I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so bad

                He is one of my favorite things. Seriously guys, look how handsome he is!

You may be wondering about this title of this post. If you don't recognize it, it's from the Sound of Music when she sings the "Favorite Things" songs to the kids during the rainstorm. Have you ever realized how random that song is? Brown paper packages wrapped up in string....Hey, everyone's got their own 'thing' that makes them happy. You enjoy those brown packages, Julie Andrews.

Anyway, today is day two of being all but a talking vegetable for me, and I'm having a hard time with it considering it's two weeks before finals and I'm missing school. Don't worry, I'll explain: I've struggled with back problems because of dance for about two years now. My dad's side of the family has seen this a lot, so I guess I just inherited it. My back has been doing progressively better over time, but this week in particular it hasn't been doing so well. To make an extremely long story short, yesterday my back began to have muscle spasms, causing me to collapse to the floor multiple times (aka any time I tried to walk or stand straight up), and leaving me unable to stand, walk, or do practically anything by myself. Luckily, I have the cutest husband ever who has been taking good care of me...which is what this blog post is really about--Taylor...and the day that I married him. Which is one of my favorite things.

On March 13th I received my endowments, which is an essential ordinance in The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and it is necessary to be done before you get married in the temple, which is where Taylor and I got married. I can't say much about the endowment session, not because it is secret, but because it is sacred. However, I absolutely loved it, and it made me even more excited to marry Taylor in the Provo temple :).

On the night of March 14th, we had a "rehearsal dinner" with our families and the bridal party. It was super fun to hear Madie, my made of honor, Josh, Taylor's best man, and our parents speak. Taylor and I also spoke of our experience dating each other and of our ultimate decision to marry each other. Unfortunately, I didn't get to bed super early because I wanted to get anything and everything that would/could cause me stress the next day finished before I went to bed. However, it was the night before my wedding, who can really sleep that night anyway?

On March 15th, 2012 I woke up at 5: 40 am, and my amazing maid of honor, Madie, picked me up at 6am so that we could grab breakfast at Einstein bagels (you have to try their breakfast sandwiches!) and then be in A.F. by 7 for me to get my hair and makeup done.


The rest of the day went exactly as planned and it was perfect. I know that a lot of people say their wedding day was perfect.....aside from this, that, or the other. However, literally nothing went wrong on our wedding day. The days leading up to it were not so enjoyable because of school, stress, etc., so I felt like we deserved the perfect day. The weather, by the way, was AMAZING. I even noticed a small sunburn later that day that I'd gotten just from taking pictures outside. I have to give credit to my mom, the busiest person in the world, for helping my day to be perfect. She even last minute surprised me with getting an ice sculpture for our reception! All of our families and friends were so supportive and helpful. I'll never be able to thank them all enough. Now, enough of the talking, here's some photos of our wedding day (all photo rights go to Elizabeth Taylor Frandsen):

                                                    Guys, look at that blue sky:

This bouquet was SOOOO heavy. But I loved it! 

Our bridal party was SO much fun. 

Don't worry, we had practiced this dip in advance, just so we could get a cute dip picture. 

I had never been a huge yellow gold fan until my sister Nicole got a yellow gold wedding ring. I love it so much now it was one of my colors! 

I loved my wedding shoes. I also bought them before we were officially engaged. I had to just watch them sit in my closet for months until I could finally wear them! 

I wanted a very girly wedding, which I was able to do very well with with the bridesmaids attire. I wanted them to all have the same dress, but to wear whatever gold shoes and jewelry they wanted to so that they could show a little personality. 

As I mentioned before, I wanted to go all out--sparkles, bows, etc. So when my florist suggest a triple bow bouquet for the bridesmaids I did not hesitate. 

All of the bridesmaids had a sash with a cute rhinestone/pearl flower on the front, and it was tied in a bow in the back. I also wrote a message on the bottom of each of their shoes (thanks, Pinterest!)

Again, with the girliness. When I found this ivory tulle-tiered dresses with the gold sequins on top, I just couldn't say no. By the way, Costco has AWESOME little girl dresses. Taylor's family did a great job finding the cute pink cardigans and pink sparkle bow shoes for the girls. 

Nicole wasn't quite feeling going all out being a bridesmaid since she's married, so I found this cute lace dress at Downeast. I had her wear the same sashes as the bridesmaids, and put this cute "belt" on top to match with the girly theme. P.s. the "belt" was originally a necklace. 

Our bridal party was sneaky and put together a fun dance for us using my favorite song (yes, one was a Backstreet Boys song). 

I tried to add detail to everything, so I used every girly, cute thing I could find. 

Brown Brothers Catering---amazing! I made sure to have people sneak me these drinks and some food while we greeted people in line. 

My dad passed away almost five years ago. I decided to dance with his dad, my grandpa Nielsen, in his place. It was hard to not have him there physically, but I know for sure that he was there in spirit. 

Taylor has the sweetest mom ever. I'm glad he got to share a dance with her on our wedding day. 

(look how cute my mom is in the corner) I know a lot of people think having a little fun while feeding each other wedding cake is tacky, and that's fine. But personally, I don't think we look tacky at all! We enjoyed it.

I absolutely love this photo of my beautiful mom and cute sister. 

 The best part about our wedding day was that it was just the beginning of awesome days. Sure, I looked a lot better on that day than I do today (rocking the "mowgli" look while I sit like a vegetable), but my love for Taylor has only grown since that day 20 days ago. So today and yesterday have been rough, but that's why "I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so bad". And that's all.