Wedding! Part 2

We planned the wedding with the idea that the ceremony was for us, and the reception was the party afterwards to celebrate it, and like all good parties the focus there was on the guests. But the ceremony was ours, and it was perfect.

My friend Ryan played Truly Madly Deeply by Savage Garden for us during the ceremony, this is a video taken by my cousin of the first part of it. He did a fantastic job, Ben said he never really understood the song until Ryan sang it for us! At one point we looked at each other and went to kiss without thinking, and then remembered we couldn't yet! The priest laughed at us.

We had our ceremony in a public park, we'd reserved the Pavilion next to it but the park was open, and as it was a gorgeous day there were other people there, at least that's what I'm told. Ben says a few people walked just behind us during the ceremony, and apparently someone drove past at one point, but I didn't see any of that. I saw Ben's eyes and the pastor's eyes, and Ryan singing, but that was all. I was very present and very focused, but only on us apparently!

After our beautiful ceremony,

We were married!


We recessed to Three Dog Night's Joy to the World (queued up to 1:42) which is also my parent's ring tone on my cel phone. I love it!

We came back up the aisle and did a sort of receiving line where we spoke to everyone before they left their seats, so they could sit down while waiting. I hugged everyone then, and again when we went around to the tables at the reception, so by my count I got over 200 hugs that day! A personal record! The amount of love we got was staggering, it made us so happy to see everyone who could come out for the wedding!

Then it was picture time! Formal ones

And not so formal ones!

The ride back to the Inn was much more relaxing. We were so relieved to be married finally!


When we got back to the Inn, our guests and the rest of the wedding party went to cocktail hour on the Inn's deck, which overlooked the river, while we took more pictures. As we walked around in search of photo ops, some of my friends called down to us to see if we wanted drinks, which we definitely did! Long island Iced Tea for me and Jack and Coke for him, and they were fantastic, and also the only drinks we had time to drink that night! We made it to the very end of the cocktail hour and I snagged one appetizer, though I heard that the rest of them were delicious.

Then it was time for our grand entrance!

Uncle John brought his bagpipes, this is him practicing before the wedding, and he piped us into the reception! He has a tradition of giving each niece and nephew an engraved broad sword on their wedding day, and after we came in he piped as we walked through an arch of my father holding our sword and my brother-in-law holding theirs. It was fantastic and fun and completely surprised me, I didn't know anything about it until 5 minutes before!

And then it was time to dance! We danced our first dance to this acoustic version of Jason Mraz's I'm Yours. We didn't choreograph it like the couple in the video, but we've taken dance lessons together and know each other's style, and we twirled and jumped and sang to each other and he dips me so perfectly! My favorite memory of the night is that first dance with my brand new husband!

A very close second to that memory was dancing with my father! I am basically the female version of him, and we apparently completely shattered all the "Daddy's Little Girl" stereotypes, according to my grandmother at least, by dancing to Oingo Boingo's Weird Science! (From :10 to about 1:10) We had a blast, he loved it, it was perfect for us!

We successfully made the rounds of the tables and talked to everyone there. I didn't realize it but apparently it's a north-eastern tradition to give cards to the bride and groom personally at weddings, I carried a very pretty bag and received one from almost everyone on my side of the room, but very few on his. But then we've gotten a lot in the mail from his, and he said he had never seen that done except in mobster movies! There were a surprising amount of things that I assumed were just part of a wedding that he'd never seen, and vice versa, I had no idea weddings were so regional!

We did get time to eat, we kind of rushed through it but the food was good!

And then we danced! The dance floor was busy all night, the DJ was fantastic and played to our crowd perfectly! This is a video Jake took that's rather dark but you can see how much fun everyone had!

And this is a video with some square dancing with better lighting! This is much closer to how the reception actually looked. The little boy is the son of friends of my parents, and he had a blast dancing! I picked him up and danced with him at one point, but he looked nervous so I put him down, and he ran off. I found out later he'd run right back to his father and told him he'd danced with me, very excitedly! So cute!

We had cake!


Mmm cake :)


We had alternate tiers of sponge cake with lemon curd and buttercream and pound cake with chocolate ganache and buttercream. It was very good :)

I tossed my bouquet pretty much just because Ben wanted to toss my garter while singing Usher's OMG to me! I did not appreciate that song at all until he sang it to me, and then it was vastly improved!

The end of the night came far too quickly, as it does. Our last song was The Proclaimers I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), and the dance floor was full of people we love! The DJ did the thing where he cut out the audio for some of the "Dadaundas" so we could shout them out, which is crazy amounts of fun! I danced and shouted and twirled and was married!

We did it! I jumped up and down in triumph after the last song, I was so excited that we did it! We planned a wedding! And it was perfect! The whole thing was absolutely perfect, not because everything we planned came out exactly as we thought, but because after it was over we were married!

Wedding! Part 1

We have been married one month today! Here are my wedding thoughts and pictures!

