As you can see these posts are tak­ing me forever to put together. Well, this par­tic­u­lar post was one where I really wasn’t sure where to start, as the cer­e­mony as a whole is a bit of a blur at this point. There were def­i­nitely some moments when I was acutely aware of all of the eyes on us, and oth­ers where noth­ing was more clear than the words we were speak­ing. But con­nect­ing the dots in my mem­ory is prov­ing to be a bit dif­fi­cult, espe­cially as I try to put it all into words. Good thing I have a mil­lion pic­tures to guide the way!

Little secret: just before this photo (which I LOVE) was taken I was com­pletely freak­ing out. There were two times that day that I had mini heart attacks. The first was right before we met for the “first look” and the sec­ond was this one, right before we walked down the aisle. And then I saw Brian. And I was happy. (By the way if we hadn’t done the first look, I have no idea how I would have main­tained any sem­blance of calm. Seeing him before the cer­e­mony was huge for chill­ing me out. If you’re not a huge center-of-attention per­son like me, I highly rec­om­mend tak­ing that time together, not just for the pho­tos, but for your sanity.)

You’ll notice our amaz­ing offi­ciant Alma Daniel in the back­ground of this shot. (You may — if you have a real­ity TV vice, like me — rec­og­nize her from Bethenny Getting Married. Oh yeah, Bethenny Frankel and I shared an offi­ciant. We booked her first though! Ok, enough of that.) Alma was incred­i­ble. She led us step-by-step through cre­at­ing a cer­e­mony that was per­sonal to us, that had mean­ing we con­nected with, and that fit our vision to a T. The day of, she was great with both us and our guests. She some­how man­aged to con­duct a cer­e­mony that was both gen­uinely heart­felt and cel­e­bra­tory, with a few tears and a hell of a lot of laughs.

Speaking of laugh­ter, there are tons of pic­tures cap­tur­ing this through­out the cer­e­mony — me, Brian, the wed­ding party, the guests, every­one. Sadly I have no idea what was so hilar­i­ous now (except for the one vow that has to do with me trip­ping, since I hap­pen to be seri­ously acci­dent prone), but it’s really nice to look back and see so many smil­ing faces.

Also cool: some­thing Alma likes to do is to stand next to the cou­ple, rather than in front or behind. It’s a small detail, but it def­i­nitely made a dif­fer­ence. It was great for our guests to have an unob­structed view (it always both­ers me at wed­dings when I’m star­ing at the bride and groom’s backs for the entire cer­e­mony, and can’t hear any­thing they’re say­ing). Plus it was also really nice for us to be able to look out and see the reac­tions and expe­ri­ences of our friends and fam­ily as it was happening.

We wanted to keep our cer­e­mony rel­a­tively short, but we still wanted to include at least one read­ing to sup­ple­ment all of the required bits and pieces. So after lots and lots of search­ing, we asked Laura (Brian’s brother’s girl­friend) to read this excerpt from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin:
Love is a tem­po­rary mad­ness; it erupts like vol­ca­noes and then sub­sides. And when it sub­sides you have to make a deci­sion. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is incon­ceiv­able that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breath­less­ness, it is not excite­ment, it is not the pro­mul­ga­tion of eter­nal pas­sion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a for­tu­nate acci­dent. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other under­ground, and when all the pretty blos­soms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.

At some point I plan on mak­ing this into a nice lit­tle print that we can hang up in our apartment.

I agree with Margaret, I love this shot of my Father-in-law on the edge of his seat, literally.

And we’re married!

I won’t copy the cer­e­mony here in its entirety (unless there’s some inter­est in it), but one of my favorite parts was the Benediction, which came right before the Pronouncement:
May you cher­ish one another
May you rest in the silent space between you with no need to fill it
May you never get so lost that your humor can’t find you
May you be as gra­cious with each other as you would be to an hon­ored guest in your home
May you love each other more than your need to be right
May you not be scared of each other’s shadow or threat­ened by each other’s Light
May you share in the other’s wis­dom and be stronger for it.
May your mar­riage be full of fun
May you live long together in good health, har­mony and happiness.

Every word that lit­tle pas­sage res­onates so strongly for both of us. It was a per­fect way to end the cer­e­mony and start our newly mar­ried life.

All pho­tos by Unusually Fine