June Blog Challenge Day 11: Wedding

11.  Describe your wedding.

We got married on a Saturday, April 16, 2005, at 11 a.m.  Around the time we got married, we hardly knew anyone who got married on weekdays or evenings, which is very common now.  (Good grief, I make it sound like it was ancient days ago!)  We were 20 and 22.  Seems so young now!   

Note:  These pictures are all scanned in so they won't be that perfect.

We made the invitations ourselves (a bunch of us women; it was fun).  The ones we gave out looked more or less like this one (I have a few left over each with slight variations and I can't remember which one we decided on ultimately).

The ceremony was first, in the church.  I chose the big church I had grown up in, even though Hubby & I attended elsewhere at the time, because I had always imagined getting married there and couldn't picture anything else.  We had 300 guests, too, so we needed a big place!

The guestbook table right before entering the sanctuary.  We had matted pictures of ourselves for guests to sign as well as the traditional guestbook.  The programs had eagles on them because Hubby loves birds. 

Hubby's amazingly talented aunt did all the decorating.

Yes, I loved daisies.  Still do!  I believe my FIL built those two shorter stands up front.

Hubby's parents.  Hubby was the first of their children to get married, so this was all very new to them.

My big brother ushering my mom in (my dad was with me).  I think they're both so cute here!  This was old hat for my mom & dad; my 3 older siblings all married before me, with one of my sisters having been married only 6 months earlier!

Hubby's brother and my cousin were our candle lighters.  This is traditionally a woman's role, but I've never cared for tradition :)  Those poor guys, we never thought to put a candle holder or anything on to protect their hands and the whole time they had to be careful not to get hot wax on them!

 

After that the groomsmen came out to stand and wait for the bridesmaids to each come down the aisle.  My hubby had four close friends, so I chose 4 bridesmaids, too.  I'm scanning all these pics in (what a chore!) so I'm not going to show an individual pic of all 8 people, so here's a couple of the posed pics taken later.

I love navy blue & pale yellow together.  2 of my friends, my cousin, and 1 of my sisters

I can't believe how young these guys look here - cracks me up!  

For the ring bearer and flower girl we did something really cute and fun!  We found a fishing boat-shaped wagon that we were allowed to borrow (Hubby was big into fishing).  In it went my only 2 (at the time) nieces (sisters). (Side Note:  We didn't know she existed then, but my other niece was a little 3 1/2 month old when we got married!  About 19 months later my brother & his wife met and adopted her.)   My nieces were 6 and 1 1/2.  The older one carried an ice-fishing rod (because it's short) with a daisy tied to the end of the line (and hung onto her sister), and the younger one (was supposed to) hang onto a stuffed fish :)  Mostly she just hung on to her soother :)  Then we had two of Hubby's cousins (brothers) push and pull the wagon.  The older one (7) pulled and the younger one (almost 4) "pushed" :)  It was adorable, unique, and no one cried or threw a fit!  Unfortunately, I doubt my sister (my nieces' mom) would be okay with their photos being up on the Internet, so you're just going to have to imagine the preciousness!

Next came me & my daddy.  I was unfortunately on antidepressants at the time, so most of my emotions were deadened.  I acted nervous when I felt I was supposed to, sad, happy, etc.  That's the biggest thing I'd change about my wedding - I always say I'd change almost everything except my dress & the groom - I'd say that's pretty good, eh?! :)  Anyway, so I was "nervously" chewing on my flowers (just kidding - we just have a pic that looks like that's what I'm doing!) and hiding around the corner (that's right, Hubby didn't see me that day until I walked down the aisle!).  I took my dad's arm (one of my clearer memories from the wedding - the feel of his suit jacket under my hand) and put a smile on my face.  A little ways down the aisle I realized Hubby (to be) was crying.  Oh, shoot!  Put on stressed face!  Cue sympathetic face when closer to Hubby!  Lol!  I won't show you the whole gamut of expressions I had (while feeling virtually nothing) nor my Hubby crying.  Then we reached my sweet, sensitive man who cried, and in doing so turned every woman in the audience to mush, at the sight of his bride.  My parents gave me away and I took Hubby's arm and we went up the steps to the preacher.

Here's the back of my dad & me near the front of the church.

Here's me & Hubby (almost!) at the front of the church praying during the ceremony.

     So there was preachin' (he knew us fairly well since he'd done our marriage counseling), exchanging of rings & vows, and the signing of the guest book & lighting the unity candle.  Oh, and the kiss ;)

Then, just because we wanted to, Hubby scooped me up and we ran out of the sanctuary :D

Now that is a 100% genuine grin on my face! :)

After that the rest of the wedding party and our parents came out and there were hugs all around.  Then we lined up for the receiving line, and all the guests filed by to congratulate us and us to thank them for coming.

After that we took posed photos in the church basement multi-purpose room.  I have lots and lots of those and they are really nice, but I will only pick a couple.  Argh, there's so many good ones to pick from, lol!

Just for fun :)

So while we were taking a bazillion pictures with every combination of the wedding party possible, I have no idea what the guests were doing.  Hm.

Then it was time for the reception.  It was in the church basement, and we had pizza, yes we did!  We ordered in enough pizza for 300 guests because we are crazy people, lol!  (Don't worry, we gave the restaurants a heads-up, lol!)  There was also Caesar salad and Coke and Pepsi.  Hubby was a big Coke fan, but I'd grown up with Pepsi, so it was like a friendly feud.  Actually, Hubby's younger brother (he was 14 at the time) was the one who really liked to razz me about it :)  We had a big canoe set up filled with ice and cans of Coke and Pepsi for guests to help themselves.  When my brother prayed before the meal, he brought up a can of each and said "Today, we have a marriage of these two."  For dessert, one of my friends single-handedly slaved away at making mini cheesecakes for the entire crowd (not sure what went wrong there, but somewhere someone didn't delegate help for her or something!)  Still feel awful about that.  We didn't have a cake (!) because I don't care for cake, but by now I regret it.  I'm hoping to have one for a big anniversary some day.  Anyway, I digress...

The basement after it's decorated and tables set but before it's filled with people.

 

The reception was great.  Each of the groomsmen and bridesmaids made speeches, as did our parents.  There was a lot of humour throughout.  We played a PowerPoint slideshow we had put together.  It was really good, but for some technical reason the songs (our favourites) never played during it :(  Our MC was hilarious.  And he got us a lot of money which gave us our honeymoon!

Hubby & I killing ourselves laughing while the MC attempts to read something in a Menno accent.  It was priceless.

After the reception we left for an airstrip in our town where my FIL used to have a hangar.  We took a number of pics with his plane, because it is the plane my hubby & I had a lot of dates in.

 

 

After that we changed out of our fancy duds and left on our honeymoon!

Any details I left out you're curious about?  Ask!  I'm sure I left out something! :)