Ok! So first! Later today, Anne will be back giving away her dress, Sisterhood style. Wheee! But first she's here sharing her wisdom. What I love about Anne's wedding graduate post is not just the visible joy, or the little girl with the flamingo on her head (though, obviously, none of that hurts). What I love is the way Anne talks about how planning a wedding can be a real coming to grips with what we want, and who we are. And pulling off a wedding can show us that we are so much more powerful than we think we are, and that it's time for us to take on the world (So lets take on the world, yes? Deal!).
Most women have thought about their weddings in the years before the big day arrives. Many details of weddings are planned well in advance of even having a partner! I am no different. I had loose visions of what I wanted. There were elaborate letterpress invitations, a fancy white dress, and a beautiful space with candles and flowers. It was all very typical WIC.
Although it sounds silly to admit, I never imagined that my future husband wouldn’t want the same wedding as I did. I was fooled by movies where the guy says, “I just want her to be happy.” Lucky for me, that’s not my Husband. He challenges me. When something doesn’t seem right, he asks for a better solution. I love that about him. He often reminded me to consider the marriage instead of the wedding, and that became the theme of our wedding planning experience.
When it came time to start planning our wedding we were forced to discuss exactly what we expected. This was a really hard part of the process for me. Turns out, I didn’t really know what I wanted. I could pick out what I liked and didn’t like on wedding websites, (Monogrammed napkins? No. Gorgeous dress? Yes.) but I had no clear, overall vision for our wedding. I consider myself a fairly independent and confident woman, but I wasn’t sure that we could pull off the wedding we wanted. (This was obviously before I found APW!)
I was throwing around so many ideas, that I did not stop to think about what we wanted our wedding to be. After talking with the Husband, we decided we wanted a wedding where we could invite everyone we wanted and make them all comfortable. To us, comfortable meant a reception outdoors, in the sun, in summer time clothes, and it also meant a formal ceremony.
At the end of the day our wedding was definitely a perfect combination of our lifestyles. Isn’t that the point? We had a ceremony in the church I grew up in on a Sunday afternoon. Five minutes away, we had a barbeque under a tent. We had field games like bocce and beanbags with bubbles and coloring books for the kids. We had 120 people in shorts and sundresses.
We had a family member as the photographer. We DIY’d our own cupcake tower and BBQ rub favors. We got flowers at the grocery store. We had everything we needed to celebrate the birth of our new baby family. It wasn’t overly fancy, but neither are we.
Sitting on the altar during the ceremony, I was struck by the people around me. My mother (my maid-of honor and only attendant) sat to the right of me. My fiancé was on my other side and his brother (his best man and only attendant) sat next to him. I looked out at all of the guests. Never in my life had my college friends been in the same room as my coworkers and family. What an overwhelming feeling to see all of the people you love in one place!
Looking out at our guests, I finally realized what our wedding was going to be about. Our wedding was a celebration of every relationship in our lives. The Husband and I were honoring our relationship with each other, but we were also celebrating all of the other relationships in our lives – our amicable relationships with friends and coworkers, our familial relationships, our parents’ relationships (both married 30+ years, woot! woot!). All of these had shaped our lives and they continue to support us in our marriage. It was overwhelming and wonderfully perfect.
Photography copyright by Carol Willoughby
I can’t be the only one in love with the pink flamingo.
March 17, 2011 10:33 am
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I don’t know about the flamingo, but I sure as heck want a cupcake now. They are so bright and cute!
March 17, 2011 10:39 am
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I love the flamingo too. It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland where they used them as mallets to play croquet.
Also the cupcakes. They remind me that I wish I had one. ;)
March 17, 2011 2:38 pm
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“What an overwhelming feeling to see all of the people you love in one place!”
Yes, yes, yes. People who would never otherwise have met came from all over to be there for us and I was dumb struck by how amazing it was to have everyone we love in one room at the same time.
March 17, 2011 10:36 am
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I love this! And I love that the husband was the one to challenge her into really have a wedding that reflected them! And um.. how fun does that wedding look?? LOVE! <3
March 17, 2011 10:37 am
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Fantastic!!! Exactly the type of wedding I am imagining. And nope, no partner yet for me! Hopefully one day whoever he is goes along with this vision!
March 17, 2011 10:53 am
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This looks like a wonderful wedding! And a lot like what we’re aiming for. I really appreciate seeing weddings like this one.
March 17, 2011 11:04 am
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Hellz yeah on honouring every relationship in (y)our lives.
I wrote a blog post today about anomie and our wedding and spent ages trying to get at what I wanted to say, and you’ve said it really neatly.
It’s about EVERY relationship, not just the nuptial relationship.
March 17, 2011 11:09 am
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I second that! I also love how you said the wedding was about all your relationships. I never thought about it that way but it is so true. When viewed in that context, it makes sense how weddings can be so stressful, because it is not just you and your future husband’s relationship you are building, but the relationships with your mom, your in-laws, your siblings, and your friends. That complex web of relationships can also be what makes a wedding so emotionally powerful.
