GTKY: Wedding Edition

ATXmommas

Wedding details came up in a couple different threads this week, so I thought it would be fun to share some details about our own weddings.  If you have not yet had a wedding, share some details about your hopes/plans and/or some favorite things about weddings you have attended. 

1) How many guests?

2) Indoor or outdoor?  Tell us about your venue.

3) Music (walking down the aisle, intro, first dance, etc.)?

4) Is there anything non-traditional that you did?  

5) Every wedding has at least one thing go wrong…. what happened at yours?

BONUS: PIP us your wedding and/or inspiration pics!

ATXmommas

1. We had about 100 guests.  Keeping the guest list at 100 was tough, but it was all we could afford for the wedding we wanted. 

2. The ceremony was outdoors underneath a huge tree and the reception was indoors (same venue).  The venue was an old church that was located in a different town in Texas, but was picked up and moved to Austin.  White walls, wooden floor, with stained glass windows.  It was the first and only venue we visited.  I fell in love with it.

3. Our wedding party walked down the aisle to an instrumental version of Adele's "Make You Feel My Love," Z and I walked down the aisle to the Vitamin String Quartet's performance of "Pictures of You," and we all walked out to Natalie Cole's This Will Be an Everlasting Love."  Our intro music as the reception was Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours."

4. I guess it's mostly traditional things that we did NOT do.  We didn't have flower girls or ring bearers and didn't do first dances at the reception.  My mom walked me down the aisle, not my dad (I asked both him and my mom, but he didn't want to walk me down the aisle WITH my mom - they are long-divorced, so that was that).  Our ceremony was fairly typical - we picked a non-religous officiant (named Spike - I love that detail) - and she did an incredible job of sharing our love story before our vows.  Oh, and we had cupcakes instead of cake, but I think that is becoming more of a thing these days.

5. In our case, everything went perfectly except the ovens at the venue would not work!  My caterer handled things wonderfully and thankfully she had access to commercial kitchens in downtown Austin, not far from our venue.  So, dinner was delayed by about an hour, which sucked, particularly because our wedding was on a Sunday evening (money-saver), but only a few folks had to leave before dinner was served.  All in all, it went very smoothly.

A few pictures!

ATXmommas

And, I just remembered by looking at these pictures, that I purposely stood on the left side so that the tattoo on my left shoulder wouldn't show up in all the pictures!  I just have the one tattoo and I'm not really a big tattoo person, so I didn't want it in all the pics.  I also took out several earrings (I had several in the cartilage part of my ear) before the wedding.  Figured it was as good a time as any to get rid of them.

mrs&mrsk

Fun topic

1)We ended up with 158 guests, paid for 160, invited 225 or so?

2) Our venue was a catering hall that had just been redone in my hometown.  We weren't' even going to look there but we were in the area so we set up an appointment.  At the time, we loved the service & menu and the look was better than most we had seen.   The price was very good (Friday night) and we booked very soon after.  They were planning to rip the building down and rebuild prior to our wedding (and did) so we ended up with a brand new venue for a great price! 

3) Music (walking down the aisle, intro, first dance, etc.)?   We were supposed to walk in to A thousand years - the piano guys version- but ended up the regular version.  Intro was Feel this Moment (bridal party was another pitbull song) and our first dance was Ben Harper's Forever. 

4) Is there anything non-traditional that you did?  We had a joint mother daughter dance in addition to our father daughter dances

5) Every wedding has at least one thing go wrong…. what happened at yours?  We had in our contract that we would be the only wedding there. It's a 2 event venue and we could have had another type of party but we thought 2 brides was enough for one night! At our bridal shower, a cousin told us that she was invited to another wedding THE SAME NIGHT!!  The grand opening for the renovated venue was the same day, so we went in and gave it to them !!  We decided to come back and discuss further at another time- and ended up giving back our 2nd bridal suite (as we had decided to do a reveal by then anyway) and they resent all the invites for the other wedding with revised times to "stagger" them more.  They also threw in some random good stuff.  The day of the wedding, the other party was in our space a bit, throwing off our timing 10-15 minutes, but that was no big deal.  The big deal was when their DJ LOUDLY played blurred lines and we could HEAR it during our vows.  It's funny now, but damn was I pissed!  Otherwise our night was amazing!!

