Posts Tagged ‘At Home Weddings’

Nov 2011

Today's post isn't just any wedding graduate post. It's from APW Advertising Manager Emily's Dad (with photos by Emily, obviously). You already know a bit about Emily's family, since we ran her grandparents' (fourth picture down) 1951 wedding and her great-grandparents' wedding. And now, without further ado, we shuttle you off to Thanksgiving weekend with a blast of family-centric joy. Have a wonderful holiday, from the APW family to yours.

*Chris, Teacher & Marianne, Retired*

Our wedding was supposed to be a surprise. We billed it as a house cooling—she was moving in with me and renting out her house—and invited our friends over for a party. The hardest part of the planning process was deciding who to invite. Early on we decided we had to tell some of the guests—our own kids and a few others who had to come from out of town. Since we did the deed on a Thursday evening—the eleventh anniversary of our first date—it was likely that some would have had perfectly valid excuses not to come. We didn't tell people in town and one good friend in particular missed the party. Feelings were hurt. Other people weren't invited because they weren't immediate family or long-term friends. More feelings were hurt. If we had it to do over again we might have made the invitations more explicit and more inclusive.

We had both been married before; she with a big formal affair and I with a private court ceremony. This wedding split the difference, so to speak. The most important things to us were simplicity, informality and the absolute absence of stress. The event itself was entirely informal; we both were barefoot, our guests sat in camping chairs during the ceremony, and our dogs were maid of honor, best man, and "father of the bride." My best friend performed the ceremony using a one-time license (and was well-dressed for the occasion, yet was the only person who stepped in dog doo). Our grown daughters, both possessed of quirky sensibilities, were in charge of decorations and dessert, and Marianne's mother brought flowers from her garden. We barbecued tri-tips and everyone else brought something to share. A couple of impromptu toasts were made, and my younger daughter's boyfriend treated us to an impromptu fire spinning show. In every respect, save the invitations, everything went off perfectly and a good time was had by all.

The only surprises of the evening were positive. My friend Bruce, the officiant (a generally quiet and serious person), made a short speech with only a day to prepare, and came up with a hugely humorous homily; among other things, noting that we were barefoot (which he did not know beforehand) and saying that it should be called a weddin' rather than a wedding. After Marianne's uncle made a toast for her side of the family, my friend Alan volunteered to make one for my side, but he said it in Chinese and wouldn't tell us what it means. They couldn't have been funnier if they'd had weeks to think about it.

Thinking back on it, there is not a single bad memory. The food was excellent, everyone had a good time, everybody got to talk to everybody else, and we all ended up around the fire pit at the end of the night. There is nothing I would have changed.

Photos by: Emily Takes Photos

This post includes Sponsors, who are a key part of supporting APW. For more information, see our Directory page for Emily Takes Photos.

Posted in: Wedding Graduates, Wordless Weddings | 18 Comments »

Oct 2011

Wedding Graduates: Emily & Aaron

I've started to get a whole new class of emails asking for advice. I call them the, "So-and-so offered to plan my wedding and all I have to do is show up, and I really don't want to plan a wedding, but somehow it seems wrong to take them up on it—is it WRONG?" emails. And my answer is always, "DEAR GOD. LET THEM PLAN YOUR WEDDING." Think about it. Just a generation or two ago, the bride's family always planned the wedding. It's only our current obsession with *personalization* that puts the burden squarely on the bride (and sometimes the groom), so what's wrong with letting your community throw a party to honor you? Which is just what Emily & Aaron did when their roommates offered to plan things. And oh boy, was that the right decision. And Emily wore a Betsey Johnson wedding dress, which is also always clearly the right decision.

My husband and I didn’t plan our wedding. From day one, we handed it almost entirely off to our loved ones, and that turned out to be the best decision we made.

When Aaron and I decided to get married, the last thing I wanted to do was plan a wedding. To make a long story short, we’d been together for six years and were completely committed, but we wanted to wait to get married until our gay friends could do so as well. Then we started looking into joining the Peace Corps. Immediately our passion for service came up against our dedication to equality: In order to apply to the Peace Corps together, we needed to be married for at least one year. When it came right down to it, we agreed that we don't want to look back on our lives sixty years from now and see "what ifs." We decided to go for it.

Easier said than done! Add my issues with marriage equality to the fact that I’m not one of those women who can discuss wedding colors with my friends as though we’re on the United Nations Security Council, and you can imagine how excited I was about planning a wedding.

