For my Seeeeester.....

I'm taking a break from the wedding posts today to blog about a loss my sister experienced this weekend. My sister lost a very dear friend in a car wreck early Saturday morning. She had just spoken with him the day before he passed away about coming up to Lubbock to hang out with her and some of her friends this past weekend. Unfortunately this didn't happen.

We are from a very small town. Most of us have had the same friends from pre-school all the way through graduation from High School. This was the case for my sister as they've been friends since elementary school. The loss was a big shock to my small town and an even bigger shock to my sister. My sister turned 25 on March 21st and 2 of her best friends Cheche and Bird (again we're from a small town, everyone has a nickname) came up to Lubbock to celebrate. It was Bird that passed away. We had a blast at Lindsey's party and a lot of that was due in part to Bird. He was the life of the party, always there to make everyone laugh, even it was at his own expense. He was a WONDERFUL friend to my sister and my heart breaks for her.

His funeral was this morning at 10:00, and though I had planned to be there to be by my sister's side, I got called in to work. Because I couldn't be there I decided to write this blog about my sister's sweet friend and I've been listening to Deftones all morning in remembrance of him. Bird loved the Deftones and luckily I was able to hang out with him at 2 separate Deftones concerts. That was one thing about Bird, he absolutely LOVED music. Here's to you Bird......

Bird and my beautiful sister at her 25th birthday party just a little over 3 weeks ago...

Lins, Cheche and Bird
And lastly, Bird was in a band with Chech and I thought this song was a perfect ending for this blog.

"And God bless you all
For the song you sang us..."


Love you seeester.......

The Ceremony...

Ok here we go! So since we had our first look, this definitely made the ceremony way less stressful! One of the things I placed a great deal of thought in was my music choices. For all of you that know me, you KNOW how much of a music fanatic I am. I chose several songs to be playing while people were arriving and being seated for the wedding. Here is the list: If you want to take a listen, click the link and then click the play button right underneath the title :) 1.True Love Will Find You In the End- Beck 2.Shelter- Ray Lamontagne 3.Fade Into You- Mazzy Star 4.First Day Of My Life- Bright Eyes 5.What Light- Wilco 6.Flightless Bird- Iron & Wine 7.I Will Follow You into the Dark- Death Cab for Cutie 8. A few instrumental Wilco songs....the lyrics are a little weird but since it was all instrumental it didn't matter :) The parents and grandparents were seated while Iron & Wine's cover of 'Such Great Heights' played. The groomsmen/bridesmaids/flower girls and ring bearer walked in while Jose Gonzales' cover of "Heartbeats" played. I chose Heartbeats mostly because I LOVE it and secondly because this song was playing the moment I realized I was in love with Taylor.....awwww! I chose the Sigur Ros song "Staralfur" to play while I walked down the aisle. The first time I ever heard this song was in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.....one of my favorite movies! I didn't want a song that was super traditional and I didn't want to pick something that you hear ALL the time at weddings. Staralfur was the perfect song for us! Here is my sweet Papaw walking me down the aisle. We also chose to do a sand ceremony instead of lighting candles. I need to take a picture of the finished piece because the design is REALLY cool! It ended up looking like two bird wings, one big and one small right on top of each other. This was so fitting because I love birds and incorporated them in several aspects of our wedding. Taylor said he's the big bird wing and I'm the baby bird wing haha! We chose Band Of Horses' "No One's Gonna Love You More Than I Do" to play while we created our sand art :) Next up: The vows. Taylor is and has always been an EXCELLENT writer. Me? I'm an okay writer but nothing I write is ever as good as Feeeedler! When he said he wanted to write his own vows I wasn't surprised at all. Me however, I knew the ceremony would already make me a blubbering tearful mess, so I elected to choose vows from a book that our pastor had and do the whole repeat after me :) Here are Taylor's vows: "You have motivated me to be a better man and I feel that my life is balanced and purposeful with you by my side. I’m proud to have you as my wife and I want to give you a life of happiness and love. Whatever comes our way, we will face it together. You are a blessing in my life and I can’t wait to start the next chapter in our lives." Awwww so sweet :) The kiss! And afterwards we walked out as Mr. & Mrs. to The Talking Heads "This Must Be The Place" We literally chose this song DAYS before the wedding. We couldn't agree on a song to use, we wavered between Arcade Fire "Neighborhood 1", Cake "Love You Madly," The Knife's original version of "Heartbeats," Wilco's guitar solo in "Impossible Germany," which if you remember was the song that was playing when Taylor proposed to me at the Wilco concert back in 2009. We just weren't sure if any of those would fit and even though we had pretty much every other aspect chosen, this was the one thing we weren't sure about. Then it kind of hit us! We love Talking Heads and listen to the "Stop Making Sense" live album all the time. We even watched their live performance of "Stop Making Sense" on DVD on our one year anniversary back in 2008. So when we were scrolling through my ipod on shuffle and this song came on, we immediately knew this was the song we wanted to use. And lastly, here are Madison and James dumping out their petals and putting them back in, from what I heard, they did this many times throughout the ceremony which is plenty fine with me because it kept them occupied! Too cute! Next up......The reception!