Our wedding trailer:    (something's wrong with the site will have to post later)

2momsinCA

Warning! Early pregnancy loss mentioned!

Ours was a nontraditional (and completely free) as could be! Neither of us were interested in having a big event and I think our day was totally perfect.

We were married in the very first day that marriage was legal in the state of CA (for the second time- we had just started dating when it was first legal pre prop 8). 7/1/2013. It was announced just the day before that marriages would start happening that day so we had basically no time to prep. Our wedding was at the West Hollywood city hall and our officiant was Abbe Land, the mayor. We were interviewed by the news and professional photographers were all over the place. We got in touch with them later and they sent us beautiful pictures to capture our quick little ceremony. We stayed at a beautiful boutique hotel in WeHo that night and ate the most delicious celebratory dinner at Mozza.

At the time I was about 5 weeks pregnant and feeling totally on top of the world- we were about 6 months in to TTC. Sadly I lost that pregnancy about a week later. But still our wedding day could not have been more perfect.

Karlamo

I'm at work on this lovely -16 degree morning, so I'll play along.

1. I think we had around 80 guests.  We were strict with our guest list and only invited those who we really wanted to be there.  This annoyed my mother as she felt we should invite her neighbor's since their daughter is gay.....really??? We paid for our wedding ourselves which is why I felt I could say no.

2.  Ceremony was held at a UU church.  The minister who married us was the peson who brought mamosey and me together.  He was our former Americorp Volunteer Coordinator and later changed careers to be a minister.  It seemed fittig that he marry us.  Our photographer was the husband of my one and only boyfriend.   The reception was held at a country club. We got married in the fall so lots of fall colors were used.  Open bar, lots of fun.

3.  The church had two aisles which was perfect.  We both walked down the aisle at the same time meeting in the middle.  Both sets of parents walked us down.  We walked down to Alison Krauss singing the Beatles version of "I do".  Funny note, the church had a gaint pride flag hanging inside of it and I made them take it down cause I thought it looked tacky.  We had our first dance to Billy Joel's "Just the way you are"

4. In some ways our weddig was very traditional and other ways not so. We didn't do flower girls etc, but we did each chose one person to stand up with us.  At our ceremony each guest was handed a river stone and at one point during the ceremony we asked them to hold it in their hands and say a blessing or prayer over it. They then each came forward and placed them in a glass vase.  We have all those well wishes sitting in our dining room. 

5. It rained.  Really hard.  Which was ok since we hired a bus company to shuttle our guests from church to venue and then back to hotel.  Mamosey was late getting to the church because her hair was taking extra long and the rain.  Other than that, I don't remember anything bad happening. 

I'm at work so no pictures with me but our photographer did have our picture published in a magazine featuring gay weddings. 

KH826

Our wedding was about 110 people. Ceremony was outside and reception indoors. The venue was an old dairy farm that the converted into a hotel/event center. The ballroom where our reception was still had the original barn doors, wooden beams and silos -- really rustic, but also cozy and classic, in my opinion. I loved everything about it, still do.

J walked down the isle first with both of her parents. I walked down last by myself. She came and met me half way down the isle and we walked the rest of the way together. That was unplanned - she just did it. It was amazing. I walked into an instrumental version of pachebel's canon. We walked out at the end of the ceremony to "You are the Best Thing" by Ray Lamontagne. Our first dance song was "She is Love" by Parachute.

J danced with her Dad and halfway through her brother got up and took over dancing with J and her Dad walked over to me where I was sitting at our sweetheart table watching and asked me to dance the rest of the dance with him. I had no idea he was going to do that. My Dad isn't a part of my life and chose not to come to the wedding. I cried big ugly tears, as did my mom and sisters.

We didn't do the garter thing - just not us. We didn't have a single fresh flower - J made all of the bouquets out of fabric. She also made every centerpiece, table decoration, favor, etc by hand. It was very much us and I loved it.

