Our wedding ceremony

We were fortunate to have a person play music for us and control the lighting. I downloaded the MyWeddingDJ app onto my iPhone, and added the music in there. It was a great decision. It’s an amazing way to make sure that the right song gets played when. I set my phone to forward calls, just in case beforehand, and I knew nobody would be texting me during the ceremony since everyone who might text me was there.  When we got there, I handed off the phone to him, and he used the music I uploaded, all acoustic instrumental versions of 1950s songs that I found on iTunes as the pre-ceremony music.

Our Processional was this acoustic instrumental version of Moon River
 (which I copied from youtube and put into my phone)

When it was my turn to come out, we came out to Cat Power’s Sea of Love (my song with Richard, which is also a modern cover of an old song)

Our non-religious ceremony lasted about 20 minutes. I’d worked together with the officiant to put together a ceremony that was of decent length.  Right before the vows, which we wrote ourselves, our maid of honor read Union by Robert Fulghum. I wanted a reading to break up the ceremony a bit, and this made for the perfect lead in to our vows.

After the vows, the ring mishap and the signing, we walked out of the venue to Something’s got a Hold on Me by Etta James (starting at the first chorus)!

<3

caketalks asked: Not a question, just a thank you and a message of congratulations. I have been following your blog for a while now and its so lovely to see you come to the end of your wedding planning journey and begin your life as a married couple. Huge congratulations to you!!

Thank you so much for your kind words! It’s been quite a ride and its been great to share it with others :) this blog started out as inspiration for my not-yet-engaged self, but grew to a blog with almost 2500 readers of the course of the last two years.
I also look forward to being able to look back on the “my wedding” tag and reminisce on what all I went through, in a few years from now!
It has been so nice to receive well wishes from so many readers, thank you so much to you and everyone else who has sent me messages!
I really do have some of the kindest readers out there in the Tumblr realm!

I’m MARRIED!

Everyone, what a wonderful day. I cannot even express it. 

The weather was not windy, blue skied and sunny and just warm enough. The makeup artist and hair stylist did an amazing job on me and made me feel like a super model, and my bridesmaids were so stunning.

The ceremony went off without a hitch….well, almost. The best man FORGOT THE RINGS! Yes, it happened. Our amazing officiant did a great job of fixing it on the fly, and quickly grabbed my parents in law’s wedding rings to use for the ceremony. I was in such shock that I didn’t even have a moment to feel angry or upset. It was actually quite hilarious after the fact. It’ll make for a good story to tell in the future. Richard and I managed to get through our vows without crying as well, but we were both moved by each other’s.

We got amazing photographs all around the venue area, a university campus that looks like Hogwarts (!!!), and then went to the reception in the beautiful vintage car we hired. 

The food was so good, the waitstaff were very quick working and friendly, and everyone seemed to really enjoy the meal, and the complimentary bottles of wine drained quickly! The bridal party toasts were fantastic and made me cry a little.

The DJ was fantastic, and handled the older and more country folks in the crowd (my family mostly) constantly heckling him to play MORE COUNTRY MUSIC. He did a fantastic job mixing it up, and the dance floor was PACKED from 8:00 til the very end. My happily drunk coworkers, my partying aunts and uncles (in their late 60s up to almost 80s), and the bridal party (about half of whom hate dancing) danced all night. I feel like I’m tooting my own horn a bit, but I’ve been to about 5 or 6 weddings and the dance floor always was much quieter, so it was AMAZING to see everyone having so much fun together. People I’d never seen dancing (some of my “stuffier” relatives) were out there boogieing hard! The older people all stayed much later than originally we figured they would, because everyone was having such a good time,

The wine was drank, all the cupcakes were eaten, and everyone had a great time!

This morning we were humbled to go through all of the cards and gifts, everyone was very generous and we are so grateful, and feel so loved.

This is the only picture floating around of the two of us so far, but I’ll be sure to do a spam of the professional ones, once they come!

xo Shan

I am over the moon happy right now! :)

A BEAUTIFUL DAY AND AN AMAZING DANCE PARTY OF A NIGHT

I’m married! Yay!

Must get to bed now, but I’ll update you all soon! :)

xo SHAN!

The boutonnières are missing

WHY THE F*** is this happening? Where did you go…. :(

They say nothing goes perfectly smooth when it comes to weddings. Apparently not. This is the first real “I want to cry right now” moment. Hopefully this is the only one.

:(

The rehearsal went well, and the decorations came together really great. Gotta focus on the positive…Richard can go and get a boutonnière tomorrow. The groomsmen will go without.

Shan.