Tuesday, February 11, 2020

The Wedding Story: Our Ceremony


Photographs by KMP © 2019


There is so much to plan in a wedding.  You have to make decisions on everything from the invitations to the flowers to the logistics of how it all gets set up, what food you'll serve, how to give directions on how to get places, and how you'll get places... the list is seemingly never ending, and everything feels so big, and so important.

Yet, when it came to putting together our ceremony, everything felt like it came into place in a very intuitive way.   It was like, everything came from the heart, and we knew in our hearts that the decisions we made were the right ones, because they came so intuitively from our hearts.





An Unplugged Ceremony



This concept was pretty important to us.  While I understand and am guilty of taking photos at some of the weddings I've been to, more and more I've found the importance of experiencing some of life's events not through a lens, and being wholly and fully present in the moment.  Especially knowing that Kristen and Justin were capturing all of the important moments, we wanted our guests to be able to actually experience the ceremony, and not end up with photos of phones in front of people's faces. 




One of the signs I designed for the wedding






Having Andrew's Brother Officiate



We were so thankful that Dan was willing to be our officiant.  Really, we couldn't have envisioned it any other way.  Neither Andrew or I are religious at all, so having any sort of religious representative officiate wouldn't have felt right for either of us.  Instead, having someone speak who had really witnessed our whole relationship over the 11 years we had been together was a more fitting decision.  Dan guided us through a beautiful ceremony, and having his insight was really special for us.











Readings of Love


We selected three readings that were read by some of our aunts and uncles that really encapsulated what love and life meant to us.  We chose Corinthians 13, an excerpt from Thoreau's Walden, and a section from The Velveteen Rabbit about what it means to be real.  All three of these readings were very important to us and added something meaningful to the ceremony.



Incorporating a Handfasting Ceremony


Again, as we aren't very religious, we wanted to have a meaningful ritual of some sort incorporated in that wasn't overly religious but meant something to us.  We'd seen candle lighting (nervous about flames in the woods), and sand ceremonies (but then would need to transport it back on a plane??), and none of those seemed to quite fit.   Then in some searching online we found this concept that really made a lot of sense to us.  Each of the six colored ribbons represented a different value that we found important in a healthy loving relationship, and stood for something that we wished to have in our marriage.  Additionally, we chose six members of family and friends to 'give' the ribbons, who we admired for this quality, or who we would then see fitting to be bestowing it on the marriage.

Not only was this a meaningful thing for us to have in the ceremony to interact with our loved ones, but it was also a great experience for us in choosing what colors we wanted to use and what values we wanted to signify for our lives moving forward.

Our ribbons stood for:

Yellow  |  Balance + Harmony
Dark Blue  |  Longevity + Strength
Green  |  Nurturing + Health
Red  |  Courage
Light Blue  |  Patience
Pink  |  Happiness








Writing Our Own Vows



This was an almost unspoken decision that was made pretty intuitively by both of us.   We have so much to share from the heart with each other always, and both wanted to share our own feelings with each other for our ceremony.   Writing them ourselves made them wholly unique and special to us.  ♥










Vendor Links:

Planning + Coordination  |  J29 Events
Photography  |  Kristen Marie Parker
Florals  |  VanessaSchmidtco.
Entertainment  |  Puget Sound DJ










Until Next Time, 


— The Lovely Red Fox

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