I loved my dress an insane amount. It is to date the best article of clothing I have ever worn. I am not one to feel beautiful, but I felt beautiful that day. It was perfect.

Our officiant was the college professor who taught the class we met in

What went wrong? Well, J almost had to wear sweats to the wedding LOL ... She tried on her cream colored suit she was supposed to wear at 1am the day before the wedding and it DIDNT FIT. After an epic meltdown and no sleep, we drove the the mall and waited outside for it to open the next morning. Her outfit she ended up with was pieced together from Bloomingdales, JC Penney and Kohls. We left the mall and headed directly to the rehearsal. There was no time to panic or be annoyed, and it all worked out fine, but that was sure stressful... That's my wife for you, though!

Here are some pictures ...

Danni_Girl

We had a small ceremony, so about 55 close friends and relatives, and then about 120 or more at the dinner/dance.  We wanted to have a small intimate wedding, but a big party after.

Our ceremony was held in a small chapel at the University.  Then the dinner and dance was moved over to the Holiday Inn by the waterfront. 

We both went down the isle with our Dad's. While our Mom's were walked down the isles just before us by our Best Man and Maid of Honour.  Jo went first with her Dad, and I went second. We walked down to the instrumental version of 'Halo' by Beyonce, Left with 'At Last' by Etta James. Our first dance was 'Forever' by Chris Brown.  We can't remember the song we played for the Father Daughter dance.  We both danced with our Dad's at the same time, and Jo's Mom and Brother were balling their eyes out at the edge of the dance floor. My Dad and I had a dance by ourselves to our song a little while after... 'Dad's Girl' by Red Sovine.  He would play and sing that song to me all the time when I was younger.  Love that song, makes me cry just thinking about it. https://youtu.be/ZzAmdU3LxNg

Instead of our first dance being slow, we wanted something more upbeat, so we started it off as if juts a normal song being played (no announcement). As soon as it started Jo and I made our way onto the dance floor from where ever we were in the hall, danced together for about 30 seconds, then started grabbing everyone and brought them onto the dance floor to dance with us.  It was great! Everyone actually made a circle around us during this one part of the song, which worked out perfectly.  He had it all planned, it went great!  Everyone had a blast.

  
We did the flower and guarder toss, but instead of Jo taking the guarder off me, she was wearing it, and I crawled across the floor in my big dress and took it off her leg, and she tossed the flowers.  It was rather entertaining.  

As I got into my Uncle's Cadillac to go from the hotel to the Chapel, My dress went into the wheel well area and I got grease on it.  My Dad started to panic, but I didn't care.. which was surprising.  It actually tucked really well into the folds at the bottom of the dress, so it wasn't noticeable.

We had our parents songs played so they could have their dances too, and when my parents song was played, my Dad wasn't even in the hall.  So I went and danced with my Mom so she wasn't left hanging.

Also, one of Jo's Uncles, who wasn't 100% on board with the wedding in the beginning, was fooling around and joking about putting cupcake in my face, but when I stepped back to get away from him, he stepped on my dress and I fell backwards, and when he went to grab me, he got icing all over my dress.  Plus, Jo's Dad and my Dad jumped up thinking he pushed me!  There was almost a war.. lol

It turned out that we got married the same day as Kingston's Pride.  Didn't even plan it that way. It was a great night!!  We've been to many weddings that are pretty much over around 11pm. But we actually had to start kicking people out of the hall at 2am when we had to shut it down.  The floor was always full of people dancing, and that's what we wanted.  

We have a good 1000 photos our wedding.  Everyone who took photos sent them to us, plus my friend took a good 500 on her own.  I love having photos from all parts of the night.

** photos deleted as I don't want TB using my photos for their own purpose **

mrs&mrsk

Password ajfilms doesn't seem to work from safari

Esquette

1) How many guests? We wanted to keep it small and intimate: we had 40 guests, and invited about 55.  

