First of all, thanks to Josh for this amazing picture! Jeff and I were engaged since February 2008, and it was great to have a long engagement. With work, school, and the bar on the table, it was nice to have time to plan everything, rather than having to get it all done at once. We were able to cut down our budget a lot by doing things ourselves, and by the generosity of both of our families and friends, without which our wedding would not have been as amazing as it was!I think the hardest part about our wedding, for me, was relinquishing control to someone else. I'm used to organizing and doing things my way, but on the day of the wedding you can't do anything but worry about hair and makeup! I should have known that I didn't need to worry about a thing...everyone was so great about getting all the last minute things together!
Although we got off to a rocky start because Jeff was running a little late (he realized only about 20 minutes before he had to be at the wedding venue that he had actually forgotten his shirt-and so ensued their own adventure to the mall...), and the DJ played the wrong song for the bridal party entrance (which turned out fine in the end), the rest of the wedding went so smooth and perfect that I couldn't really believe it!
By far the best part of it all was seeing so many of our friends and relatives all together in one place, and seeing them all have a great time. I will give the DJ this, he knew how to keep everyone dancing--with the exception of one house/dance song that he played, which ensured
that everyone left the dance floor and emptied the keg. This picture was taken after someone--brilliant, of course--decided to move the dance hall outside where it was much cooler! And everyone was getting low...
One of the "unique" things we did at our wedding (every bride wants her wedding to be special and "different," let me tell you--not easy to do on a budget!) was that we stayed away from the unity candle and such things. Jeff is an artist, so I thought we could tie that in to the ceremony somehow. What we ended up doing was that Jeff did an outline of a heart on a blank canvas, then during the ceremony we had both of our mom's come up and outline one side of the heart in black. After they were done, Jeff and I got up there with the red paint, and he filled in part of the heart and I filled out the rest.
After the ceremony it was moved to the reception area, along with some permanent markers, and this is what we got:
We still haven't found out who crossed out whatever they wrote on the left side of the heart, oh well. Now we just have to save up a lot of money so we can get it framed somehow and display it somewhere.
Needless to say, any bride could probably write a book about her wedding; suffice it to say that it was everything we wanted. We only wish it could have lasted longer!
