Our Wedding: One Year Later!

It has been a whole year since our wedding... A WHOLE YEAR. How is that possible?? Some days it feels like our wedding was ages ago, but other days it feels like it was just yesterday. I was in Wisconsin a few months ago, talking to my friends about how I think I slipped into a bit of a post-wedding depression at the end of the year. It sounds funny, but I actually think it's true. I went from very high stress: planning, organizing, freaking out, etc. to very low-stress: nothing left to plan, organize, or freak out over.

Though nobody loves stress, I think for me it was the exciting kind of stress, so I didn't mind it so much. It motivated me to keep pushing forward every day because I knew I had a deadline. (Don't get me wrong, though. I was a total wreck about two weeks before the wedding and had many fetal position freak-outs.)Anyway, I wanted to share some photos from our wedding because I never did get around to doing that, and talk about our vendors, timeline, things I learned, things I missed, things I loved, things I didn't, etc. and hopefully it will be helpful to anyone out there currently wedding planning!

Okay, so, where do I start??

Adam proposed on September 30th, 2017 in Squamish, BC. Wedding planning started almost immediately (totally browsed through some Pinterest boards that night, lol). I always knew I wanted a big wedding. I know some people dread the idea of one, or decide something small and intimate better suits them, etc. but for whatever reason I've always been a fan of big, traditional weddings and knew that's what I wanted. Adam also loved the idea of throwing the biggest party ever and sending invites to all of our friends and family. What more could you ask for?

By the time December rolled around, we had already chosen our wedding party, found a venue, caterer, bakery, DJ, and photo booth vendor. We planned an early Christmas visit to Wisconsin and spent time with my family but also squeezed in some meetings with our caterer, bakery, and DJ to go over details. We were so on top of our game!

We got married at Over the Vines which is an old barn from 1888 located on a vineyard near Madison, Wisconsin. I knew Adam was a keeper when he was totally okay with getting married in an old barn in Wisconsin instead of in the beautiful mountains somewhere in Washington, haha. I remember years ago, sitting with a handful of women chatting about love and life and the topic of weddings came up. One of the women said, "Oh god, I hate barn weddings," and I said, "Hey! I want to get married in a barn!" Lol so no matter how cliche barn weddings might be to some people, I think they're cute and SO Wisconsin and I knew I had to have one.

Anyway, something we didn't plan for: because our venue was so popular, by December 2017, all of the 2018 Saturday dates in August and September were already taken (!!!!) which meant our wedding would have to be either on a Friday or a Sunday. Sunday felt better than Friday, so that's what we decided on. It wasn't ideal, but we made it work. I'd say the only bummer about having a Sunday wedding was the end time. It always seems like Saturday weddings rage on until one in the morning, but because we got married in a barn and not in a traditional venue, there were neighborhood noise restrictions, so Sunday weddings had to be over and cleared out by 11 PM. I kept looking at our timeline and feeling really worried we wouldn't get everything covered in time to be out of there by 11, but in the end, it worked out just fine.

By February, we found our wedding photographers and florist (who I'm not going to tag because I'm petty), and by May, we had secured our day-of coordinator. Liz of LP Planning was the last vendor we booked, though realistically she should have been the first! In the early stages of our wedding planning process, Adam and I sort of decided we didn't really need a wedding planner or day-of coordinator. We figured we were organized enough and had a pretty big wedding party (12 people), plus both sets of parents around to help, so with all of those extra hands, we didn't see why it would be necessary to bring in yet another person.

BUT, as time marched on, we realized more and more that assigning tasks to certain people was proving to be too difficult to keep track of. Thankfully Liz still had our date available, so we swiftly booked her and I'm so happy we did!

She was extremely helpful and ran around all day making sure everything was in order and set up the way we discussed. I love this photo of her pinning a boutonniere on my dad. To be totally frank, our florist sucked. They dumped off all of our flowers in a box and took off before we even got a chance to greet them. We paid almost $100 extra to have them deliver everything because I thought that would include handing out bouquets and helping with boutonnieres, or at the very least saying hello to the bride or groom, but nope. Adam and all of the groomsmen took half of their bridal party photos without boutonnieres because they assumed the flowers hadn't even arrived yet. Someone working at the venue said they thought they saw someone carrying a box of flowers earlier in the day. Once Liz heard this, she sprang into action and searched the grounds. She found the box and then quickly helped the guys pin their boutonnieres on before I even got a chance to go full bridezilla. It was so appreciated!

