planning our wedding: the overview list

i hope you've enjoyed this wedding series as much as i've enjoyed finally getting it all out my head. because lists are nice...here are all of the "planning our wedding" posts:

• intro
• the ceremony: 6 questions to ask yourself before you begin planning + our ceremony flow
• forget the reception: a celebration where napping was encouraged
• our itemized budget: how we got to $17,676
• our vows
• regrets
• everything is expensive, but these 5 things are free!
• 4 things we delegated that thoroughly surprised us
• why we said no to a bridal party
• saying no to pinterest

and to end this series, here's the video slideshow that our photography oh happy dawn made for us.

love,

liz

planning our wedding: say no to pinterest

i'm serious. 

SAY NO TO DRUGS PINTEREST.

i was adamant about not using pinterest to plan our wedding because what pinterest is for women is like what porn is for men: addicting and reality-skewing. it's a serious addiction (much like any social media), but particularly unhealthy during an emotional wedding planning process.

the reason i have a strong point of view on this us because i have such a strong inclination for ocd behavior with tools like pinterest. it's the visual candy store no one could've imagined, but someone created and now we are like flies drawn to an electric fly trap. 

knowing this about my tendencies, i told myself i would not use it to plan the wedding and committed to it. (i also committed to not look at any wedding blogs.) if you are like me, i highly recommend staying away from pinning your way to some "dream" wedding. you will likely get carpel tunnel, blurry vision, a wedding budget explosion, and a disappointed spirit. 

in full disclosure, i did end up pinning a few times to capture some ideas mostly for the boutonniere, bouquet and make-up. i made a secret board with 30 pins, but it's public now so you can see what i drew some inspiration from.

by saying no to pinterest, 

• i noticed i would be most tempted to use it when i wanted to escape my current reality. i could taste it in my mouth....the deliciously distracting images, and i wanted it baaad. these were the times i was most grateful i committed to saying no to pinterest for the duration of my wedding planning.
• i could keep my eyes focused on making value-based decisions, not emotionally-based decisions. 

what do you need to say no to?

planning our wedding: why we said NO to a bridal party

as i've watched friends get married, i would make my secret list of people who i'd choose to be in my bridal party for when the time arrived. giiiiiiiiiiirl, i know i'm not alone on this...can i get an amen?

yet when it came down to it, i chose to toss that list out the window.

actually, i think the value behind a bridal party is beautiful. it recognizes the people closest to you who have stood beside you and your relationship, and who will hopefully continue to stand beside you in your marriage. these are the people who will help you live out your marriage - because marriage is work and painful at times. it's heart-moving to see all those people physically standing beside a bride and groom. 

but the decision to NOT having a bridal party was pretty simple. we asked ourselves: 

• Q: why does it feel so bad to have to have to rank our friends? 
• A: we don't want to rank our friends! they're all meaningful to us in different ways. 

• Q: is there a way we can involve our friends without putting such a large financial burden on them? 
• A: a resounding YES. so we said NO to having a formal bridal party. 

we believed we could still honor those people closest to us without having them incur the often large cost of being part of a bridal party. especially for women, being a bridesmaid can be painfully expensive. but because we love our friends, we're willing to spend the money. i have done so in the past without any regret. 

there was a period in my 20s when all of my close friends were getting married, and i was invited to be a part of many of those bridal parties. without a doubt, it was an incredible honor and, i was also making practically poverty wages working at non-profits and living in the bay area. i was genuinely unsure how it would all work out financially. for one wedding there is usually: a bridesmaid dress, sometimes matching shoes, hair & makeup, bachelorette party and all the associated costs, hosting a bridal shower, bridal shower gift, wedding gift, time away from work or family, flights or gas, etc. for some of my friends, i couldn't even afford to give them a wedding gift because i was financially tapped out after all the pre-wedding affairs.

that's why we decided to honor our friends by asking them to participate in other small and meaningful ways:

