Steven, Patent Attorney at IBM & Mike, Stay-At-Home Dad, Former Speech Pathologist for public schools
Photographer: Kenton Waltz
One sentence sum-up of the wedding vibe: Things don’t have to be perfect when kids are involved.
Soundtrack for reading: To be perfectly honest, neither one of us are overly into music. We struggled with whether or not to play music at the ceremony and in the end we didn’t.
OTHER COOL STUFF WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT
Since there were only (including us) eight adults and seven kids, we didn’t need a large cake. But I wanted the cake to look like a “wedding cake.” So only the top layer is real cake. The bottom layer is a piece of foam underneath the frosting. Having to get up on one’s wedding day faced with frozen cake layers and thawed out buttercream is rather nerve-wracking.
We had a very limited budget. We cut out the idea of a photographer from the very beginning. But a few days before the ceremony I was pining for one—not really for a wedding photographer, but just someone to document the ceremony. I was really lucky to find Kenton Waltz on Craigslist as a wedding photographer who also hires out for a fixed hourly rate. That’s the only way we were able to get a photographer.
After the short ceremony in the church, we drove back from Vancouver to Portland and dropped the kids off with our babysitter. After some pesto pasta, the kids spent two hours decorating every inch of our house with streamers and balloons. Meanwhile the adults were having a lovely dinner at Clarklewis. I was really touched to arrive at the restaurant and see that the table was already set with a round of champagne for a wedding toast.
As an attorney, I’ve been interested in all of the marriage equality court cases. Instead of some flowery, non-meaningful poetry reading, the minister used quotes from the court cases, President Obama, and former Washington Governor Christine Gregoire.
We didn’t have much time to plan the wedding. We chose the date because it was our sixteenth anniversary as a couple.
Favorite thing about the wedding
Rev. Patti Pomerantz started the short ceremony by sitting on the floor with the kids (who were fifty percent of the people in attendance). She asked them how they felt when something was not fair. And then explained that the wedding ceremony was a way to overcome something that hadn’t been fair in the past but now was. It was a perfect way to start. The rest of the wedding was interspersed with noise from the kids in the front wriggling around and playing. I am so happy that our sons, Soren and Shepherd, were able to be a big part of our ceremony.