Quick rant time: the other annoying thing about our florist was the overall lack of communication/enthusiasm when it came to picking out flowers for bouquets. I would sit down and write out what I had in mind, attach inspiration photos to my emails, etc. and I'd literally get one-sentence responses in return. It was really off-putting because they were so nice in the beginning, but I think when they realized we weren't planning on spending thousands of dollars on flowers, we quickly became one of their least important customers. I didn't even get to see what the bouquets were going to look like before the wedding! The first time I saw them was the day-of when Liz brought the box of them into the bridal suite.

It's also worth mentioning that my bouquet cost a couple of hundred dollars more than my bridesmaids' bouquets, and mine was not that much different or bigger than theirs (see photos below). It's not that the bouquets were ugly by any means (they were beautiful!), or that I was SUPER unhappy with them. But when you're imagining your bridal bouquet that you spent hundreds of dollars on, you sort of expect it to be big and beautiful and not almost identical to the six other bouquets you spent significantly less money on. I do think the flowers were great and they fit our theme nicely, but overall, it wasn't what I had in mind, and I just felt the florist was incredibly unprofessional on top of it. I left them a not-so-nice review on Yelp after the wedding... (So I did get to have my bridezilla moment after all - it was just after the fact!) K thanks for listening to my "quick" rant about flowers. I swear it's my only rant since everything else about our day was so lovely!

I purchased my wedding dress three months before the wedding through the website, Pre Owned Wedding Dresses. It was a BHLDN (Anthropologie) dress so of course, it was pretty pricey! (My earrings and shoes were also from BHLDN.) I was able to snag the dress I wanted for $400 less through the pre-owned website, though. I also avoided paying shipping costs as well as Seattle's outrageous 10.1% sales tax! The woman I bought it from had actually never worn it, either.

She initially bought two dresses and decided on a different one for her wedding day and was unable to return this one. So for me, it was a brand new dress, just at a cheaper price. (It was definitely NOT a cheap dress though, lol. Especially after alterations... But yeah let's not talk about that.) I will spare you another bridezilla moment I had while dealing with the alterations place in Seattle. It involved me crying near Pike Place Market holding my expensive ass dress I thought the seamstress completely ruined. *Sigh* But it all worked out, guys... It's fine. It's over. I'm not gonna think about it anymore!

My bridesmaids got their dresses from Kennedy Blue. I love their long, flowing dresses. I had my ladies choose their favorite design in the crinkle-chiffon fabric. It took a while to finalize my color choice, but after many nights of agonizing over color swatches, I decided the sage green was my favorite. Advice for Kennedy Blue bridesmaids: order your dress early! It took some of my friends a few months to finally receive their dress!

Each of them fancied a different design, but we still managed to have two of each so it worked out so wonderfully. I loved the symmetry of it all! Ashley was my Matron of Honor, so she found a pretty white belt to wear with hers just so she would stand out a bit. I think it looked great!

I also bought sage-colored robes for them to wear in the bridal suite. I brought them with me to my bachelorette party to make sure the sizes worked for them. I bought a white one for myself, and I actually purchased that pink one my mom is wearing while I was in Japan!

Adam opted to purchase his suit instead of rent one. He bought it from Black Lapel and we were really happy with the quality. His groomsmen (and my dad) rented their suits and shoes from The Black Tux. We wanted a classic look, so they all wore fitted, slim-leg suits in a dark grey color with black skinny ties and black shoes.

Adam's suit was similar, but the grey color was just a tad lighter. We were worried the slight color difference would be strange, but I think it worked perfectly!

After our first look, Adam and I read our vows to each other in private (with only our photographers there to capture it). We chose to do this because we’re both shy and hate speaking in front of people and the thought of it was giving both of us way too much anxiety, haha. It was really special actually and I recommend doing this if you have a fear of public speaking! It was also nice just being with each other for a little while before the ceremony and chaos. The calm before the storm.

My friend Shaun married us, and part of the reason we chose him is because he’s such a great communicator. We knew he’d be cool as a cucumber and would not only keep our nerves in check but would bring in a little bit of his humor to the ceremony, too. I’ve known Shaun since we were 14 and it was really special having him be a part of our day. We couldn’t have asked for a better officiant!