• give a toast at the rehearsal lunch: my sister helen, steph, zack, michael and matt all gave heartfelt toasts. the time they took to write and share their reflections meant a great deal to us. 
• speak at our wedding: we had five formal speakers and my sister annaha, who read a poem. it was an enormous gift to have our friends reflect on and write a five minute talk they would deliver in front of everyone - on topics we chose! this was no small task, and we were grateful for their honesty and vulnerability in sharing. 
• come be with us in the morning of our wedding: samuel asked a couple of guys to hang out with him as he got ready for the wedding, as did i. it was so lovely to have friends to simply be with us. 
• come to a ladies' weekend (aka bachelorette party): this was my way of having some time away with special women in my life, relaxing at the beach in santa cruz and eating delicious meals. i felt super aware of the costs associated with going away for a weekend, but also felt like it was important to do this. so samuel and i agreed to pay for the beach rental in santa cruz, which cost us $950. it was a lot, but it felt like a way i could say "thank you" for being a part of my life. plus, the ladies coordinated and cooked all of the meals and we ate extremely well. nom nom nom. 
• note: this was different for samuel. he didn't mind his boys throwing down cashmoney for him. haha. they went go cart racing, white water rafting, and ate a lot!
• be our ring-bearers: in a typical wedding scenario, i would've asked my nieces to be my flower girls. but we didn't think having flower girls was necessary and they were already part of the family processional. also, i didn't want to spend money on buying special dresses for them when they already have a lot of cute clothes. then it dawned on me....it would be really meaningful to me if they brought us our wedding rings! so my sister dressed them in cute clothes they already had, and told them the importance of their role. i thought it was a great win-win. and the best part...my precious nieces got to play a typically male role. i'm all for that!

• lastly, the way we thought about the bridal party was this: inviting someone to attend our wedding meant that we were inviting them to participate in our marriage, for life. all in all, it's like everyone was part of our bridal party. : )

so we stood up there alone...

...but together with everyone.

planning our wedding: 4 things we delegated that thoroughly surprised us!

it's tempting to want to control every aspect of your wedding, to have it be "perfect." i implore you to let that go of that mentality as soon as possible. it will make life easier! plus delegating is a great solution to wedding control issues. : ) 

the beauty of having six weeks to plan our wedding was that our time constraint made it clear we simply couldn't do all of it. i am so glad for the gift of delegating some things out to people who i love and trusted. 

1. bouquet & boutonniere. i wasn't even sure i wanted flowers at first. they can be very costly! anyway, i can't remember if heather offered or if i asked, but the thought of heather making my bouquet felt like the right call. she's so talented with floral arrangements, and she is so dear to me. i knew having something she made for me would be really special, kind of like wearing annette's earrings. i showed heather a picture of a bouquet i was drawn to for it's simplicity and colors and asked if she could make something like it. i completely trusted her judgement and eyes for beauty and let it go. i was so surprised and delighted by what she created the morning of our wedding. it was...perfect. 

2. the welcome table. oh emily grady. she is a saint. here are a few things about emily i appreciate: she cares a LOT, she got married a few months before us, has a great rustic sensibility, and is impeccably organized. i knew that she and her husband would go above and beyond welcoming our guests because they are naturally like that. they give their all. i merely handed her the stuff i had for the welcome table, asked her to do what needed to be done, and then thanked her. i knew all would be good in the grady's hands. and it was! (see below, the little mason jars and yellow ball flowers were small things that emily brought from her home.)

3. family dinner venue. we needed to find a restaurant to host 30+ guests for dinner on saturday night after the wedding, which was no simple task. we asked my oldest sister to help us with this search, negotiate the terms, and be our liaison. it was so helpful to have my sister do the heavy lifting in this process. easy to say: everyone RAVED about cafe pro bono. the meal was so good that we went back there with our wedding coordinators to thank them, and gave a gift card to one of our speakers to enjoy a meal there as well. we loved it that much!

