One Year Later | Wedding Photos

One year ago today, on a rainy Wednesday, Aaron and I made it official here at our home with just our kids and a friend/officiant in attendance.

I often tell people that some stories aren't ready to tell right after you live them. They don't have to just be hard stories - sometimes they are simply the most meaningful and you might just want to hold it closer for awhile. For me this is one of those stories. I'm so happy to share this piece of our life here with you today.

Everything we did for this day, everything we chose, was on purpose.

• We got married in Aaron's music room that he built in our garage with twinkling lights covering one wall. Those lights are still in there now and they make me so happy every time I spend time in his space. We had talked about going somewhere and having a destination wedding but in the end we decided our house would be the best spot (and we put our money into our familymoon).

• We invited my wonderful friend Tara Whitney to come and capture the day for us. There is no one else I could have imagined capturing the spirit of this day for us in our home. I wanted her to capture us just as we are - which is her gift. I loved having her here to capture our hearts.

• We incorporated a whole lot of glitter confetti and we still find it around the house from time to time.

• We hired a local caterer to come to our house and cook us a Thanksgiving dinner since we were taking off the next morning for our familymoon and would be gone on the actual holiday. It was so awesome and made the entire celebration that much more special.

The whole thing was very "us" - and more than anything it was really about us. It was about the seven of us coming together. It was about the seven of us celebrating our new beginning. We sent flowers to our families saying thank you for their love and support. I would completely do it this way all over again in a heartbeat.

Side note: My wedding to Chris was big and so, so fun. We were the first of our group of college friends to get married and what we wanted most at that time in our lives was to have a big party. This time I wanted something different. Both were awesome in their own space and time. Both are a part of my story.

Thank you for cheering us on. The last year has been even better than I imagined - so much growth all around.

Here's a look at November 15th, 2017:

GETTING READY

Aaron bought a bunch of fun pairs of socks and let the boys pick which ones they wanted to wear.

The best story about me putting on my own makeup is the text that Katie sent me telling me exactly how to use all the things I had bought the day before from Target on her recommendation.

She's good like that.

We decided to drive just down the street to take some photos outside.

THE CEREMONY

Simon walked me into the room to a song by Dave Matthews (of course) called Loving Wings.

Magic is where you make it.

DINNER

The kids requested Shirley Temples as their drink.

I loved having this at our house. LOVED IT. It was comfortable and fun and just so very us.

Love wins.