WHERE. DO. I. EVEN. BEGIN. Today officially marks two months of being married…and I honestly can’t believe that I’m JUST now getting the chance to start sharing about our wedding weekend! We got married, went on a two-week honeymoon, came home and launched a brand new course, photographed 2 destination weddings, adopted a new fur baby and traveled to multiple family events…life just has not stopped. In the most beautiful and wonderful way!! But, it’s been craziness nonetheless. Haha!! I am SO excited to finally sit down and re-live the most wonderful few weeks of my life (even if it is 60 days later)!!!

I plan to do a LONG series of blog posts to recap every single moment. My hope is that it is fun for you to read and come along for the journey…but also that it serves as a diary for me to come back and re-read years from now when we’re old and grey. I don’t even know how to sum up just how much our wedding weekend and honeymoon meant to me, or how wonderful it was from start to finish…but I am going to do my BEST to sum it all up over the next few weeks of posts.

To kick things off: we’re going to start on the evening of Thursday, May 4th! Our wedding day was on May 6th, but the weekend really kicked off two days beforehand. We checked into The Alida Hotel on Thursday afternoon. We wanted one extra day to get all of our cars unpacked, see some of our guests that came into town early and feel settled before the events started on Friday night. Looking back, I am SO GLAD that we did this! We had three full cars packed to the brim with clothes, decor, gifts, etc. (thanks to Hayden’s momma for being the extra car! Haha!) and we also had to drive all the way to Hilton Head and back on Thursday morning to pick up Hayden’s suit (a 3-hour roundtrip). It just would’ve all felt like A LOT to do on Friday AND be ready in time for our rehearsal and welcome party!

So, we packed up the cars and checked into Alida around 3pm. It was SO FUN, because the lobby bar was already filled with our friends and family!!! My parents, brother, sister, uncles, aunts, cousins and more were already there waiting for us. We had lifelong family friends that I hadn’t seen in YEARS. A handful of my bridesmaids were already there (the rest were on the way!) and it just felt SO SPECIAL to get some quality time with people we hadn’t seen in so long. I arrived sweaty with no makeup on, but we still sat in the lobby and had a few cocktails before getting ready for dinner! I got ready with my sister and my best friend Morgan (who flew in all the way from Madrid!) while we jammed to Tay Sway and sipped champagne. Even that hour together was so much fun!!!

We LOVE the Alida Hotel because it is SO central to downtown Savannah (I swear they didn’t pay me to say that!! Haha!!) But, we were able to just walk across the street to one of our FAVORITE Mexican restaurants. We had reservations for a few of us, but there were so many more people ready to tag along than we even expected. I think almost 35 of us ended up getting tacos together! Then, we popped over to the nearby Electric Moon rooftop bar and spent all night long welcoming guests as they arrived, having fun cocktails and talking about everything that was to come. It was truly the BEST. It felt like such a relaxed, exciting way to kick-off a jam-packed weekend.

Next week, I’m going to be sharing all about our rehearsal + welcome party that happened on Friday, May 5th!!! STAY TUNED!!

Bride Sweatshirt

White Floral Dress

Right when we arrived, unpacked cars and met everyone in the lobby!!

After getting ready with two of my favorite ladies!!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also love:

Hayden & Hope | The Bridal Shower 

Hayden & Hope | Our Engagement Photos

Hayden & Hope | The Proposal