4. cake & toppers. when chris said he would make a cake for us as our wedding gift, we were thrilled. we didn't know what to expect. but classic chris....he sent us a list of questions to think about regarding what the cake and its meaning to us. when we got back from europe, we met with chris to discuss his questions and share our favorite cake inspiration. in the same discussion, he asked us about toppers. honestly, cake toppers wasn't even something i cared about, but chris mentioned sheri and then things changed. i love her work and i love her, and commissioning sheri to make us cake toppers felt like a good decision. i told her that samuel calls me bird and i call him my bunny and that we do this little affectionate nose-to-nose thing. and with that kernel of information, we had one of the most exquisite and tasty wedding cakes i had ever seen and tasted. (yes, i'm biased.) 

bonus: the day of coordinating. there was of course, delegating the entirety of the day to our friends cara and amy. we did as much prep as we could and then handed over everything to these two extremely capable women. they gifted us with an enormous sense of relief and freedom. having day-of wedding coordinators is like being pregnant for nine months, and right before you go into labor, someone else takes over. cara & amy delivered our baby. how's that for a metaphor? 

ps. if you're looking for a wedding coordinator, cara is available for new clients. i'd be happy to put you in touch (email me at lizsong (at) gmail.com or comment below). 

anyway, all this to say....

there was an element of surprise and delight i couldn't have created if i did everything on my own. i simply loved being surprised on my own wedding day by the beautiful creativity and service of my friends.

as much as samuel and i wanted to host an awesome experience for our community, i think part of what made our wedding so special was that we were also able to receive from our community. we had to stop believing we were "being a burden" by asking for help, but rather we were inviting our friends to participate, to ask them to invest in us. 

a wedding can be a beautiful opportunity to give and receive love from our community. i'll hold this learning close to my heart for many years to come.

how might you let go of perfection and invite deeper friendship/delight/surprise into your wedding planning process? or even into your life?

planning our wedding: everything is expensive, but these 5 things are FREE!

here are some ways i didn't just "save" money, i didn't spend any!

1. borrow your friend's jewelry. at my ladies weekend (aka: bachelorette party), i asked everyone to bring any/all of their gold earrings. i tried them all on and knew immediately which one i wanted to wear. the sweet thing was that the pair that jumped out to me belonged to my oldest childhood friend annette. it was particularly meaningful because we chose not to have a bridal party, but still wanted our close friends to know they were precious to us (upcoming blogpost on this topic). i stood as annette's maid-of-honor and hadn't planned on reciprocating that role for my wedding, but it was special to have a piece of her hanging on my ears! FREE (and priceless)!

2. do your own hair. i could've gotten something elegant and fancy done, but the occasion didn't really call for it. because our whole wedding was more low key, i didn't have any problem curling my own hair. (side note: i felt more confident doing my own hair than my makeup so i paid someone for that. you can see how much i paid here for my lack of makeup skills. *gulp*) the morning of my wedding, my friend steph drove to michael's and found the flower i wore in my hair for under $5. she and mary helped me clip it in and voila! hair done! i think steph said not to worry about the cost, so if i'm remembering correctly, i guess it was FREE! ;-P 

3. look around your house. you may be surprised by what you find tucked away in your cupboards and closets. we ended up using the following that we had on hand: large canvas, clothes pins, straws, card stock, floral tape, pillows, markers, compostable utensils, some nice dinner size napkins, and a shell alice (sister-in-law) found last summer in france to hold our rings. 

most of us tend to be accumulators. we own a lot of stuff "just in case." well, time to dig into your "just in case" stock pile and use them up. you've already paid for these items so it's not a new expense. FREE! 

4. borrow everything you can think of. instead of creating more waste or purchasing things you won't use again, ask around. if you want to have those cute glass water dispensers with lemons in it (i did!), i'm sure someone in your community has one. ask around. people want to support you! or maybe you have a friend who has a really cute sense of style and would be willing to loan you a few decorative things here and there, ask! call on your community for support. FREE! 

on a related note: one thing that samuel and i were clear on was that we would much rather spend money on a small gift (we chose a pair of movie tickets) or a meal with someone who helped us, rather than spend that money on buying one-time goods for the wedding. connecting with people outweighed having the "perfect" __fill in the blank__.