Here's where the real heroes of our wedding story come in: Our roommates. They are sisters, two of our closest friends, and an absolute blast to share a house with. They also happen to have über type-A personalities and a serious love affair with stress. The original wedding plan, as we ran it by the roomies in June, was: "We're going to the courthouse in August, and then we'll have a barbeque at the house afterward. No big deal." This was met with two sets of eyes rolling and "Just leave it to us." Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Emily & Aaron

Posted in: Wedding Graduates | 54 Comments »

Jul 2011

1924 Vintage Wedding: Emily & Richard

Way back when I started APW (it's funny that 2008 seems so long ago now), one of my goals was to prove, once and for all, that simple weddings were traditional. Or, in other words, to prove that all this nonsense about but-you-have-to-have-it-it's-tradition, was just that: nonsense. And then I wrote a whole book about that very same subject, which you all will get to read come January.

So I'm beside myself with glee to share Emily's, of Emily Takes Photos, Great-Grandmother Emily's wedding from 1924. First, let's all swoon over her grey wedding dress and her adorable hat and flowers. And then, let's chortle with delight over how simple their invitations were:

Indeed. Simple and traditional and proper. And yes, you caught that. At the bottom of the invitation it indicates that the reception will be, "At Home." Traditional indeed.

But the best part of all of this? The newspaper announcement, that starts with, "Simplicity will characterize the wedding this morning of Miss Emily Mon..." it continues, "A luncheon at the Mon home will follow the service at the church. This will be simple in keeping with the charming dignity of the wedding..."

And don't even get me started on, "The two young matrons of honor at today's ceremony were also recent brides. In their early girlhood, Miss Mon, Mrs. Dietze and Mrs. Nicolaides agreed to serve as bridesmaids or matrons of honor for each other and this morning the romantic contract is fulfilled in its entirety." I know. Anne of Green Gables and I will be over here with the smelling salts, trying to pull ourselves together.

Posted in: Tradition | 48 Comments »

Jul 2011

Wedding Graduates: Candis & Hayley

Today's wedding is awesome, not just because it's a lesbian wedding that took place in a deeply red state (though I love that bit), but because of everything else. It features partners who don't see eye to eye on aesthetics and styles (you don't have to!) and DIY everything, from photography to food, and a dessert (but country club style) reception. Hurrah!

Indulgence was the word of our spectacular, DIY wedding day. Hayley and I aren’t much for themed events (or so I thought), yet our wedding was absolutely centered on indulgence, with a dash of hedonism and political rebellion. We’re a gay couple getting married in a completely crimson state, and we only set out to please ourselves. Ever wanted to see a feminist country club wedding? You should have been there.

Hayley and I come from vastly different places in the world. Geographically, she was born and raised in Louisville, KY, a city with severe bipolar disorder (Midwestern? Southern?), while I grew up in romantic, deeply Old South Georgia. Her fondest memories from childhood include riding her bike to the country club to swim the day away, while mine tend more toward riding my bike down the dirt road to the local pond to fish. She has political anemia: she knows, but she never gets too fired up about much of anything. I, on the other hand, have been known to scare lesser mortals with the vehemence of my social zeal. We may be best friends, but we’ll never be total birds of a feather.

So when the planning began we struggled to conceive of an event that said “Candis and Hayley totally love each other” in a way that was both exciting and authentic. We thought big wedding, small wedding, beach elopement, farm weekend, country club soiree, art gallery chic, etc, etc, ad nauseum. After months of ideas being rejected, we settled on one that had been heavily endorsed by Hayley and that didn’t make me want to vomit. Compromise is the name of the game after all. With Hayley’s family home as venue and garden cocktail party as the style, we were ready to get serious.

Like all couples (maybe more so with two brides) we went through the inevitable arguments over invites, flowers, cakes, dresses, favors, blah, blah, blah. Even the date wasn’t sacrosanct as we changed it twice to accommodate family members. Eventually all things were decided, plans set, dresses bought and gifts arriving in the mail. Wedding planning turned out to be both harder and easier than imagined. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Candis & Hayley

Posted in: LGBTQ Weddings, Wedding Graduates | 26 Comments »

Jul 2011

Wedding Graduates: Holly & Chris, Part 1

Today's wedding graduate post is in two amazing parts. It's the story of balancing an elopement with family needs, of a simple last minute at home wedding service, and of the sweeping vistas of Yosemite. It's about amazing photography and simple intimate loving moments. So let's start Holly's story (Holly is, by the way, an excellent photographer in her own right) on a farm in Florida, with her family gathered round. Here is The Wedding Day, Part I:

This is the story of how we ended up getting married twice in one week. Once on a family farm in Florida and the next in the middle of a valley in Yosemite. Two weddings never was part of the plan - that would just be crazy! But that’s how it ended up happening. And we wouldn’t change a thing.

