Bossy Wedding

When we first started planning our wedding, I said I wanted it to feel like a backyard family party we would throw, if we had a backyard and were professional chefs. I clipped photos of long tables lined with small arrangements of wildflowers. We pictured friends from every part of each of our lives, meeting for the first time and becoming the community that would witness and support our marriage. We were adamant from the beginning that every element of the day should be meaningful and memorable for us, and that any "traditions" that didn't pass those tests wouldn't be part of our wedding. I thought I'd probably cry all day, and laugh even more.

At some point during the planning process, I got a bit sidetracked. Everyone was always asking how the wedding planning was going as if it was supposed to be a full-time job, and I had never had much to offer in response. We had picked a date and a venue, we had invited people, I had found a dress—what was left? After quitting the wedding blogs cold turkey, I ended up guiltily reading them all again. I couldn't help myself. And all of a sudden, I was getting a LOT of ideas. Maybe we should be shopping for tiny vases to hold our tiny wildflower bouquets (I was going to arrange them myself, of course). And maybe we should be decorating the reception restaurant with DIY bunting made of vintage sheet music. Maybe we should have a wall of antique keys so that people can write their "keys to a happy marriage" on tags and then hang them on keys. And then we would need to have a vintage hotel key holder to hang all the keys, or maybe a vintage window frame that I painted myself. (That is a real thing I saw on a wedding blog—I am not creative enough to make that up.)

Up to that point, I hadn't been stressed about the wedding much at all (CM might disagree). But all this DIY nonsense completely freaked me out. Thank goodness CM was there to save me from myself. We hired a florist (duh), left the sheet music bunting in its prototype stage, and didn't go out once to source antique keys.

And the wedding was everything we wanted it to be, truly a perfect day. The things that went "wrong" are some of my fondest memories, like CM bringing the wrong shirt, or my veil flying off, or a ladybug landing on my shoulder and distracting me during the vows, or the tiny raindrops that started falling during dinner and resulted in everyone pitching in to move tables just in time for the rain to stop. You always hear people saying their wedding day flew past in a blur, but it didn't feel like that to me. If anything, my awareness was so heightened that almost every part of the day is etched into my memory.

Still, it couldn't hurt to write it all down for posterity, right? This week I'm so excited to share with you the photos and stories of our wedding. All photos, unless otherwise noted, are by Pink Pixel Photography, all rights reserved. I hope you'll enjoy reliving the day with me.