5. if you can't find it for free, forget about it. sometimes it's easy to get married to an idea you simply "can't do without." well, you can. if it costs something or requires too much work, it may not be worth it. try to simplify your process by cutting things out. it's likely that very few people, if any, will even remember...and you probably won't either. make your wedding planning process as easy as possible. it's such an emotional time, so reduce any additional stress. FREE and FREEING!

most of all, it was vital for samuel and i to keep coming back to two things:

• as special as our wedding day would be, it is just one day. it's one event. what is far exceedingly more important is that we spent time preparing for our lifelong marriage, not just an event. 
• my friend heather reminded me that "your wedding is a celebration of you, not a reflection on you." remember that you're creating a space to connect and celebrate with dearly beloved guests who love you! they are not there to judge you, they're there to love on you!

planning our wedding: regrets

as much as i loved our wedding day, i wish i could've done two things differently:

1) been more inclusive with our invite list
2) hired a videographer

i want to share my regrets because i could only learn these after the fact. if i could change these two aspects to my wedding day, i would.

invite list
initially, i wanted a very small wedding. i'm talking in the order of 20 people or so total. this would've meant we would've had to exclude a lot of people we care about. we "tried it on" for size and it didn't sit right in our guts. so after we made our initial all-inclusive list, we kept narrowing it down over and over until we could get our total count down to approximately 100 guests.

unfortunately, i held onto "100" as some magic number that would keep things "intimate." i'm not sure what i was thinking because there is no magic number.

email invites were sent and while we received responses, we calibrated our invite list. it was only a few weeks before the wedding when i started to feel more flexible about who came. my spirit of exclusivity changed to a spirit of inclusivity. i wanted more and more people to be a part of such a special day. 

but at the same time that my attitude changed, we were also getting very close to the date. i felt bad about inviting people so late in the game. i was afraid it would communicate that i was only inviting someone because a last minute spot opened up, but they weren't on my "A-list." so instead of just being courageous, i decided not to invite the people i had a change of heart about.

i wish i had been honest and brave.

fortunately, i had the opportunity to reconnect with one of my friends after the wedding and before we moved out of california. it was so good to catch up and learn what he'd been up to since he got married earlier in the year (a wedding i was invited to and had attended). my heart hurt that he was someone i didn't invite. so at the end of our conversation, i told him i was sorry that i didn't invite him. i told him that i wish he had been there to participate. i meant it.

videography
it didn't even need to be amazing videography, i would've been happy to have my iphone recording it.

when we got engaged, samuel asked what i thought about hiring a videographer. i told him i didn't care to have one. "as long as we have some good photos, it's fine. i don't want to spend money on it." :-\

i wish i had revisited this topic along the way. since our whole wedding day turned out to be something neither of us ever expected, something more meaningful than what i had imagined...we wish badly that we had it filmed. i wish i could watch mary, alice, don, and heather speaking, to watch the emotions shared between samuel and i, to laugh when i spoke embarrassingly, to catch glimpses of our beloved guests enjoying themselves... all those moments that i couldn't be a part of or was too overwhelmed with emotion to receive fully, i wish i could re-live the day through video. 

i'm also saddened that we won't have something to show our kids one day. 

do you have any regrets from planning your own wedding? what are yours? 

planning our wedding: our itemized budget

i have a story in my head that there's an overarching issue in our society regarding the private nature of money. we tend to be very hush hush about it - me included! it's usually an "undiscussible." i wish we lived in a more disclosing manner, not hiding behind shame or guilt or pride or fear of judgement. i imagine we might be more open to disclosing what we have (or don't have) if we honestly believed money was an arbitrary gift, and therefore neither mine or yours, but rather, ours. it's a gift that comes and goes; money is simply part of a flow.

one thing i noticed when we were planning our wedding was that folks would be eager to share things like the minute-by-minute schedule, mile-long to do lists, budget categories and advice - lots of advice! (i do it now too. oh dear.) but no one ever voluntarily shared their itemized budget with us. i'm not sure i even asked because i didn't think it was okay to. "how much money they spent is their business. it would be too invasive to ask," i told myself. would it have been?

i think it would've been helpful to have a frame of reference to get a sense of how much things cost - for real, not just in my fantasy la-la head. 

anyway, in the spirit of greater transparency, i want to share ours. i hope it's of service to you. if you have any questions about it, i am more than happy to help in whatever way. you can email me at lizsong (at) gmail.com or leave comments below.

notes:

