Last weekend, my Uncle Dean came over for dinner. Uncle Dean is my mom’s brother and lives about 5 blocks away from us. He travels a lot so we don’t get to see him often but on Friday, we had some important details to go over.
Wedding details.
We are excited that Dean has agreed to marry Carlos and I.
We talked flow of the wedding, verses, themes and what we wanted for our magical day. We talked about traditions, about things that most brides and grooms do and things WE wanted to do. We talked timing, schedule and overall logistics. It still seems so surreal, planning a wedding. Can this really be happening, am I really planning the day I will marry the man of my dreams?
I love the idea of having Dean marry us because it incorporates mom’s side of the family into our special day.
So in advance, thank you Dean for being a part of our wedding, for marrying us and for being there when mom can’t.
What were some “musts” for your wedding ceremony? What were things you really didn’t need to have in your ceremony?
P.S., No, Uncle Dean is not choking Iggy 
For some reason, it just looks like it in the photo.
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m not sure if you’re getting married in a church, but an isle runner and real petals are just not necessary!
You’ll trip over the isle runner and spend too much money on flower petals! Glad you could have a relative officiate!
Congrats!
ps. I follow you on twitter!
My husband and I had a pseudo-destination wedding in the mountains of Idaho. We got married in a log cabin church by Ken’s cousin. Subsequently, we wrote our entire ceremony. We based it on our location and the catholic church’s mass. We did a bible reading and a reading from Thitch Naht Hahn (our dads are no longer so we each mom did a reading). We wrote the “homily” but used a metaphor for marriage — since we got married in the Sawtooth Mountains, we used each letter to mean something important – like S=, A= W=….etc. It was a big hit. We did the sand in glass thing — totally could have lived without! We also did traditional vows. I’ve been to a few weddings who wrote their own and sometimes people make them goofy – which is fine but it seems inappropriate since you are making a big oath between your partner, family, and God. Oh — random note – we included our dog as a groomsmen! We put him in as “man’s best friend” in our programs.
Good luck with the wedding planning! One thing to keep in perspective (details will drive anyone crazy) is people only remember the food, music, and if there was booze. All the stress about table colors, flowers, photo books, etc. really slip out of memory. Also, my best friend told me this when things got stressful – no one cares about your wedding as much as you do. Asking people to show up early, help, give opinions, etc. just wasn’t AS IMPORTANT to them as it was to us. It sounds mean to say but it kept us in check with family and friends.
I love that you made your dog a groomsman!
A “must” for me was great music during the ceremony that did not require our church’s aging organ (and organist). Being in band my whole life, my dad and I were able to use some connections to get a brass quintet made up of area band directors that play gigs on the side. The music was beautiful, and exactly what I wanted for our ceremony. They also came to the reception and did about an hour of jazzy dinner music as guests were arriving, getting seated, and starting to have dinner. It was fabulous!
Annalisa is exactly right! The only thing people still talk about 3 years later is the pizza we ordered at 10:00 pm for everyone to eat after a long day (weekend) of celebrating! Don’t sweat over the small details, and focus on the things that are important to you & Carlos.
For the ceremony, we took the parts from different wedding ceremonies we’ve been to and created a ceremony that was perfect for us. It was important for us to recognize our parents, so we had a special song for them and hugged and thanked them. We ‘rewrote’ our own vows to reflect things we actually felt and would say to each other (no ‘submitting’ to each other in our vows). It was important to me to sign our marriage certificate as part of our ceremony, since to me, it kind of ‘seals the deal.’ So we incorporated that in place of lighting a candle and/or pouring sand. I asked my aunt (who I’m close to) to do a reading, and told her to pick whatever she felt was important for her to share with us as we begin our lives as husband and wife. We also asked the family friend that married us to do the same. We couldn’t have selected 2 readings that we more perfect, and we left it completely in the hands of our loved ones (and both were honored to be able to pick something to share with US instead of us telling them what to say)!
Enjoy every moment of your wedding planning…it is a very special time!
My brother did something similar to your pizza idea at his wedding in England. Bacon sandwiches are popular over there and he had a big platter of them brought out at about 11 p.m. for those who were still partying. A good idea as it had been a while since the meal and people had been drinking.
I’m a newlywed – we were married October 15th in Minnesota. It was really important to me to have an outdoor ceremony… and we lucked out with the weather this year. It was gorgeous and perfect and emotional and fun and I would not change a thing!
WELL – - I would change one thing. I thought I didn’t need / want a videographer, so we skipped that, but now I feel like I was just so excited to see Mike up on that alter (We didnt’ see each other before), that I forgot to listen! The song was SO significant and meaningful to me, and I barely heard it. my friend Andy played piano, and I didn’t hear it. The words that I helped to write… barely heard them… in all the excitement of the moment, I don’t have a “memory bank” to pull that stuff from. So I wish that we had hired somebody to at least AUDIO record it!
Other than that – music was important to me. Flowers were not that important to me because our outdoor setting was so beautiful already. Having things done by the people we know was important to me (ie, our musicians, readers, etc were all friends). Having a non-pretentious wedding that felt authentic and rustic and real was very important to me. Keeping it small enough that we could talk to everybody was important to me.