2) Indoor or outdoor?  Tell us about your venue. We got married at the Denver Botanic Gardens, during the Chihuly glass exhibit, which was amazing.  Our little garden had a relatively small glass greenhouse that was made in England as one of 13 that were comissioned for Disney.  This one wound up at the Denver Botanic Gardens.  It was perfect for our little party.

3) Music (walking down the aisle, intro, first dance, etc.)?  We walked into our space (no aisle, really) together, to a guitar and keyboard playing the Portugese Love Theme from Love Actually.  We walked out again, together, to the Rainbow Connection.

4) Is there anything non-traditional that you did?  Ummmm, lots!  We had breakfast for dinner: tiny pancakes, breakfast burritos, melon skewers.  We had no wedding party and no officiant.  Our ceremony was less than 15 minutes. We walked down the aisle together.  We didn't have any official dancing, we just happened to dance at the end of the night.  We didn't care about flowers or centerpieces. (Although, my BFF is a florist and couldn't bear the thought of me having a baby's breath bouquet, and made me a gorgeous bouquet which included my favorite plant: artichokes!)  No booze.  The ceremony and reception were in the same place.  No seating arrangements.  

5) Every wedding has at least one thing go wrong…. what happened at yours?  Ummmm.... Our wedding was damn near perfect.  There are some pictures we wish we could have gotten, but really.... Nothing went wrong.

BONUS: PIP us your wedding and/or inspiration pics!  I'm the one who looks like a PRETTY PRETTY PRINCESS.  And Sweetie is the one looking completely drop-dead gorgeous in that tux.    (ETA: I guess I just attached the pictures.  I'll have to figure out how to put them directly in the post....)

ball.and.chain

@Esquette, I love your artichoke bouquet!

Jazibel

1) How many guests?  We had 75 guests

2) Indoor or outdoor?  Tell us about your venue.  We got married at the retreat and conference center I used to manage. Our wedding was outdoors in an oak grove, down w short wooded path and across a small wooden bridge. We arranged our guests chairs in a circle and the ceremony was held in the center.  Our venue was also on site in the adjacent community building and newly built patio/garden area. Guests mingled indoors and out, our dance floor and DJ were both outside.  Our ceremony was at 4pm (if memory serves me), so the sun was setting behind the hills toward the end of the day. It was a beautiful venue and we received so many compliments. Plus it was free which is why we chose 7/3 as our wedding date. We had a weekend wedding and some friends and family arrived Friday and left Sunday, also staying onsite for free. 

3) Music (walking down the aisle, intro, first dance, etc.)?  Eternal Flame by the Bangles (for walking down the aisle).

4) Is there anything non-traditional that you did?  Everything was non-traditional. Up until that point I'd only been to one wedding and it too was a non-traditional wedding, so I had no idea about bouquet tosses, or first dances. One of my friends was an event planner and she jumped in last minute and took charge. Which is how we ended up with the Muppet theme music being played as we were "introduced" after the ceremony (we hadn't chosen anything).

We were on a super tight budget so we had a crepe bar, our officiant wore a fuzzy purple shawl (her choice) ;-)  I wanted a princess dress but EV made her own outfit.

Our colors were lavender and maroon, but we inherited a ton of Bali-themed decor at the last minute and did a 180 with our decor choices.  We had glass vases on the tables with palm and fern greenery, orchids, candles and chines fighting fish in the bowls. We gifted the fish after the ceremony.  EV designed the floral arrangements, and our cake (which was amazing) was a three tiered chocolate mouse/ganache cake with cranberries.  

As alternative as our wedding was we received a ton of compliments - people loved the laissez faire attitude.

5) Every wedding has at least one thing go wrong…. what happened at yours?  My wife's mother got drunk and called me several rude words in front of our friends.  It was the last straw on our relationship for many years.

Despite that though we had an amazing weekend.

BONUS: PIP us your wedding and/or inspiration pics!

Jazibel

OMG - now I'm obsessed ;-)

ATXmommas

Thanks for sharing, everyone!  

@mrs&mrsk - Lots of fun pictures!  I love the one in the street.  I think I would have been upset about hearing another wedding's music during my vows, but you're right - something to look back on and laugh!

