#Marrytinez – Our Wedding Morning

Long time, no blog. But it happened you guys!! We’re married. And if you’ve been following 347 since the beginning, you’ve probably been around for our engagement story, the wedding party proposal, the venue and date choice and also our engagement photos. Once we got that far, things got chaotic quickly with planning the garden party of our dreams and I called the blog quits for awhile in order to give my full attention to our wedding and other priorities. Now that I have a life again and we received our absolutely gorgeous photos back from Santiago Murillo, I’m ready to break this into a few different sections and catch you up on ALL of the details. And with me, you know there are always plenty of details. So let’s talk wedding morning!

This is our invitation suite. Being a graphic designer, I’ve dreamed of designing this forever and when the time came, I had so much fun with the process! I spent a lot of hours watercolor painting these illustrations, scanning them in, digitally manipulating them and laying out each piece to be printed. I ordered four different types of string to tie the folding pieces with before deciding on this leaf green raffia and Dillon spent nights pouring yellow “M” monogrammed wax seals to seal the back of each envelope. Not to mention SO many trips to the post office figuring out exactly which stamps I was allowed to use. One thing I’ve learned about USPS throughout wedding planning… get 6 different opinions, because each will be totally different. Lastly, I insisted we spray each invite with a lavender/sage essential oil mix before sticking it in the envelope, because I’m even crazier than I lead on to being LOL.

These are some pretty details from our day. When packing your bag for the morning of the wedding, consider little props that will make these photos shine! I ordered an extra hand-dyed ribbon from our bouquets for Santiago to use and also picked up this velvet ring box. I wear Honey by Marc Jacobs perfume anyways.. but you better believe I made sure to set it out for him to shoot with my other accessories because how freakin perfect is that little bumble bee with all of our floral goodness. 🙂 As for my jacket, I hand painted it using leather paints on an all-nighter two days before the wedding. I’ll go into that more in-depth in another post, but this shot of it from morning of was too cute not to share!

When I think back to our wedding day, one of my fondest memories is just having that block of time in the morning to spend time with all of my favorite girls. These ladies are from all walks of life: Birth (lol hi mom), Elementary School, Middle School, High School, College, Big Brothers Big Sisters and Dillon’s family. It was just SO fun to have all of these women who I love and respect so much in the same room together on my favorite day. I was so nervous towards the end of the morning. To the point to where my makeup artist, Aseel, put this mask on me to take away redness from my face because I started looking a little crazy. I’m just a naturally anxious person and that combined with SO many pieces having to fall into place for our wedding that wasn’t at an actual venue… OH also paired with the fact that Dillon’s choice was that we read each other’s personalized vows for the first time in front of everyone instead of reading our own. I was FREAKING out. But, I have to say that the force in that room really helped me keep it together. I had the best girl gang you could imagine, multiple vendors commented on it after the fact! A quick tip- I recommend including your Jr. Bridesmaid/Flower Girl/Ring Bearer in these morning festivities! I chose to not have them come with to the posed photos after the ceremony because I thought it would make it run more smoothly. So I’m super happy to have these cute photos of our littles from the morning of- it really made them feel like a part of our day!

I’ll get more into the details of my dress in a later post, but for now I’ll just say.. it was an absolute dream for me. I know the whole “princess” vibe is normally thrown around for brides, but that’s really not me. I felt like a real life garden fairy that day- and that’s exactly what I was going for. As for the pretty print you see next to my dress, that would be another absolutely amazing gift from Meliss, my Maid of Honor. Our whole lives, Melissa has always gone above and beyond when it comes to gifts for special occasions and this one was SO thoughtful. She reached out to my favorite illustrator, Shannon Kirsten, (who I took huge inspo from for our wedding invitation suite) and sent her inspiration photos of our decor and florals asking her to illustrate the title of our first dance song, “You Are the Best Thing” by Ray LaMontagne. It’s something that I absolutely cherish and will be on display in any place we live for the rest of our lives.

These getting ready photos give me all of the feels. Looking back, it’s so sweet to think that Dillon and I were both getting dressed, anxious and excited to see each other, directly across the hall from one another in our AirBnbs. We found two units downtown Racine that were in the same building, which gave us a little more space than a hotel room and made it convenient for our photo and video vendors to move back and forth quickly.

