Six Girls, No bathroom

The morning of our wedding was like any other morning- except not, because the city was still covered in about an inch of snow, the ground was still frozen which meant- SURPRISE- the pipes were all frozen too. I was lucky to get a shower in before we lost water, but others weren't. Our makeup artist arrived and informed us that there was also a boiled water advisory. We had no idea, and as most of us are from California, we also didn't know what that meant. We quickly learned that we couldn't drink any water that DID present itself...so we ordered champagne! Nothing was going to stop this day from being fantastic!

So we began hair and makeup in shifts, each girl arriving to see this:

Shown here are their bouquets and robes, each one tagged with their name ( I know they look like they're all the same, but I'll explain how they're different in another post). You'll notice the hankies and teacups on the sides. In another blog post, I shared that I had given these to the girls when I asked them to be my bridesmaids. I was so please that a couple of them had brought them to New Orleans and used them in the second line.

Another thing I want to point out is the pattern on the robes. You might recognize it:

Yep! It's the pattern from inside the teacups I had custom made into robes for the girls-each one in the color they would wear for the wedding.

Thanks to a lack of running water, the morning was off to a rocky start, but once we got all dolled up, it didn't seem to matter. I love tradition, and I loved the idea of incorporating local traditions (it's why we had a cake pull!) but I also wanted something extra special that would be a memory and stand out- really make the morning memorable. Days before I had purchased some charged candles from a local voodoo shop. They came in all my girls' colors, so I got one of each.

Before putting on our dresses, we sat in a circle on the bed. We used the candles to "pass the flame" the idea being that all of their love and positivity would be passed through the flame to me. Since I was the bride and the one who brought them all together, I started the circle. I want to be clear that this is not a voodoo ritual. We used voodoo candles, that were charged, each with a different positive blessing attached (love, wealth, health, etc) so that when we passed the flame, we welcomed those blessings into the day, our lives, my marriage, etc.

Once the flame had been passed back to me, we brought them all together and then all blew our candles out at the same time.

I posed for a few more shots:

And a few more:

And then it was time to get dressed. I wore a corset under my gown, so we called in everyone' Fairy Godmothers and corset extraordinaire- David!

and then it was time to get buttoned. Man, there were lots of buttons.

And with that, I was off to meet my fiancé for our first look!

MAJOR thanks to Erika and David for buttoning me in and tightening my corset to give me the silhouette of my dreams for the wedding of my dreams!!!