@2momsinCA - that's an amazing story!  I have friends who were recently married in San Francisco's City Hall and it was actually quite gorgeous!

@karlamo - I would have taken the rainbow flag down too.  I think the idea of blessing the river stones is so touching - what a wonderful token to have.

@KH826 - you truly are a beautiful women, but I agree that you looked exceptionally gorgeous on your wedding day!  I love that there were so many personal details from J making your centerpieces.  And, your story about having to shop for J the day before is hysterical. Your description reminded me that we didn't do the garter or bouquet toss either.

@Danni_Girl - your reception sounds like an AMAZING party!  The pic of you crawling to Jo in your big dress is pretty funny.

@Esquette - your venue is exquisite!  And I too love the artichoke in your bouquet.

@Jazibel - You made such a beautiful bride!  Kudos to you for just going with the flow with the last minute changes - that would have made me crazy!  But, it turned out beautiful.  And, I really adore the swing picture.  What a neat idea for a wedding pic.  But, yikes about your MIL.  

@wittyandwaiting - I hope your wedding is just what you want it to be whenever the time comes!

2brides

1) How many guests? 50

2) Indoor or outdoor?  Tell us about your venue.It was at a boutique hotel

3) Music (walking down the aisle, intro, first dance, etc.)? harp and flute for the processional (Pachelbel's Cannon) and for the first hour of the reception. Then we had made a playlist of our favorite songs.

4) Is there anything non-traditional that you did?  We did the blessing of the river stones. We each collected stones from meaningful places to each of us (mine from Maine and L's from TN) and had people hold them during the ceremony and then bless them. We had them in a fountain in our house...then we had kids who liked to play in said fountain and it had to be put away. Now, the rocks are in a baggie in the pantry, I think. We also had people sign a plate that it now in the dining room - but it is really faded. It has been nearly 12y since our wedding.... We didn't do bridesmaids/flower girls. We didn't have our parents walk us down the aisle (L's parents didn't come), we didn't have dancing, we had a Saturday brunch reception...

5) Every wedding has at least one thing go wrong…. what happened at yours? What didn't go wrong? They served the entirely wrong menu. We had done a tasting and picked out some awesome stuff (banana stuffed french toast) - and they ended up serving a regular convention breakfast (eggs, bacon, yogurt in the cartons, etc.) The in room sound system wouldn't work so they brought in a Bose alarm clock with a CD player (this was pre-iPod) and sat it on the floor. We were supposed to have a champagne toast and they totally didn't have the champagne ready/or do it. Immediately post ceremony we had to change out of clothes, drive an hour home to get our dog and drive her to a friends house to spend the night and then drive back to the hotel for dinner with OOT guests. It wasn't terribly romantic... :P

BONUS: PIP us your wedding and/or inspiration pics! No computer pics..sorry!

channe9

1) How many guests? 55 -- we wanted smallish and that was easy given that it was a transatlantic wedding -- we live in the UK but got married in the US. Lots of my wife's invitees couldn't make it over from the UK. 

2) Indoor or outdoor?  Tell us about your venue. We rented a house on an island off the coast of Florida and threw a fantastic backyard house party that went indoors when it got dark/the mosquitos came out. I loved our non-legally binding house party. (We got married at home in the UK a month before...) 

3) Music (walking down the aisle, intro, first dance, etc.)? For our first dance, we had "Shimbalaiê" by Maria Gadu  

4) Is there anything non-traditional that you did?  

No bouquets or big wedding parties. We almost didn't have a cake until my mother insisted.

It's shocking that this is non-traditional but it was such a big deal at the time... We invited who we wanted -- to the chagrin of my mother who thought we should invite members of her family who I hadn't seen in years. She said, "They would probably never come. Well, maybe they would come just because they were curious about a gay wedding." Ugh, no. NOT invited. 

We didn't walk down the aisle as we felt quite strange about getting parents involved and my wife was terrified that she'd fall over -- she IS clumsy. Instead, we stood and our guests walked in. That way WE got to see THEM on our day. (I'd seen it on a wedding blog and it fit our situation well.) I remember the excitement of seeing several people for the first time since I'd moved away years before. Wonderful! 

