Fleur de Lips: Monumental Love: Becoming a Bride

Today, my dears, I have a ton of pictures for you, so I'll let the pictures do most of the talking here. It was hard to narrow down which ones to share, because these really are some of my favorites of the day. For one, there's beautiful light streaming through the windows and all the ladies are dressed up, but the best part is just how happy we all look. No stress, no worries, just so much love and laughter.

All photos by Eau Claire Photographics

As each girl arrived, we hung their dresses up in the living room window. Really, it was just because that was the only place for six dresses, but it also sped things up when the photo and video teams arrived! They said sometimes it takes a while to get all those dresses together.

The cute hangers were covered a little, but still did their job.

Ghost dress!

One more shot of Dino's pretty purple robe as the girls get dressed.

Getting by with a little help from my friends.

BM Taco was clearly ready to get the party started.

To start, Momma P goes to take the dress down.

And then she might have not been able to reach the hanger so MOH Curls took over.

Excuse me for a second of big sister bragging: this girl is gorgeous.

And she's helpful.

This was the best way we could figure to get me into my dress without messing up the hair: I put on the Spanx + petticoat first, then I stepped into the dress and the girls stuffed the fluff from the slip into the dress. Good enough, and the realization of how ridiculous this was caused me to get very giggly.

Oh the things we do for weddings.

These next few pics give me a glimpse of what it would have looked like if I'd gone with a strapless dress. I don't regret the sleeves for a second, but I do still love these shots.

My mom stepped in to zip and fasten the little pieces of lace that would cover the zipper.

I don't think I can do a recap post without saying a picture is my favorite of the group - this would be the one for today. That train!

You can see the little ruffle along the top of the dress here, which was a sweet detail to capture.

I'm pretty sure in this picture I was telling BM Duffy that she'd be the one doing this in a month, and this was her reaction. I told you we got silly.

If you read my post on finding my dress, you'll remember that the bolero was a completely separate piece. So once the dress itself was on and secure, I slipped on the bolero and my mom and sister started doing up the tiny, delicate buttons in the back.

It was kind of weird just standing there waiting, so I kept smoothing down my dress while they told me to stop moving.

And here the silly keeps on going - when we realized that they had skipped a button and had to start over.

My exact reaction - "Why did we let two lefties do this job?"

And then I couldn't stop laughing as they were trying to undo their work.

Successfully buttoned up! Way to go, lefties!

Y'all like how my mom and I were kind of twins? That was totally unplanned, but when we went to pick up my dress at the salon, she found this gold one and lit up when she put it on. She had been going back and forth on what to wear and hadn't fallen in love with anything, but she was absolutely strutting in this dress. I made a joke about how she was copying me, and she swore up and down that she wouldn't buy it and would find something else if it bothered me - and of course I told her she was nuts. This dress made her look amazing and feel fabulous, and that's all that mattered to me.

Then BM Perk gave me some garter assistance.

Total disclosure: those came off like an hour later because they were slipping down my leg and we just stuck them back on before the toss at the reception.

One final step to Bridedom: the veil!

I was so honored to wear the veil my mom wore at my parents' wedding 30 years earlier.

Nanny's face here is so cute. "You ready for this?"

We took the veil off of its original cap and had the seamstress put the pieces on two combs, so that I could wear them separately.

Oh hello, bride, there you are!

One of my favorites of my Nanny and me.

This picture captures what I was doing all morning - deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths!

And finally...I got the last of my nerves and jitters out by flexing my "Disney Point" - I don't remember why and the video doesn't even explain what was happening here, but it looks fun.