Our “First Look”

I honestly can’t begin to tell you how many hours I spent contemplating on whether Eddie & I should do a first look.
I read a ton of blog posts and articles about why you should do a first look and how sweet it is and how you have that moment together before you begin to enter the chaos of a wedding ceremony. As a photographer myself I see the benefits for having a first look for the pictures, let alone for that time to be together before becoming one; so I struggled a lot.
I found myself coming back to the little girl thoughts I had growing up.
I was never the girl who had her colors, dress, location, etc picked out for her wedding day, I just didn’t care all that much. Yet I WAS the girl who thought about the look on her husbands face when she walked down the aisle. That thought was what sealed the deal for me – we weren’t going to do a first look, no matter how tempted I was.

With that decision being made Eddie & I knew that we still wanted to spend some time before our wedding ceremony together in prayer. Over the years I’ve seen (as you probably have too) the pictures of couples praying together blindfolded, so that was the direction we went. We made sure that I hid in a bathroom while he walked to the cottage and got into place at a corner and then I walked around to that corner, shut my eyes, and we laced our fingers together. Both of us were a little shaky but within a few moments of praying over our day and our relationship everything started to calm down and I was reminded of why I love this man so incredibly much.
((Fun Fact: What I DIDN’T KNOW was that Eddie had been so. incredibly. sick. up until this point (he may have still gotten sick after our prayer). He was up the entire night before with food poisoning and was sick up to an hour / half hour before our ceremony started. Had I known that I probably would have prayed over his health – but those sneaky monkeys thankfully didn’t tell me about it. I have horrid anxiety when it comes to stomach issues and everyone that really knows me knows that fact so when I say the entire wedding party and family knew about it the entire group knew and I still had no idea until after we were married and were walking back down the aisle as husband and wife!))

My final thoughts…
Was I happy that we didn’t do a first look?
Yes.
I am still so happy that we stayed true to what we wanted and saved that special moment for the ceremony. I am sure it would have still been special even if we did have a first look – but for us it was just….everything we wanted. Standing at the end of a long aisle and seeing Eddie turn around to lock eyes with me, it was magical. He was so incredibly handsome (and sexy!) in his Navy dress uniform and I just couldn’t get over that I was walking to my future. Ahhhhhh all. of. the. feels! <3