Our ceremony was short and sweet. We're not religious at all, so we didn't want any church/god talk. Instead, Shaun read a lot about love and commitment, my friend Sahan did a reading that made me cry, and Adam's friend Daniel read a passage from, "The Alchemist," that we both loved. We also had a ring warming. It's something my friends Kyle and Ashley did at their wedding that we thought was really nice.

Our rings were passed around in a little bowl and the idea was to have everyone send us good love vibes through the rings. I don't think they made it all the way around, but we tried.

We had a handful of DIY projects at our wedding, including the arbor which Adam and my dad built together. It's about 100 degrees and humid in Wisconsin during the summer, so you can only imagine how fun this was to build one very hot June afternoon in my parents' backyard. It turned out amazing though, and it was special marrying Adam under something he built with my dad. *Insert sweet, sappy, symbolic stuff here*

Speaking of the arbor - initially I had envisioned just a wood arbor with simple white fabric loosely wrapped around it, but because it was sort of windy on our wedding day, Liz (our DOC) did her best and used the leftover eucalyptus garlands and baby's breath from the reception tables and attached them to the arbor to weigh down the fabric and keep it in place better. The end result wasn't really what I had in mind, but I had way too many other things going on that day to care too much about how the stupid fabric looked on the arbor, lol. And I definitely appreciated her making it work even with the wind!

My mom was also a HUGE help when it came to DIY projects for the wedding. She basically lives for all things DIY, so I got lucky there. I found all of our eucalyptus centerpieces for the reception tables either on Craigslist, eBay, or Afloral. None of the branches were the same, but my mom and I worked hard to get 16 functioning eucalyptus garlands with what we had.

I was so grateful for the very large bundle of $13 eucalyptus branches I found on Craigslist. The woman selling them was just trying to get rid of them after her daughter's wedding, so that was awesome and saved us a ton of money! (Thank you to my friend Brian for meeting up with her in Madison to collect it all since I was still in Seattle at the time! And shout out to his mom for taking it from his car and then delivering it to my parents' house. It really takes a village, y'all...)

I thought it'd be cute to have our guests throw rose petals at us as we left the ceremony, so we made these little cones using paper doilies and twine. It was a process, but again - my mom is the queen of DIY and made that shiz happen.

It was so fun kissing Adam as my husband for the first time and then running away together as our friends and family threw rose petals at us!

Our programs were also homemade. Since we got married outside, we were worried it would be a hot day, so making programs that could double as fans sounded like a good idea. I purchased some cute templates I found on Etsy and then customized the text. I had them printed at Kinkos on heavy paper and then we glued them together and placed a wooden stick in the middle. We used the leftover twine from the flower cones to add a little extra decoration. My dad even helped with this project! Some of them were a bit rough around the edges (as you can see here), but hey, isn't that the beauty of DIY? Our photographers didn't get any photos of them, but a friend of mine snapped this on his phone. I'm having a hard time even remembering what the other side looked like! Just goes to show how little these details actually matter after the wedding, haha.

As I think about those little details and look through our photos, it’s safe to say I probably spent too much money on Etsy buying things that felt very important at the time. One of my favorite little extras I got on Etsy were these napkins. Aren’t they cute?? I just couldn’t resist! We still have a huge stack of them in our wedding keepsake box. Maybe we’ll use two every year with our anniversary dinners. :-P

My matron of honor, Ashley, and her husband, Eric brought some lawn games for people to play during cocktail hour and they were a huge hit. It was nice giving our guests something to do (other than drink) while they waited for the reception to start.

For our seating chart, we just had a giant board set up with names and table numbers instead if individual name cards. I was worried people would be confused/lost or totally miss the seating chart and just grab any chair, but whoever set it up (I honestly don't know who did, haha) put it in a pretty obvious place. I also told my brother Vinni (our usher) to make sure people saw the sign before finding a place to sit.

Adam and I sat at a "sweetheart" table at the front of all the reception tables and we have zero regrets about that. I know it's "normal" to sit at a big head table with the bridal party, but we just had too many people in our bridal party and lots of kids and partners and all the rest, so this made the most sense to us.

It also gave people the chance to come up and talk to us without crowding around a big table. Lots of room to move around and hug and chit chat!