• thanks andrew for pointing out a glaring omission of our photographer! corrections made above! 
• we had approximately 100 adults & 20 kids in attendance.
• $5135 was the total we spent on gifts/thank you's and family care. this was much more than we expected to spend, but in the spirit of generosity, we wanted to make sure people knew we were extremely grateful for all the ways they supported us. 
• samuel's shoes cost $130 because we got his granddad's old shoes restored. they were beautifully done by the european cobblery. and then of course, we had to find the perfect belt to match, which also happened to cost $125. i've never paid that much for an accessory, but i learned that men's apparel is extremely particular! it all needs to match! now we have a suit fo life. (samuel just can't gain any weight.)
• i bought a shirt "i had to have" for the our saturday night family dinner. totally didn't need to have a new shirt for that evening. #emotionalconsumerism
• i also bought a slip to wear under my dress. it was high quality and the only one i found that actually worked. i don't regret buying it, but now i have this $90 slip i've only used once. it's very unlikely i'll use it again. what do you do with these one off purchases from a wedding? 
• a shift in perspective: when we were living in the bay area, we thought, "wow, we planned this wedding for a steal!" especially when we compared it to stories like, "we only spent $30k. that's pretty low." but now that we live in rural montana and see what some people live on, i feel like we spent quite a bit for our wedding. (and after reading this post from mr. money mustache, i'm like...whaaaht?) my perspective has definitely shifted!

anything strike you about our budget?

planning our wedding: forget the reception!

no, we didn't forego the reception, i just refused to call it that! it's a celebration in my book! it was so much fun to think about how to create a space to connect with our guests after we were proclaimed husband & wife. 

the values guiding our celebration planning:

• simplicity
• comfort
• really tasty, filling food and generous portions
• ease & flow
• connection

when we considered what we wanted our celebration to look like, we wanted first and foremost for people to be well-fed and relaxed. since we had an interesting set of constraints (i.e. no kitchen or power since we were at a remote park), we were given an opportunity to think creatively. one thing that did emerge in this process was that neither of us were married to having dancing at the wedding. this is an example of questioning an assumption and realizing that dancing wasn't necessary or important to us. it simplified the whole event! we would rather have time and space to talk to our guests, unhurried by an exhaustive program. the only thing driving us was trying to get around to everyone!

anyway, we imagined how awesome it would be to have picnic style set-up so people could enjoy good food and then lounge around. or if they wanted, our guests could play games and watch their kids (or adults) run around a giant green field. with that vision in mind we created this:

eat till you drop: originally, i wanted to have five different food trucks of all varieties so that people could eat whatever they wanted, but when i started looking at cost, it was prohibitive. so we decided on one food truck by koja kitchen & a custom crepe making station by crêperie saint-germain. because samuel is ethnically french and jewish and i'm korean, it was really fun to have our food represent both of our backgrounds. the best part? our guests could have as much as they wanted. unlimited, hot food! AWESOME. in addition to the main course, for appetizers, we had a huge platter of fruit (thanks to our friends lisa & michael ng who gifted this to us), nuts (thanks to costco) and a variety of dduk: korean rice cakes (thanks to my mom). apparently, it was more than enough food. phew!

only one interruption. sometimes at weddings, you might be having a great conversation with someone you haven't seen in a while, but every 10-15 minutes, your attention will get called to the front. nothing wrong with that; sometimes you want the interruption! but we cut out all the toasts, first dance, groom dance with mom, bride dance with father, game 1, game 2, bouquet toss... honestly, we just didn't connect with most of the wedding traditions out there. instead, we decided to have one item on the program: the cake cutting. after appetizers and lunch, we had everyone gather one last time together. 

the cake: a work of art. i can't even describe to you the intricacies of cake that our dear friend chris marcell murchison made for us. it was his wedding gift to us, and it was an intensive multi-day labor of deep love. the bespoke cake was a hazelnut genoise with a berry (strawberries, blackberries and raspberries) and cream filling, and a white chocolate buttercream icing. and when i saw it, i couldn't believe it. to decorate it, chris and his partner daniel meticulously placed every leaf & flower to perfection surrounding the delightful cake toppers that our dear sheri jarvis made and shipped to us all the way from montana! all of it, was an exquisite piece of artwork and i felt overwhelmed by this expression of love. we had chris come up and describe the cake to everyone before we all dug into it.

kid-friendly games. not only do i have four adorable nieces under the age of six, we have a lot of friends who have small children, so we wanted them to feel free to bring their kids (and not have to find a sitter), so all of them could enjoy the celebration. my dear friend josh brought his homemade giant bubble makers, which entertained the kids like no other. we also had a little station where kids could go on a scavenger hunt, hula hoop, play with play-doh and silly putty, or draw.

adult-friendly activities.