The rest just kind of fell into place.
I have to agree with you Jessica. I have been married 15 years and we didn’t do a videographer… instead just opted for a photographer.
We did set up a camera in the church’s balcony to film the ceremony(but didn’t film the reception). My cousin ran the camera and kept it kind of rolling while people were filing out afterwards. Some of the most fun my husband and I have looking back is revisitng those last moment of people filing out and remembering who was actually at our wedding… so wished we had done the whole wedding and reception with a videographer.
I am not even engaged so wedding planning isn’t something I’ve ever done but I am beginning to think of just walking down to city hall and getting it done quickly. My boyfriend’s mom has definite opinions on things and I don’t want to be shelling out a boatload of money for one day where everything id dictated by someone else. So, if I could give advice – make sure you always do what you and Carlos want. If you need to splurge for something because you really want it – do it.
I’ve seen many people save on fancy invites and ‘extras’ but focus costs on things people will remember: food, DJ, etc…
We eloped so most wedding things didn’t apply to us. However there were a few things I did that really mattered to me and I’m glad for it.
One is that I really cared about my wedding jewelry – perhaps more than the dress in some ways. I figured I would only wear the dress once, but I thought that the jewelry was something I could wear again and again on our anniversaries and perhaps some other special occasions and it would always be the special jewelry I wore when I married my true love.
Also, I really cared a lot about the music, because I care a lot about music in general. But music creates and atmosphere and sets a tone, so really can make a difference.
I’m really glad we got a photographer that not only we liked their style, but that we felt really comfortable with and had a good connection with.
And as far as the something borrowed, something blue, etc. tradition – I actually asked my mother, my sister and my very closest girl friends to borrow something from each of them so as I got married, I carried a little piece of all of them with me.
Our ceremony will be short and sweet. We are having a family member marry us and it will be a meaningful ceremony. That’s it. No need to decorate extravagantly for 15 minutes!
We did a ring warming ceremony, our family passed around our wedding bands during our vows and held them for a moment and thought of good wishes for our future. It was beautiful and it incorporated the most important people in our lives intimately with the ceremony. I have the ring warming ceremony typed up somewhere if you’d like to see it.
One thing I am glad that we did was put out disposable cameras all over the reception area for our guests to take snap shots with. ***Very Important!! If you do this, make cute LARGE print notes and put them ALL over the cameras reminding guests to make sure the flash is on!!*** It is great to have all of the professional photos, but something very special about having all of the non posed snapshots of people acting goofy!
Great memories!
We eloped, (20 years ago) so I guess we didn’t find anything other than each other a must to make the wedding work. lol Congratulations to you – enjoy your big day!
My biggest must was that I wore my mom’s wedding dress. Ever since I was small I wanted to wear her dress. The dress has amazing bead and lace work with a matching cathedral-length veil. I was fortunate that the dress was able to be cleaned and that it needed very little tailoring.
A must for my husband is that we got married in our church. I was all for eloping, but it was really important to my husband, a devout Lutheran, that he be married in the church. We included in our program a favorite hymn of his grandmother and a favorite hymn of my grandmother.
Also very important to both of us is that we kept the ceremony and celebration family focused. We both have small families, and all of our family, with the exception of one cousin, live out of state. For our rehearsal dinner we opted to forego a traditional sit down dinner and went bowling instead. Both our families love bowling, plus we went bowling on our first date. This allowed everyone to interact in a fun, relaxed setting. It went so well that my sister ended up doing the same thing when she got married! Instead of a big reception, we invited everyone who came to the church downstairs for cake and punch immediately following the ceremony, then went out for a very fancy dinner with just our immediate family and closest friends later that evening.
I love that your uncle is marrying you!
We had my husband’s best friend marry us on a beach in Pensacola. We opted for the destination wedding because I have such a large family and he is an only child as well as his mom. We did a small, casual ceremony with just immediate family and a few close friends and followed up later in the summer with a pig roast reception for everyone!
Of course, not everyone was happy with this arrangement, but it was the best we could do since we were paying for the wedding ourselves and didn’t want to go into debt for it.
Our wedding was very non-traditional in that the ceremony on the beach was short and sweet with no chairs, just friends gathered around us in a U-shape in the sand.
Our dinner was at our favorite Irish Pub & Steakhouse and people just ordered off the regular menu. It followed by Live Enterainment provided by the pub. A ton of fun and no dj or band necessary!
I was a little stressed in the planning stages because I *thought* I should be doing more because it was so simplistic. However, everything went beautifully and I wouldn’t change anything!
For us, we were just happy to gather to marry each other. There were only a few things we really wanted:
- that my uncle married us
- a friend sang at the wedding
- I wanted orchids in my hair
- marched out to the throne room song at the end (the one from the end of Star Wars. It was indeed the coolest way to end a wedding ever)
-We sent out recipe cards with the invites and asked everyone to bring their favourite recipe to the wedding reception (got so many cool recipes!)
