Wedding Recap I: Photos and Ceremony

Enough teasers… let’s start with some details!

We decided to do most of our photos before our ceremony so that we could quickly get into the reception and start partying.  I spent the morning getting ready in the hotel with my bridesmaids…

Pretty hair!

… and then the girls, the parents and I hopped into a limo bus to meet the guys over at the park by Iwo Jima, where Adam and I got engaged, for our first look photos.

After that the guys joined us on the limo bus and we all headed over to Glen Echo for the bridal party and immediate family shots.

My brother and I in the limo on the way to Glen Echo.

The wedding party, in between posing for photos.

Oh, here’s as good a time as any to show you my bouquet in detail. For not caring much about the flowers, I am so glad I ended up going with a florist because I LOVED them.

Photo Credit: Abby Jiu

After photos, we went up into one of the classrooms for our ketubah signing. I am really glad we ended up having a ketubah, because it turns out in Maryland, the bride, groom and witnesses don’t even sign the marriage license! Being a lawyer, it just didn’t seem like a good idea to enter into a marriage contract without signing something. I love, love, love the text we chose, and we ended up with a gorgeous piece of original art as well.

After the ketubah signing, we watched the guests arrive off the bus from our hiding spot in the classroom. It was then time to sneak out the back door, line up, and get to the main event!

Our ceremony was performed by Adam’s good friend from college (who is now a good friend of mine as well). He was probably much more nervous than we were! He did an amazing job… I am so glad we chose someone we knew so well to perform the ceremony and I loved that our ceremony was really personal. It was serious, yet still light and funny. We even got our friends involved: we made the chuppah we stood under with our friends (who even came early to help set it up!), we had Adam’s brother-in-law do a reading (“Union” by Robert Fulghum), and each member of the wedding party said one of the (non-religious) seven blessings we chose.

Then there was glass breaking, and kissing, and turning around to see all our friends and family with the biggest, goofiest smiles ever on our faces!

Immediately after the ceremony, there were lots of hugs and kisses going around with our immediate family and wedding party, before we were whisked away to a secret room for some alone time… complete with champagne and a plate full of hors d’oeuvres. After scarfing those down, we then went out for some extended family formal pictures and then for a few of just us now that we had made it official!

2011 Resolutions

Last year, I was pretty ambitious and made 10 resolutions for 2010. You might expect me to make 11 resolutions for 2011, but nope… I’m going to be more focused this year, with just three resolutions.

1. I resolve to become fitter, faster, stronger.
Okay, so this is sort of three resolutions, but they all go hand-in-hand, so I am considering them to just be means to one ultimate goal.
Fitter: I plan to lose those last 10-15 pounds… and keep them off. I’ve put on about 5 of the 15 I lost in 2010 since I essentially stopped working out after the Army Ten Miler and I can definitely tell based upon how I feel and how my clothes fit, and I don’t like it.
I’m hoping to get a jump start on this resolution by joining the Biggest Blogging Loser. I don’t expect to be able to actually be in contention for the prize money, because honestly, I don’t have a high percentage of my overall weight to lose. But I am hoping that doing this along with so many other people will keep me accountable and committed to my goal.
Adam and I have also resolved not to eat out at all in January (official work lunches excepted, as we don’t have control over scheduling those)… no grabbing anything from the snack machine, no buying a cup of coffee.
I am also going to do the menu part of the Whole Living Action Plan this month. I did a modified version of it last January and liked how it got me focused back on eating whole foods again after the sugar- and junkfood-filled holiday season. I may try to incorporate some of the other parts of the Action Plan as well.
Faster: I want to get a PR in each of the race distances I run this year. My current PRs (all set in 2010) are:
5K: 29:28 (4/9/2010)
4M: 40:54 (3/13/2010)
10K: 1:03:20 (9/25/2010)
10M: 1:44:07 (10/24/2010)
Half Marathon: 2:32:35 (5/9/2010)
Stronger: When I first started working out regularly in 2007, I mostly did strength training workouts. Then I was bit by this running-bug and strength training fell by the wayside. This year, I will treat my strength workouts as just as important as my running days. Stronger legs = faster legs. Stronger muscles = calorie-burning machines. See? Hand-in-hand with faster and fitter.

2. I resolve to do five things from my “101 things in 1001 days” list each month. The end of my 1001 days is March 24, 2012, which means that I’ll have to cross off the majority of the remaining 50 items of the list this year if I am going to finish the list within 1001 days. I don’t need to cross of five items a month — some things on the list require a task be completed multiple times, so doing one of those items just once counts towards this resolution.

3. I resolve to leave my work at the office. Now, of course there will be instances where I will need to physically bring work home (sickness, blizzards, etc.), but that isn’t want I mean. I spent way too much time at home (or on vacation — my honeymoon, for goodness sake! — or out with friends) over the past few months worrying about things going on at work. I would wake up and get in the shower and start thinking about what I had to do at work. I’d think about it on the drive in, the drive home, during dinner, while trying to fall asleep. I would even dream about work. And it accomplished nothing other than stressing me out… and it’s not as if I can bill the client for all that time where I just can’t turn off my brain, and I wasn’t actually working during that time. :-) So this year, I will only think about work while working, and when I leave the office at night, that part of my brain will be turned off until the next work day.

So there you have it, my resolutions for 2011. Here’s to a fantastic year!