• remember my "soon-to-be disposable centerpieces?" well, i got $1 tin cans from target's $1 section and filled it with candy, paper, and some markers. i asked our friends to help us with a little project by drawing something they saw during the wedding. the intention was to send those cards to our guests as thank you's, but i'm still deciding what to do with them. (*clearing throat* to those who attended our wedding, thank you's are on their way!)

• bingo: as a way for people to connect with others, i created a bingo game where you had to find out who fit the description in the box. if you got bingo, you'd get a little reward: $5! i had so much fun designing this activity, and who doesn't like getting money?

• adult toy box: don't be dirty minded. this toy box had frisbees, dodgeballs, board games, etc that people could play with. the best part? we asked a few of our friends to bring stuff to fill the box, then take it home when they were leaving. 

• picnic blankets and pillows: one of the most memorable moments from my wedding was when samuel and i pulled up to the picnic area after we went off to take some photos by the lake. when we pulled up, i saw my friend's husband laying on one of the blankets, resting his head on a pillow. he lifted his head and gave us a nod and i remember thinking, "that is exactly what i wanted people to do! awesome!" it gave me a good laugh. 
• note: i bought used flat sheets at a thrift store and washed them, and the pillows were mostly borrowed from my friend emily. i asked her to take them home with her after the celebration, and she graciously did!

when all was over, we took off and our friends and family stuck around to help clean up. but the celebration didn't stop there! since our wedding went from 11:30 to 4pm-ish, we hosted a final family dinner that evening. we had so much fun spending relaxed time with our extended family at cafe pro bono. the service was impeccable and the food, delectable.

our only change would be that we could've had more time to connect with everyone. the day went by far too fast. (oh! and i never got a chance to eat a crepe. major bummer because everyone raved about them.) otherwise, we loved our celebration! 

up next: our itemized budget!

planning our wedding: the ceremony

it wouldn’t be far fetched to say that the wedding ceremony is one of the most neglected elements of a wedding day.

i don’t mean the decorations involved in the ceremony space or what your bridal party is wearing. i mean the actual ceremony that proclaims two to be committed for life as one, the act of committing to put someone else above you for the rest of your life. yeah, that. 

sometimes wedding ceremonies are generic and predictable, and it’s clear that it’s just a gateway formality to get to the cake and dancing. we’ve been handed a cookie-cutter idea of what a ceremony is supposed to look like and oddly enough, we have nodded our heads and said, “yeah ok, i accept.” then we go right back to tending to our soon-to-be disposable centerpieces. i find that extraordinarily disturbing.

when samuel and i were planning our wedding, i said to him that the ceremony is the most important part of the wedding day. "i really want to create a thoughtful ceremony that's meaningful to us!," i would proclaim. but in action, i was often swept up with all the things that felt more urgent (but less important) like booking rentals, looking at pinterest (a whole blog post coming on this topic!), thinking about my rehearsal dress, or....thinking through my soon-to-be disposable centerpiece. i remember it was far too easy to get sucked into a vortex of things i didn't truly care about (like super cute straws and matching string! omg!). that behavior had part to do with me losing focus of what was important to me, and part to do with the culture of the wedding industry.

the wedding industry is supreme at stealing your attention with the "sparkly" stuff (the stuff that doesn't matter a whole bunch in the grand scheme of things). to be clear, i'm not condemning those sparkly things (dresses, napkins, decor, cake, aisle runners, entertainment...), i just hold a belief that in our present wedding culture, things of a decorative nature reigns on high. and when the Queen of Decor points her scepter at you, it is hard to break free from her hypnotizing spell.

and it is a spell. 

there's nothing wrong with throwing a fabulous & beautiful celebration! but what i am saying is this: before jumping into the million details, i believe it's extremely important to click up a few notches and get clear with yourself and your fiancé what exactly your wedding day even means to you. it is important to be consciously making decisions about planning your wedding, not just to get swept up with emotion and the sparklies. 