Our reception tables were super simple but that’s what we wanted. Our venue was already so beautiful on its own, so we didn’t really feel like we had to go overboard on flowers or decorations. We rented the table linens from a place in Racine because they were so much cheaper than anywhere in Madison.

As I said earlier, the garlands were handmade by my mom and me. Our hands were pretty green after assembling, and my parents’ house smelled like eucalyptus for months before and even after the wedding! The baby’s breath is something I purchased online (as well as the rose petals) and shipped directly to their house the day before the wedding because our florist was asking too much for both.

The wooden table numbers were also a cheap Etsy purchase and I thought about spray painting or coloring them in some way, but then decided leaving them alone might look best since the natural wood sort of went with our theme anyway.

The "In Loving Memory" table is something we knew we wanted, but it was hard putting some of those photos in frames. Not having my friend Dana stand with me as a bridesmaid or see my cousin Erik seated with my family was difficult. I definitely broke down a number of times during the wedding planning process. It just didn't feel right at times to be planning something so big without them. But having this table was important, and I knew that even if I couldn't see them, that they and our other loved ones were all right there celebrating with us.

Speaking of our loved ones, we sure had a lot of people there. A few people from my family didn't come (and never apologized for not showing up even though they sent a "Yes" RSVP) but we still had a pretty large group, including all four of my brothers which made me happy.

Everyone from Adam's mom's side lives in Australia, but two of his aunts, and even one of his uncles made the long trip across the world for us. That definitely made up for some of my local family members flaking out on us. It really meant so much to have them there. How wonderful/generous/amazing is that??

For dessert, we had a mini cake for just the two of us, and donuts, cupcakes, hand pies, and cookies for guests. Our little cake eventually got divided up as well. We were happy about that - there was no way we could have shipped it back to Seattle! (The cake topper was also from Etsy.)

Bloom Bake Shop in Madison is the BEST by the way. My coworker and his partner were kind enough to pick up all of the sweets the day-of and they said the women working at Bloom were just the nicest ever. I highly recommend visiting them if you ever find yourself in the Madison area!

Everything tasted so good - especially the sweet potato donuts! A friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in years came up to me with a donut in her hand and before saying hello or congrats or giving me a hug, she said, “AMANDA THESE DONUTS ARE LIFE-CHANGING,” hahah. It’s true. They really are!

Our wedding gifts were little bags of coffee beans from Seattle. Since we met here, and coffee is a pretty big deal here, we thought it was only appropriate! My incredibly kind coworker and his partner got them from their friend who roasts his own beans here. Not only did they not charge us for the beans, the two of them also sat and individually packaged each Ziploc bag, put them all in a box, and then mailed the box to my parents' house in Wisconsin. I mean... Seriously!

Here's a photo of them because I just adore them so much. They really were such a huge help and we appreciated them flying across the country to be there for us! We seated them at one of the family tables because they do feel like family to me. :)

One of my favorite parts of the reception was when my dad's band played! He's been the singer of a band my entire life and I've known the other guys in the band forever (they also played at my high school graduation party lol), so it felt right to have them perform a few songs at my wedding.

It was really fun watching all of my Seattle friends who had never met my dad before get out and dance and enjoy his music. They all told me later that I was totally right about how cool my dad is, haha.

Gosh, there's just so much to say about our wedding but I feel like I've already babbled on too much! I really love weddings. That's something else I realized when ours was over. Even though it was overwhelming at times, I did love the organizing and planning of it all. Shortly after Adam and I returned home from our honeymoon, I finally decided to launch my own photography business (I think I've mentioned that here before?) and I feel so fortunate to be able to capture weddings for couples now because I fully understand how special that day really is and how much work goes into making it all come together.

It all feels like it was just yesterday, so it's hard to believe we're celebrating one year of marriage today! Our photographers sent over 800 photos, so it was hard narrowing them down! Here is another fun post with some photos from our photo booth. I'm so glad we booked that photo booth by the way - our guests loved it!

I don't think I'll ever stop looking through all of these photos. It was such a perfect day. Thanks again to all of our family and friends who helped in some way or another throughout the planning process (especially our parents!), and thanks to those who made the long journey out to Wisconsin to celebrate with us!

And to Adam - thank you for being my rock, my best friend, my soulmate, and my husband. I feel so lucky to be your wife. Happy anniversary! I love you times infinity! As always, thanks for reading. xo