March 17, 2011 11:17 am
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Hooray for husbands with opinions about weddings! And hooray for your beautiful cupcake tower! I’m thinking you should submit one of those newfangled DIY posts and tell people how you did it.
March 17, 2011 11:13 am
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Yes yes yes!!! This is the kind of wedding that I would love to have a how-to guide for!
March 17, 2011 12:17 pm
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Lovely post, especially mentioning that a wedding is a celebration of the special relationships in our lives. I remember my husband & I sitting down at our reception & taking in the sight of our family & friends there to celebrate with us. We were so overwhelmed & honored. One of my favorite moments of our wedding day!
March 17, 2011 11:24 am
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This is gorgeous! And makes me super happy because we’re having a wedding very similar to this and this is RAD. :)
March 17, 2011 11:55 am
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YES I love when there’s dancing alternatives. I wish we’d done that. I mean, homemade Toss Across?? Seriously?!? I love it.
March 17, 2011 12:18 pm
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since no one else has said it yet, ohhhh the dress! whoever gets it is one lucky lady!
March 17, 2011 1:28 pm
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Cornhole!! That’s my family’s new game. We have a miniature version on our coffee table right now that we spend way too much time playing.
I love how you described having people from all parts of your life together in one room. I love moments like that where all parts of me are together in one place. That was one of the fun parts of our wedding was watching not just parts of one of our lives coming together, but our individual lives come together as one as manifested by all the people from our lives who came together.
March 17, 2011 2:38 pm
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Coffee table cornhole?! What an awesome idea! I think I might need one of those. Did you make it yourselves? How big are each of the pieces? What’s in the beanbags? Oh, I have so many questions… and ideas! Thank you. :)
March 18, 2011 6:17 pm
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I love your wedding! this is what I always dreamed my wedding would be like (I love outdoors and late summer and lawn games). It’s not working out this way for me, so I’m glad I got to see pictures of your great day! Plus, you’ve given me the idea that maybe I can grab some of these ideas and have an engagement BBQ this summer :-)
March 17, 2011 4:56 pm
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Thanks for all the thoughtful comments. I’m not much of a writer, so gathering my thoughts for these posts was a very rewarding challenge for me. Kudos to Meg, Alyssa & Lauren for keeping this community running smoothly!
March 17, 2011 6:37 pm
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This is so, so lovely, and looks like it would be such a fun, relaxed wedding! I think you definitely achieved “comfortable”; what a great thing to strive for, too. I may be biased, as this is almost identical to what we’re planning for our wedding, but it looks fabulous! Also, it’s great to see grocery store flowers in action (and looking stunning) since I’m currently trying to convince my mom of them :)
The part about seeing everyone you love in one place and being overwhelmed by it… I realize that it is said as a good thing, but that is one thing I’m most nervous about– being completely overwhelmed by people, despite knowing and loving them all. Is it always a good overwhelmed?
March 17, 2011 8:08 pm
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Yes. But don’t forget to give yourself some time to yourself, too. I’m not usually one who needs a lot of alone time, but I’m definitely not used to such big groups of people. So whenever I was getting overwhelmed (of the not-so-good type) by the amount of people, or the pace of the many conversations, I’d just go into my parents’ bathroom for 5-10 minutes (we had the wedding at their house and their bathroom was the best quiet point that was the furthest away from the crowds), sometimes alone, sometimes with my partner. You probably won’t need too much time at a time (I was surprised that I didn’t need more), but it is really important to allow yourself to be away from entertaining and enjoying for a little bit so you can relax and re-charge your smile.
March 18, 2011 6:25 pm
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First of all, I love the BBQ reception (but I may be a little biased as we did the same at our wedding!) and second, I loved the emphasis on the guests and making them feel comfortable. We spent a lot of time (and portion of our budget!!) on the things that we thought would make the day a better experience for everyone because weddings go by so quickly that no one is going to remember the expensive little details but rather the general experience. And it really paid off… we get told all the time that our wedding was the funnest wedding that said guest had attended and even the caterer pulled us aside to tell us that he does an average of 6 parties a week and that ours was the first he had enjoyed in a long time. We didn’t do anything especially different from a typical wedding but I think that the typical wedding dedicates so little time to the guest’s interests and comfort that it was pretty easy for us to throw such a memorable wedding. (and the super soakers probably helped a little too…!!)
March 18, 2011 4:29 am
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Oh you look so beautiful in your dress!! I, too, came to the realization that my fiance and I don’t want the same wedding. I never had really thought I would have this problem.. But, you’re right. It’s definitely not like it is in the movies!! We’re still in the planning phase and I hope that it comes around to something we both love like yours did. Congrats!!
March 18, 2011 1:57 pm
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haha too funny. I have that same dress and we’re planning an extremely similar wedding. (My fiance and I actually met playing bags/cornhole so we’re for sure having that!) I just love your style and I guess great minds think alike ;-)
March 19, 2011 7:38 am
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So rad! Congrats! Love the beanbag toss…makes me want that for our welcome picnic. :P
June 8, 2011 9:01 pm
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