even though we only gave ourselves about six weeks to plan our wedding, we spent a significant chunk of time in the beginning to talk through the big picture questions. we asked ourselves:

1. what are the three most important aspects of our wedding? 
2. what of our values do we want this wedding to reflect? 
3. how do we want to start the first day of our lifelong marriage? 
4. what assumptions do we hold about our wedding ceremony and celebration?
5. putting aside that this is our wedding, how comfortable would we feel about spending $____ on a one day event?
6. what process do we want to have about making decisions about our wedding? 

through lots of iterating, we were able to get on the same page about the values we wanted to guide our decision making process. and although our ceremony didn't end up being hugely different from a traditional wedding ceremony flow, we were glad we consciously chose every aspect of it. our ceremony took about one hour and this is how ours flowed:

musical prelude: to indicate that the wedding was starting

[music: down to the river to pray by alison krauss]

family processional: we had three clusters here (liz's sister 1 & family, liz's sister 2 & family, samuel's sister and dad)

entrance of dean (pastor) and samuel

[music: no fear no envy by joshua radin]

entrance of liz and parents

greeting: we asked our pastor to specifically start with a specific phrase to welcome everyone because we considered everyone there "dearly beloved..."

note: liz & samuel did not stand with our backs to the guests. we sat on stools off center, facing our guests the entire time. it was important for us to see everyone and have everyone see us. we realized through conversation that we don't want people to just stare at our backsides! 

message to couple:

we asked a few of our closest friends to share for five minutes on specific topics. this was our longest portion of the ceremony. and samuel and i introduced each of the people we chose before they came up. 

(0) a moment of silence for brigitte mandell (samuel's mom) who would've spoken on our wedding day, but had passed away earlier that year.

(1) mary carrera: community in marriage 

(2) alice mandell: friendship in marriage

(3) don mandell: adoration of your spouse

(4) heather fosth: spiritual life in marriage

(5) pastor dean

reading of poem: my oldest sister read one of my favorite poems. the printed poem and an old key was on everyone's seat when they arrived. it was the one thing i wanted to make sure we sent everyone home with.

the small man
builds cages for everyone
he knows.
while the sage,
who has to duck his head
when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys all night long
for the beautiful
rowdy
prisoners.
-hafiz

wedding vows: we wrote our own vows, and i'll share them on a separate post. :) 

rings from sage & norah: my nieces sat near the front, and when it was time, my sister prompted them to come up and bring us the rings. they were perfect for the job!  

exchange of rings: side story: i made the wonderful mistake of saying, "just get it in there!" next to the mic while samuel was trying to get my ring on. samuel covered the mic and made a face or something. my bro-in-law told me later that everyone behind him gasped (he was sitting in the front row). we all got a good laugh out of it. ;-) 

pronouncement of marriage

introduction of couple

final blessing from group: we had everyone hold hands with the people next to them while dean prayed a prayer over us. it was really important for me to have a sense of unity from all of our beloved guests. (in my original idea, we were going to have everyone sit in a circle around us for the ceremony, but establishing and executing that chair arrangement was going to be a pain in the butt. we opted for go the route of simplicity. but regardless, i still wanted to have a moment where everyone - strangers and friends - connected as one, for even just a few moments.)

the first kiss! oh yeah! we were not going to leave this tradition out. ; ) 

[music: just say yes by snow patrol]

the bride & groom take a look at guests (my FAVORITE moments): i experienced this at my friend's wedding and was moved by this pause moment. they took a minute to look at everyone gathered in the space, and we just got to look at them in return. i absolutely knew i wanted to incorporate this, so we did. we had "just say yes" playing in the background (b/c of it's awesome climactic nature), and i got to look at each person, and make contact. my eyes swelled up with tears immediately, so i could barely see everyone clearly, but it was one of the most memorable times during the entire day. i would highly recommend having a chance to PAUSE, and soak it all in. take as much time as you want; it's your day. by the time i was barely half way through, samuel asked me if i was done. i told him, "no" and kept going. hahaha.....he let me take the lead, so when i finished looking at everyone, i looked at him and we ran down the aisle and everyone cheered!

