Our first anniversary is this weekend which has me thinking back a lot to last year. Each day I find myself stopping to remember... "This time last year we were doing _____" (insert each day's pre-wedding activity)
In continuation of blogging about our wedding, I wanted to share a bit about the ceremony. I should warn you, the ceremony is my absolute favorite part of a wedding. It's the whole reason for the day and was certainly something we put a lot of thought and preparation into. I feel myself going into oversharing mode.
Our ceremony was held in the mansion's carriage house and since it had a completely different, industrious feel from the house: exposed brick, polished cement floors, dark wood beams... I had this idea to use a different color palette for that part of the wedding as well.
It was definitely one of those "this may or may not be a good idea" moments that I probably wouldn't encourage on my clients but felt brave enough to take the risk since it was my own wedding.
Instead of highlighting fall colors like in our reception, the ceremony was white with accents of silvery green.
I used all white flowers, arranged only with like flowers. We had four large arrangements of baby's breath, and a center bouquet of white spray roses. The entrance was a path of silver/ green Jarrahdale pumpkins accompanied by a couple of them painted gold. Instead of tall taper candlesticks, the room was accented with etched crystal votives.
Our wedding party was small, just Matt's brother as his best man and my best friend as my matron of honor. With a small gathering, we were afraid a big bridal party would mean half our guests would be standing up there (an exaggeration, but still). We were lucky enough to have my youth pastor from high school mentor and marry us, and my sister and brother in law sang in the ceremony.
We had decided not to see each other before the wedding. Though I love "first look" photos, I wanted Matt to see me for the first time walking down the aisle. (We did steal a moment to hold hands prior to the ceremony and pray together... one of my favorite memories) The anticipation and wait of seeing Matt as I walked down the aisle was completely worth it!
Our ceremony was small and simple but filled with love and meaning. It was the perfect blend of faith, tradition, laughter and love that I imagined my wedding ceremony to be.