5) Every wedding has at least one thing go wrong…. what happened at yours?

We desperately needed a day of coordinator. We -- who are we kidding?! I coordinated all morning and that even went into getting dressed. Stupid. So stupid. Also, my mom's friend catered and the black beans were crunchy because they weren't boiled long enough. Also, when you buy shrimp and say they must be de-veined on the morning of your wedding -- check 3–4 times to make sure! Haha. Luckily, we had two friends who were happy enough to help! 

BONUS: PIP us your wedding and/or inspiration pics! Don't know if these pics will post as they are HUGE. (Edit: Yay! They posted!) 

mrs&mrsk

love everyones pix & seeing how many couples both wore dresses- we couldnt find very many who had prior to our wedding.   

can anyone see my video ? i am wondering if it's working again 

JGY

1) How many guests?28, which includes us.  3 of those 28 were under the age of 5.  It was ONLY family.  It was awesome.
2) Indoor or outdoor? Tell us about your venue.We rented a really unique house in rural CT, the next town over from where my parents live.  We offered the house to S's family to stay in, and my family stayed with my parents.  We had our Ceremony on the far side of the pond on the rentede property, outside.  We had our reception immediately following, under a tent on the lawn halfway around the pond from where we had the ceremony.
3) Music (walking down the aisle, intro, first dance, etc.)?We walked from the house around the pond together (with our dog) to Heavenly Day by Patty Griffin.  S's Sister and BIL (both musicians/singers) sang Feels Like Home by Randy Newman during our Ceremony.  After the Ceremony we started a Cocktail Hour playlist of our favorite lovey songs, the first one up was Formidable by Charles Aznavour.  Definitely set the right mood.  During dinner there was Jazz in the background, and then we put together a dance playlist (just in case people wanted to dance, we honestly had no expectations, but the floor was packed all night).  The dance playlist had a few specific songs thrown in there that were "The Song" for our parents, aunts and uncles, etc.  It was a big hit.  90% of the dance playlist was from prior to 1970.  It was perfect.
4) Is there anything non-traditional that you did? Our focus was to spend a day (really a whole week) with those who love and support us, and to give them a beautiful evening where they were catered to and well fed.  Because our group was so small, we were able to do some unique things that really reflected who we and our families are.  We ended our Ceremony with a champaign/sparkling cider toast to our families for making the journey (both geographical and spiritual) to be with us.  We had the waitstaff bring out trays and be ready to go for that.  I thought it was a really nice way to lead into cocktail hour/mingling/photos.  I really struggled over seating at dinner; I didn't want to assign seating and I didn't want anyone to feel like they couldn't sit with anyone else (us included).  So we ended up arranging our 4 rectangular tables in the shape of an x, so that we were all essentially sitting together at 1 big table.  Conversation flowed, and it was an amazing solution to our problem.  My family is big into cheese and wine, so my Sister created individual cheese plates for each of the 4 tables, using family cheese boards, and we had tons of extra bagguette available.  What else?  Neither of us wore white.  We did no first dance/garter/etc and neither of us carried flowers.  Our dog's bowtie was made from the same fabric as S's custom-made pants.
5) Every wedding has at least one thing go wrong…. what happened at yours?One set of Aunt/Uncle were late so we ended up having all the guests sitting across the pond wondering why we were taking so long to come out there.  We had planned events for a few days on either side of the wedding so that our guests could explore the beautiful area of CT, but it rained for pretty much a week straight.  The rain only let up for about 4 hours which was the exact time of our Ceremony and most of our Reception.  A thunderstorm rolled in at the end of the reception, and we lost power to the sound system.  But that was actually fine, because I didn't know how else we were going to clear the dance floor in time for the noise ordinance.  Ha ha ha.  Lastly, I was so happy/relieved/tired that I thought it would be a great idea to have 1 more glass of wine while we paid the caterers at the end of the night ... really, really bad idea as it turns out.