We had our reception at an Inn, the Inn at Lambertville Station, and our rain plan was to have the ceremony at the Inn as well, so made sense to me to stay over the night before the wedding there too. Ben stayed in the bridal suite, so he wouldn't have to move his luggage, and I planned to share a room with my little sister, who was my maid of Honor. She ended up changing her mind, though, and decided to stay home that night. It took me a long time to fall asleep that night, I was very excited and also I rarely sleep well in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar noises. I thought mostly about how that was the last night I would be spending by myself for a very long time, and how much better I sleep with him warm beside me, and how those weird noises couldn't possibly be someone breathing in the room behind me oh god oh god. (They weren't, I checked. Several times.)

Eventually I feel into a restless sleep, and woke up at what I thought was 6:45. This was too early so I tried to fall back asleep, but couldn't. Luckily when I sat up I realized it was 7:45, and a good time to wake up! The Inn delivers a continental breakfast to your room, so I sat at the little table in the room and had a very peaceful breakfast looking out over the Delaware River. This quiet time to myself was actually very refreshing and welcome before the busyness of the day.

I got a shower and as I was getting dressed the best man's wife, our groomswoman Danielle, came to see if I needed anything and if I was ready to move to the bridal suite, where we would be getting our hair and makeup done and getting dressed. She and her husband are Ben's best friends from high school, and they were incredibly awesome the whole week before the wedding, the helped us out with so many things I can't even list them all. She went to make sure Ben was out of the bridal suite and into their room where he would be getting dressed, and helped me move the dress and my luggage down.

When I got there I hung up my dress and steamed the small wrinkles out and stared at it for a while. I hadn't seen it in 3 months, since I brought it up to Jersey from Texas in March!


Then the people started arriving! The make up artist got there first and started Danielle, since she would be leaving with the guys before we did. There had been a mix-up with the hair stylist that stressed me out the day before the wedding, but it all worked out. When I contracted her, I knew the approximate time for the ceremony, 5 pm, but not what time I needed to be ready by. I assumed I could just tell her when I knew, but it turned out she had another wedding that morning and so got there a little later than I would have wanted, but in plenty of time to finish everyone.


Once that was done it was time to get dressed!

My shoes! (I got a pedicure after this pic was taken and my toenails were a pretty blue!)


At this point everyone ditched me at the same time! They all went to get dressed rather abruptly and left me alone!

But it was ok because I couldn't wait to see this guy!


He looks so awesome in a tux! It was strange, the whole day I spent thinking about him and talking about him and getting dressed hoping he would like my outfit, but not actually talking to him! He wanted to be very traditional and not see each other before the wedding.

At any rate, I was dressed! We took some bridal portraits which I will have when our professional pics come back, and then it was off to the ceremony!


We took a trolley there, which was nice because a lot of people rode with us, like my parents and aunts and uncles. It was a beautiful ride, right along the banks of the Delaware, green and breezy in the June warmth, sunshine and blue skies over shaded water. I really wanted the wedding to feel summery, like a lazy afternoon in a shady field as the grass flows in the wind, and that ride perfectly encapsulated it for me. It was warm but not hot, the breeze just pleasant on our skin. I knew as soon as he proposed I wanted a June wedding, and it was perfect.

We arrived at the ceremony site! It was perfectly set up, even better than I had ever imagined! We had 2 coordinators, one for the reception which was part of the package at the Inn at Lambertville Station, and one I contracted for the ceremony site, since I was planning everything from Texas. Both of them did fantastic jobs, but the coordinator for the ceremony was worth her weight in gold. She cost me what I was planning to pay for chair rentals, and she was absolutely fantastic. She set everything up at the ceremony site, I didn't have to do anything, and I couldn't believe how perfect everything was.

We had our ceremony in Washington Crossing Historic Park, next to a pavilion. There were 3 trees planted in a triangular pattern which we used as the backdrop to the ceremony, and several others providing shade to the guests. We had white wooden folding chairs for the guests, and white rose petals lining the aisle. The coordinator hung the cranes I had folded from the trees both from the trees behind the pastor and forming the aisle from the trolley, on lines with crystals that caught the light beautifully. She did everything, I just mailed her the cranes and told her what I wanted!


I watched from the trolley as Ben escorted our grandmothers to their seats, carefully walking backward so he wouldn't see me yet! He was aided by the pastor, who was also awesome. I'm not religious, but Ben is, and his family is. After much much searching, we found our pastor online. The advantage of hiring someone you don't know is you can customize the ceremony completely, you are in charge rather than having to work with someone who has a set idea of how they do things, so it worked out perfectly.

Then the music started. Ben escorted both of our mothers down the aisle to Here Comes the Sun, which was perfect in the setting. Then our bridal party started, to Walking on Sunshine! I loved the music, we put a lot of thought into it! I love looking at the pictures while listening to the songs again, too :)

Danielle and Rebecca, Ben's sister


Heather and Ed


Kyle and Stephie


Eddie and Julianna! She threw 2 handfuls of rose petals, but then was distracted by the cranes!


Then it was my turn! I expected to cry the whole way down the aisle, but I was smiling too much to cry. I walked in, holding my dad's hand, to Enigma's Return to Innocence, a song we both love and felt was perfect.


Ben did not cry either, though it was close.
I have a lot of favorite pictures of him, but this one tops them all. Listening to the song again and looking at this picture, with him so caught up in the moment and my Dad there and our guys behind him I am crying now when I didn't then!