I love these shots of my mom and I. My mom was my absolute rock when it came to wedding planning (not to mention the rest of my life!), and having these photos of her zipping up my dress are really special to me. She surprised me with an incredible scrapbook the morning of our wedding that had photos from mine and Dillon’s childhoods, fun photos of our wedding party, the entire two year long wedding planning process every step of the way and a super sweet letter. She gifted it to me before Santiago got there and I totally forgot to show it to him (wedding mornings are so hectic, you guys!) so I don’t have photos, but it set my morning off on such a great note.

Another suggestion- I asked if we could get these photos of Meliss putting my veil in because I wanted more photos of the two of us together beside the typical bridesmaid photos. Don’t be afraid to ask for photos you know will be important to you! I love having these to look back on.

Something that I didn’t plan on, but ended up loving, was this bridal reveal! Being a creative and someone who has coordinated/photographed a few weddings.. sometimes I get these opinions in my head and can’t shake them. When I’ve seen reveals like this in the past I’ve admittedly thought to myself “Okay all of those girls are in a group chat, have seen pics of her in that dress, know exactly how she’s doing her hair and were sent pics of the makeup trial”. LOL just me and my friends maybe? Idk. Anyways, when it was suggested day of I just went with it because I honestly had SO much trust in Santiago’s vision this entire process. It was just so evident to me from our engagement photos to our wedding day that he was so experienced and confident of the outcome that my crazy control freak personality was incredibly comfortable following his lead. And I LOVE having these! There are so many more than what I posted here, but in each one all of the girls are so emotional and genuine and I cherish having them. I’m someone who doesn’t naturally love being in the spotlight… more like I love to coordinate the party and the outfit of the other girl in the spotlight haha. So this was all a little out of my comfort zone to be honest, but like I said, end result was soo worth it! Santiago and Jacob changed my mind on bridal reveals forever 😉

These are the gifts for our wedding party! We gifted our groomsmen velvet jewel-toned bow ties in boxes that were labeled with their names, and the dads, ushers and ring bearer all got a floral bow tie. As for my girls, I made them all personalized clutches and tucked floral earrings inside. All personalization for our gifts was done with my cricut! If you’re planning a wedding, honestly just make the investment, don’t think twice haha. It’s a no brainer in my book! I used it on most parts of our day.

My gift to Dillon- I “iced” him with a Smirnoff Ice, gave him some photos I had taken by Elizabeth Jean Photography and had these cuff links engraved with his all-time favorite rapper’s face, Biggie. The case was also engraved with lyrics from Party and Bullshit (once again Biggie, and the song Dillon chose for us to walk into the reception to) “Cause in a few, we gon do what we came to do. Ain’t that right boo?”

Dillon’s gift to me: He gave me a real-leather planner with “Mrs. Martinez” and a Pineapple (biiiiig pineapple girl) stamped into the front! On the first page he wrote “So you can PLAN the rest of our lives together :)”. It was so thoughtful, unexpected and personal to me. I hold it to such a high standard that I’ve been too nervous to write anything in it yet LOL which Dillon bugs me about constantly. Opening that gift right before we left totally set me into “omg this is forreal about to be my husband” mode. From that point on I was just so excited to see Dillon at the end of the greenhouse!

Last but not least, here is me putting on my bedazzled barefoot sandals. I call it homeless-chic 😉 Really, I just hate shoes and decided that my wedding was the one day where I could do whatever I wanted, so why not get married barefoot?! Yes, I did have black feet by the end of the night. No, it didn’t phase me one bit. 🙂

That’s it! Well, from the first 6 hours of our day at least 🙂 There is soooo much more to come. I will link as many sources as I can think of below. Also, Santiago Murillo shot all of these photos and I cannot thank him enough. The day he sent me the gallery, Meliss and I met for lunch to look through them and being someone who is an obsessive wedding blog creeper I turned to her and said, “Holy sh**. I think I have the prettiest wedding gallery I’ve ever seen.” LOL. I’m only allowed to say that because he is 100% to thank for it! Eeeeeee… still not over this wedding high, I cannot wait to share more with you guys!

Xo Amanda Martinez :O

Photo: Santiago Murillo
Video: Jacob Durbin
Hair: Intrigued Beauty Studio
Makeup: Aseel Atari
Robes: Etsy: HcCreation
Dress: Shop- Bucci’s Bridal
Dress: Brand- Made with Love Bridal
Earrings: Etsy: Cleo Classic Design
Suits: Mike Bjorn’s
Bridesmaids: Jenny Yoo
Bow Ties: Etsy: Iris Atelier
Ring Box: Etsy: Vitamin Love
Cuff Links: Etsy: Engraved Memories UK
Stationary Printing: Cards and Pockets