The Afternoon

Posted on March 14, 2015 by Kori and Eileen

After finishing up our portraits with Zach, we hung around Lake Brownwood for a little while longer, taking a few more pictures by ourselves with Kori’s camera. Now we have come back to our suite where we are changing clothes before heading out to dinner. We took more photos of each other in our wedding attire on the deck and we’re picking a restaurant in town to have dinner at. Even though it’s a small town, there are a couple different nice restaurants to choose from, so we’re checking out their menus online before deciding.

-Eileen

We’re Married!

Posted on March 14, 2015 by Kori and Eileen

After getting ready at our hotel this morning, we drove to the bed and breakfast a few miles away with our photographer, Zach, following in his car behind us. There was a bit of a hiccup when we got lost, made a wrong turn, and had to turn around, all with Zach struggling to follow, but we eventually made it.

When we got there, we met the owners of the bed and breakfast, Don and Deb Morelock, with whom we had been communicating via phone and email in the weeks leading up to our trip. Deb had prepared a fresh bouquet for me, and she showed us over to the stone archway where we planned to have the ceremony. It’s beautiful day, and it was so nice to have our ceremony outside among all the trees and surrounded by nature. Don officiated the ceremony based on a script we had put together. He was a very good speaker and really made the meaning and emotion of the words come to life. When it came time to exchange our vows, Kori and I were both very emotional and choking up as we read our vows aloud and declared our commitment to each other. After we had read our vows and exchanged our wedding rings, we were declared married!

After the ceremony, Deb showed us to where there was a mini bottle of champagne and pie ready for us. We had told her ahead of time that we preferred pie to cake, because it is Pi Day after all. We toasted and cut our wedding pie before calling our parents and siblings to tell them we were officially married. After some difficulties finding cell service, because we are so far away from everything, we were finally able to call our families. They already knew we would be getting married, but we wanted to make sure they were the first people we told once it was official.

Once we had done all of this, we spent a few hours walking around the Morelock’s property and Zach took some candid and posed pictures, so we’ll share some of those once we get them back from him in a week or so. [EDIT: Full wedding day gallery here!]

-Eileen

The Morning of…

Posted on March 14, 2015 by Kori and Eileen

Today is the day! We’ve gotten up and have all of our clothes laid out and ready to go.

Eileen took some time this morning to go get her hair done at a place she found in the area. I was here by myself at the Hideout taking pictures, preparing myself mentally, and of course getting my camera equipment ready for shooting pictures of everything. We have a photographer, but I also want to capture our own images of this huge moment in our lives. The view outside our room on the deck is absolutely wonderful.

Eileen is getting ready. I haven’t seen the dress yet, but very soon I will. The photographer is supposed to be here around 11:30 am, so I’ll go ahead in a few minutes and get dressed to greet him.

I’m nervous. I know I’m going to lose my composure and cry when I say these words that I prepared. We’ve written our own statements to read before completing our vows, and we haven’t discussed them with each other. It’s a surprise. We collaborated on the actual vows, which we both think represent what we believe and how we feel.

-Kori

Arriving in Brownwood

Posted on March 13, 2015 by Kori and Eileen

We’re here! Albeit at nearly 9 PM…

We ended up stopping at too many places…. We saw wind turbines and a few more quaint little towns on the way, but we ended up getting here past dark. Which was a lot worse than we thought, particularly because of all the deer running out into the road! We saw SO MANY, with one here to greet us as we drove up to the Hideout.

We didn’t stop to get anything to eat since Austin, and there is absolutely nothing out here besides dirt roads, cactus, and trees for miles. Thankfully there’s a little restaurant and bar here at the Hideout, so we just grabbed ourselves some food. Now we have to get everything put away and prepared for tomorrow. We’ve almost got everything laid out and organized the best we can, until morning. This is our last night of being engaged, tomorrow we’ll be a married couple. We both have a lot of emotions tonight, from feeling rushed to get everything in the room and ready, to the weight of exactly what we’re doing here. We’re excited, we’re nervous, but most of all we’re happy to be with each other and can’t wait to be joined together tomorrow.

-Kori & Eileen