Falling for You: Family Guys (and girls)

When we left off, Mr. Waterfall and I were walking off into the sunset together, petals and all. As the church bells rang, we stood outside the chapel for a moment, hugging our friends and family.

If you recall, I had been pretty upset at my brother because, truth be told, he was kind of being a pain in the ass (as little brothers tend to be). But when he came up to me after the ceremony, eyes puffy from crying, and told me how much he loved me, I started sobbing. It wasn't pretty, but I'll show you guys anyway.

See?

My heart was so full of love and joy at that moment that it was virtually impossible for me to stay mad at anybody! That's the thing about family, no matter how much they piss you off, you always find a way to move past it.

Since we had opted out of a first look (#worthit!), we had a really tight schedule for photos. We decided to allot fifteens minutes to family portraits, fifteen minutes for the bridal party, and one hour for couples' portraits. Because we didn't have much time, Jesse asked us to make sure that our families and bridal party knew to follow us out of the church to a nearby park. When I explained this to my parents, they were outraged. The conversation went a little something like this. 

- But people will want to congratulate you right after the ceremony!

- Yes, but we simply don't have the time for it, I'm sorry.

- But...that's so rude!

- (sigh) Just do it, please?

So, after the ceremony, I yelled out for our bridal party and family to follow us and briskly walked to the designated spot...only to find that my parents had stayed behind greeting guests. Luckily, Mr. W's family had followed instructions so our photographers were able to start taking pictures of them, not wasting any time.

MIL Waterfall, Mrs. W, Mr. W, Lil Waterfall and Grandmaman Waterfall
It looks like Mr. W's mom and grandma are wearing sunglasses, but it's just their transitionnal lenses. Don't forget to take off those transitionnal glasses, guys! 

My parents eventually moseyed on over and we were able to finish our family portraits, but we were already way behind schedule at this point. I'm not going to lie to you guys, I was pretty annoyed at the whole thing. Not only did our entire reception timeline get screwed up, we ended up having to pay for full extra hour of photography! You can file this under reason #1 why I regret not doing a receiving line (more on that later)... However, since that's pretty much the only thing that went wrong at our wedding, I'll count my blessings and shut up about it.

Mami Waterfall, Papi Waterfall and Mrs Waterfall
We each gave our mom our roses after the ceremony, and they loved it. Plus it gave them something pretty to hold for pictures, since we opted against corsages. 

In the interest of not boring you all to death, I'll only post a few select pictures, but we kept our family photos to a bare minimum --parents, siblings, and grandparents. My parents are both only children, but Mr. W. has a lot of aunts, uncles and cousins, which would have been a nightmare to coordinate for pictures.

The waterfall clan in coordinating shades of blue, silver and grey.
Left to right: Grandpa Waterfall and his wife, Grandma Waterfall, Brother GM, Mami W, Papi W, Mrs. Waterfall, Mr. Waterfall, Lil Waterfall, MIL W and Grandmaman W.

As I mentioned before, our photographers' speciality is photojournalism. As much as the formal photos were a must-have for us, I truly love some of the candid moments that they captured in between formal shots.

A sweet kiss on the nose:

An enthousiastic high-five, told you we were big high-fivers!

 A tender moment with my grandpa:

Some more sibbling love. It was also really windy that say, and my veil had a mind of its own!
So that about wraps it up for family photos, next up, our couples' pictures!

Did you have any issues wrangling people for photos? If so, how did you handle it?

All photos courtesy of the amazing Bachmann Photography unless otherwise specified

Miss a recap?

• We get it started with our wedding trailer
• We had a really intense wedding week
• We handle some last minute drama and get our nails did
• We practice getting married
• We eat all the French food
• We stuff our faces with chocolate
• The girls get pretty, oh so pretty
• The men suit up
• I put on my wedding dress
• I put on my veil and my entourage loses their sh*t
• I show you all my somethings
• We ride a vintage limo to the church
• The bridal party walks the walk
• We have a tearful “first look” on our walk down the aisle
• The ceremony begins with some lovely readings
• We exchange our vows and rings and have a blessing of the hands
• We finish mass, have a rose ceremony and sign the marriage register