Lee-Anne, Stage Manager & Sara, Youth Worker
SUM-UP OF THE WEDDING VIBE:
Eclectic, relaxed, and full of joy!
FAVORITE THING ABOUT THE WEDDING
So many people told us to take a few moments throughout the day and night and just take in what was around us. Everything happens so fast and so much is just a blur, but those moments are amazing snapshots.
We had a few sound issues just before the ceremony started (which was kind of ironic due to the fact there were probably five or six sound engineers at the wedding), so we got to spend a few minutes just to ourselves before we walked down the aisle. It was such a cementing moment, it just felt so right.
It wasn’t so much a detail, but we decided that instead of a wedding cake, we would have lots of wedding pies! Lee decided that we needed to taste test every pie that we were going to have at the wedding. So our pre-wedding diet was substituted with a decent amount of pie, which was incredible! Maybe all wedding planning should be done while eating pie?!? We had fifteen whole sweet pies in total. Watching old friends and people who had met for the first time that night deep in pie-fueled conversation was fantastic. A sweet-tooth version of “breaking bread.”
OTHER COOL STUFF WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT
1. When we started talking about marriage, we struck a deal that whoever proposed would also get to decide on key romantic aspects of the wedding. That way each person was able to experience the lovey-dovey romance of deciding to get married. Sara had also pretty much decided that she wanted to get proposed too, and would hint at this (with out any sense of subtlety). But then one day, Sara realized that creating proposal rules was nonsense and decided to ask the big question.
Sara was working in theatre at the time, mostly in lighting, so she created a lighting installation and bought a bunch of fake diamond rings. The next day we went engagement ring shopping together.
“I had this whole speech planned out, but all I ended up saying was, will you marry me… and I need to sit down now. I was so nervous, the room was almost spinning”.
2. The wedding planning was easy. Lee is an organizer by trade and well, by personality, so our wedding lists and schedules were some of the best you will ever see. We had three main rules: good food, good feeling, and good people! We wanted a very relaxed evening. We got married late afternoon in a Jewish ceremony and the reception followed straight after. It was eclectic, simple, romantic, and elegant.
Together with our family and friends, we did a lot of decorating ourselves. We had a flower working–bee the day before at our place and some of our friends built and assembled the chuppah (wedding Canopy) on the day. We designed our chuppah and two of our friends helped build it. We also designed our invitations (which were tea towels) and all paper products. We did all the flowers and Lee designed and created the bouquets. It was so much fun to do as much as we could ourselves. And it saved money. A trip to the flower market was a great way to spend the morning and saved us lots!
3. Sara is Jewish and it was important to us to incorporate this tradition in our wedding day. We got married under a chuppah, our celebrant was Jewish and incorporated many of the Jewish traditions into our ceremony. Lee stomped on the wine glass, and we got a ketubah (Jewish marriage license) made from the US. It was handmade and the Hebrew was changed to reflect two females.
4. Originally we weren’t going to have a videographer, but Mum and Dad convinced us. We’re so happy that we did. The day was such a whirlwind—it was easy to just miss certain things. Watching the video for the first was great, because we got to relive the best night of our lives. You can say the same for the photos. Our photographer was incredible.
5. The more we thought about the fact that it wasn’t a legal marriage, the more important it became to be able to stand up in front of loved ones and commit our love to each other. We made promises to each other and had the most important people in our lives there to witness. Marriage, for us, is really just a continuation of that. To keep being the best person we can and giving the love to each other that we said we would. And laughter. It’s a great feeling to make your wife laugh.
