post, but I think I’ve chosen too many photos (surprise, surprise), so I’ll just post our First Look Photos today! And Wedding Party photos later! … So stay tuned! Also, how perfect were these cherry blossom trees in bloom!? You’ll see later, but they played off of my Bridesmaids skirts perfectly, it was kind of unreal.
notes: Dress is by designer Lilian West and was found at In White in Lancaster, PA. Tuxedo is a two-toned grey by Vera Wang, rented from Jos. A Banks. Flower crown was handcrafted by Stacia McClune at Petals With Style in Lancaster, PA. Flower bouquet and boutonniere were arranged by a personal friend of my mom’s, Connie. Hair and makeup was done at the Plum Salon and Spa within the Cork Factory Hotel, by Melanie. First Look Photos were taken at Rock Ford Plantation, just a short drive away from our Ceremony and Reception.
xo!
LAUREN LIVES 