Planning My Own Wedding
I dated my husband for 3 ½ years before we were married.
We knew we wanted to get married when we decided to date, because that’s how it
worked when you were a couple working as teenage youth leaders in youth
ministry together. We met when I was 15, and we’ve been together ever since. After
we moved to Northwest University together, we were supposed to get engaged. I knew
I wanted to get married in the month of March, because that’s the same month as
spring break, and it’s also the best month to go to Disneyland. Well, I waited
and waited for him to propose. We went on fancy dates to Disney on Ice and to
swing dance classes and to Downtown Seattle at twilight. Each time I thought he
would propose, but he didn’t. Time was escaping me. I knew I wanted to get
married in March, but with it already the end of November, I didn’t think I
would have much time to plan a wedding, and if not we’d have to get married in
summer, such a busy time for weddings and honeymooners on vacation, or wait
another year. Finally, the day before Thanksgiving Break, he proposed. And it
was then that I started planning my own wedding on our own budget without the
help of a coordinator on a three month time limit.
Planning my own wedding was hard, but I knew no one else
could do it. The day I got engaged, I called my friends and asked if they would
be bridesmaids. I picked our colors, pink and blue, colors that have always been
significant to us. I also called my friend Jill to do our engagement photos
that very weekend when we went home to Yakima for Thanksgiving break. We went
home that weekend and took the photos at the local arboretum in the snow, and I
digitally edited them that day. I ordered save-the-date refrigerator magnets
with our engagement photos on them that week, set for Saturday, March 5th,
2011, the Saturday at the beginning of spring break the next year. I sent them
out over Christmas break so that our family members would know such a soon
date.
From then on it was a whirlwind of going home and coming back
to Seattle and ordering stuff online. I spent hours of my time in the dorms and
the dorm lounge registering for gifts online at Target, Macy’s, and Sears. We
also applied for a FIR apartment that December, so that I could stay there by
myself until March 5th, and my husband could move in after we got
married. Just three weeks into engagement I ordered invitations so that they
would be delivered to me over Christmas break and sent out by the end of January.
I also had my wedding dress picked out from an overseas tailor-made dress
boutique, the perfect one. It had a poufy princess skirt, lacy tiers, a bow, a
lace keyhole back, sequins, and no train. I never went dress shopping; I just
took my measurements in my dorm room, typed them into the form online, and
ordered my dress for the same price my grandma paid for her wedding dress back
in 1956. We traveled to several different wedding venues and churches over
Christmas break looking for the perfect one. Finally we found a perfect church
in our home neighborhood that didn’t have a rental fee. It was meant to be. My
wedding dress came the first week of school in January, when I was homeless
staying as a guest in the dorms waiting for my FIR apartment to open up. I
tried on my wedding dress in the dorm and walked down the hallway and all my
previous floor-mates helped. It made me feel good knowing that they were there
for me
I ordered lace gloves, shoes, and bridesmaids’ dresses. I
set up bridal showers for my family, my home church in Yakima, and for my
bridesmaids. I planned our Disney Fairytale Honeymoon vacation and bought
airline tickets. I set up our wedding website where people could RSVP online,
view our engagement photos, and browse our wedding registries. We picked our caterer,
the Ellensburg Pasta Company, a company of one of my bridesmaids’ family
friend. My soon-to-be mother-in-law had a friend and previous coworker who owns
a cake decorating shop, and she volunteered to do our wedding cake for free,
along with small individual table cakes for each guest table. I asked my friend
Kaci who is a photographer if she would shoot our wedding. We asked our friend,
Jack, who was my husband’s 80-something year old spiritual mentor, to officiate
our wedding and give us premarital counseling. I also met a new friend, Josh,
in my speech class, whose wife was a florist, so we asked her to do our flowers.
I was home in Yakima every two weeks for a shower or for
catering tasting or counseling or something. When we had the guest list worked
out, people RSVP’ed, the food, the venue, the cake, the photographer, the Officiant,
the honeymoon, the clothing, the rehearsal dinner, the decorations, the rings, the
flowers, I knew that I had nothing else to do. Of course, I was planning up
until the morning of, and it was very hectic, but I knew there had to be a
stopping point. I don’t really remember much about the wedding other than
getting ready before, pacing in the church hallway, getting walked down the
aisle, being photographed, and running around the reception room making sure
things were done. My wedding was pretty, and our honeymoon was the more fun
that I could have imagined! We’d never been on vacation by ourselves before.
Overall, I am proud of planning my own wedding. No one else could have made it
how I liked it but me and my husband. It was stressful, but very worth it.
 |
| One of our engagement photos |
 |
| Trying on my dress in the Dorms |
 |
| Honeymoon Photo |
No comments:
Post a Comment