Chris warned me within the first twenty minutes after I accepted his proposal that our wedding would have to include “everybody or nobody.” He comes from a large family, has never been married, and has tons of friends, so naturally everybody wanted to celebrate with him. Our main concern was how on earth we would pay for such a soiree. In talking about the type of wedding we envisioned, we both imagined having a more practical affair. So that’s what we set out to have...

A widowed mother of a preschooler, I am currently working as a self-employed photographer and he is a marine biologist...which basically means we’re not at risk of being wealthy anytime soon. But we are very much in love and were determined to have the wedding of our dreams within our budget, which was essentially nothing. Working in the wedding industry, I knew what things cost and how quickly things add up.

I made budgets, spreadsheets and guests lists for seven different weddings, and for one reason or another none of them would work. Wedding planning was taking away from time that I should have been spending with my young daughter and when I should have been up editing other people’s weddings or sleeping at night.

Frustrations grew and every day elopement looked to be a better option. Finally, one day, we used our airline miles to book two tickets to California and announced to our families that we were going to elope in Yosemite seven months later. The announcement was met with a mixture of happiness and disappointment. Happiness because they knew that was what we wanted, and disappointment because everyone wanted to be there to share in our day with us.

As the time grew closer, our families had a harder time talking about our wedding. I knew in my gut that I would never forgive myself for saying “I do” without my daughter, Charlotte, who Chris is going to adopt, there with us. And I knew that our families, though they would never say it, would always be hurt that they weren’t there to see us. I wanted Charlotte to hold our hands as we promised our lives together as a family. And I had no idea what we were supposed to do about it at that point. The idea of bringing her with us on a plane to California and then dragging her along for ten days sounded absolutely miserable and was out of the question. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Holly & Chris, Part 1

Posted in: Wedding Graduates | 35 Comments »

May 2011

Vintage Wedding: Linda & Bill, 1979

Today's vintage wedding comes courtesy of Kristy of Moodeous Photography's parents. I don't know what it is about these decades old weddings that makes me cry like a baby, but they do. And this one did particularly. So if you're in your cubicle, be wary of the tears. And without further ado, Kristy's lovely parents, on their wedding day 32 years ago:

Linda had chosen Bill long before they even spoke. She was a member of the EMT squad in her hometown and he was a firefighter. She had spotted him on the job out on calls and noticed that he was a pretty handsome specimen. So she set out to meet this fella with the help of her friends. Assisted by a boyfriend (ex? the details are murky) who recruited my father onto the EMT squad and then by another friend who fixed the schedule so their duties would overlap, my mom laid the ground work for their marriage. But as my Dad describes it, he wasn't an unsuspecting victim. While a fireman, he recalls, "There was this one call on 232 with an overturned truck and gray matter all over the road where I saw this beautiful blond..." He became an EMT shortly thereafter.

They won't elaborate much on the proposal (and probably with good reason), but I do know three things: 1) My father did not ask his father in law for my mother's hand, 2) There was no ring accompanying the proposal, because my father *ahem* had no pockets at the time, and 3) My mother said yes.

My parents were married on Friday March 23, 1979 at 5pm in my mother's parent's home. 75 people were in attendance and I'm told it's a wonder the old farm house floors didn't fall through the way they creaked and groaned. My mother told my Grandfather she'd only invited 60 guests so he wouldn't get upset and refuse to hold the wedding at his aging home.

My mother had been married once before in a much more elaborate affair involving a church, a much fancier dress, a sit down dinner and closer to 100 people. From her previous marriage, she also had a 9 year old son, my brother Dan, who was adopted by my father and incorporated into the wedding day. Dan walked my mom down the aisle and gave her away. It's one of my favorite photos from their wedding day. Continue reading Vintage Wedding: Linda & Bill, 1979

Posted in: Uncategorized | 50 Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘At Home Weddings’

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