we loved every moment of our ceremony and wouldn't change a thing!

if you are planning, or will one day plan, your wedding: what do you want to remember during your wedding ceremony? 

if you are already married: what do you remember about your ceremony? 

all photos by oh happy dawn photography

planning our wedding: intro

it's been almost six months since samuel and i became husband and wife, and i've been wanting to share our wedding planning process, since i think it's kind of bad ass that we planned a wedding we loved in approximately six weeks. we felt we were able to create an experience that honored our friends & family without spending an obscene amount money. in the following posts, i'll share with you our budget with exact figures, ceremony flow, regrets, and whatever else that's relevant. 

but before that, i wanted to share some tidbits of info:

our dating/engagement timeline
june 7, 2012 - started dating
july 14, 2013 - got engaged
july 29, 2013 - samuel booked our venue while i was backpacking in montana! 
august 14 - sept 1, 2013 - traveled to france and spain, so we decided no wedding planning until we got back. 
sept 1 - oct 10, 2013 - MAD wedding planning!
oct 12, 2013 - married to the love of my life

top three values for the wedding day
1. ceremony
2. food
3. people / fostering community

what i was certain i must have, before we started the actual planning: dippin dots (we didn't actually end up getting it.)

what i knew for certain i didn't want to do during the ceremony: someone preaching a sermon (but this was a point of compromise)

the value that kept coming up the most: simplicity & generosity

what i felt torn up about, but was glad i did: because i don't have the best relationship with my dad, i really didn't want him to be the one walking me down the aisle. but, i felt BAD! (there are so many cultural expectations you'll encounter!) i'm closer with my mom, but it didn't feel right to have just my mom walk me down the aisle since my dad would be there at the wedding. i finally decided to have both my parents walk me down the aisle, and felt even torn up about that. but when i look back, it was just a few moments long, and i'm glad that i chose to have both of them participate in giving me to samuel. i think it both honored my parents, and i was able to honor my desires. 

what everyone said that was absolutely true: "the day will go by SO fast!" omg. it sure did.

what i didn't think i wanted, but really did want: i didn't think i wanted to be in the white gown, and do that whole typical wedding shabangabang. but honestly, it was a wonderful feeling to put on a sexy white dress and have all our friends gathered around us to celebrate. there are very rarely these opportunities when friends from all your circles of life gather in one place. it's momentous and extremely special!

biggest conflict: name change. wow, this one wasn't resolved until the thursday before our wedding day!

two values that guided my decision on my dress: 
1) i want to be able to wear it again and 
2) i want to feel beautiful in it.
i haven't had a chance to wear the dress again yet...and i'm not sure i will. but after the wedding, i didn't realize how strong my desire would be to hold on to it so that maybe my child might want to wear it one day. it's only been 6 months, so this desire could change. 

how much i spent on my dress: $150 from nordstrom.com + $28 alterations
*funny side story: when i took my dress to get altered (length and shortening the deep V up front), the seamstress pinched up the V barely a millimeter, and i looked at her and said, "a little higher please." she responded with, "you're young! you want to feel sexy!!" i laughed and said, "this dress is already sexy!" so she pinched it about a millimeter higher. haha, good enough! 

what we spent the most money on: $4,886 on food

what i said we were going to spend before we started planning: $5K

what i said we were going to spend after we started planning: $10K

what we agreed was our budget goal: $12K

what we actually spent: $17,676 (give or take a few bucks)

why we don't regret the $5K+ discrepancy: because we ended up spending a total of $5,135 on thank you follow-ups (tips, lunches, gifts for speakers, etc) and family care (hosting our families the days prior to the wedding). we wanted to make sure everyone knew we were super grateful for their help! that weekend, we got feedback from our family & friends that they felt well taken care of during the wedding festivities. that made us feel warm & fuzzy inside.

added on 4/9/14 best advice i received: "honey, all you need to do is show up and get married." spoken by a friend's grandmother, when she was in the midst of wedding planning.

added on 4/10/14 number of times i cried really hard during the planning: at least 4 that i can remember!

picture courtesy of oh happy dawn photography.