Other than that…it’s was all nonessential stuff. We tried to keep it simple. If people wanted to do things to decorate or be involved we welcomed them to help and do as much as they liked (we just got final veto power in case they went crazily off in too wierd of a direction). It’s so easy to get caught up in trying to make things perfect and we just wanted to spend the day with friends and family. We did what we could to make the day simple. My suggestion was to have coffee and juice (and champagne!) and muffins about when you are getting ready, and for photos after so that even if we had butterflies and couldn’t eat there was always a chance to at some point…kept it stress free and easy. The day flies by
Enjoy it!
Ultimately, all I needed was Brent. The rest of the trappings were just gravy. Go with what you want and simply enjoy
I *heart* this comment!
This is exactly what I was going to say, adding that it was important to me to have my closest friends and family there…I was married once before, briefly, and eloped because really, it was a sham of a marriage and I knew it, deep down inside, but didn’t want to admit it. So having an actual wedding was important to me.
In all we had less than 50 people present, my FIL married us in a beautiful state park and our relatively simple reception was held on a river boat. It was a great day!
The important part to me was the party! The ceremony was kept short and was fairly standard… the part I was really concerned about was getting my family and friends together to celebrate!
It may sound shallow, but I’m super glad I waited and put in the work to be happy with the way I looked. That way, I have a pictures proudly up instead of hidden in a box…
I hate to say this because you are in the joys of planning your own wedding but the one thing I found is that I didn’t need the wedding at all. Planning a wedding is hard work. It is often stressful, taxing and can be expensive. After six months of working hard to put together a wedding that not only suited us but also met the needs of both families we both came to the same conclusion: there were better ways we could spend our time, energy and money that would better honor our relationship. And thus almost thirteen years ago we happily set out to the justice of the peace with the dog on a beautiful fall morning. Neither of us regret it and surprisingly, our family and friends took it very well. As it turned out, as much as everyone was looking forward to a traditional wedding, they were more happy the two of us were so happy together.
I married my highschool sweetheart 18 yrs after our break up at the movie theatre that fateful night in Sept 1986!! We ran into each other after 11 years and after 7 yrs of doing our own thing, it was time for us to give in and stop being so independent and give in to the love we had for each other so very deeply. I had a daughter from another relationship so I wasn’t jumping in without making sure this would work for everyone. We were both older (35) when we officially married.. and at time, all our sibblings had the big/fairytale/lavish/EXPENSIVE weddings. We did have a church wedding w/out the frills.. it was more for our parents as none of the sibblings did the church thing and our parents both being Catholic really wanted that.. We were happy to oblige, we were both raised in this church. We had our closest family member each.. (an Aunt for both of us) say a prayer in their native language, his Italian and mine French. My husband put a ring on me and one of my daughter. He promised me till death do us part and he promised to be there for my daughter too.. That touched me.. Its been a few years now and when I look back, those very personal moments mean the world. The reception was truly a party. Being older meant older family and friends. So I gathered the wedding songs of all the married couples and played them and then did music for all the ages/generations. My daughter had no idea why we chose disco or Elvis but enjoyed it. Especially when my dad taught her the twist…. I live in New England and married in the fall.. the colors were amazing, my pics are all outdoors with the spectacular backdrop. Nothing was elaborate but it had accomodated me, my family and friends and the spirit of our relationship ever so perfectly. I stressed nothing… there was no reason to… nothing is ever perfect in life or in a wedding… no matter what happens with the day, planned or unplanned,,,, at the end of the day… YOU will be Mrs. Carlos and that’s all that really matters…. and you’re Mom will be there too!!!!!!!
Enjoy every minute of today and every day and God Bless!
Hi Jen,
My daughter got married on Dec 31st. We live in South Texas, where the weather is generally beautiful year round, so we chose to have an outdoor ceremony.
We decided on a handfasting ceremony – don’t know if you’ve heard of this or not – the minister uses bindings to lay over the hands of the couple as each vow is taken. After the vows are completed, the “ties are bound” and the couple removes their hands. The minister asked that we provide the bindings (6 of them), so I asked the significant women in my daughter’s life to provide a binding by crocheting, knitting or tying the yarn I provided them with (color-coded, of course). It made a meaningful memento for the special day.
Secondly, my daughter chose to carry a picture of her grandpa (my dad) in her bouquet. We simply made a charm with his picture on it and attached it to the bouquet. This was very important to her, because she shared a birthday with her grandpa, who died when she was 10.
In my opinion, these types of things are more important to a wedding than going overboard to please your guests, or stressing yourself out to attempt perfection. Best of luck with your planning.
Michelle
I really wanted a morning ceremony with champagne brunch….. We were young and agreed to let our parents dictate a big long weekend wedding. I ordered napkins etc with our names on them, and in the end I forgot them and the cut and wrapped wedding cake at home. Nobody noticed, I didn’t get my brunch, but all that I really truly cared about came true that day. The rest was just all externals. We let everyone have a say and everyone was happy, a true day to celebrate! Nobody noticed the mistakes or missed what we forgot or couldn’t afford.
I did not want to come down the aisle to “Here Comes the Bride” thanks to my older brothers singing it as “Here comes the Bride, fair fat and wide” while we grew up. I had my dad pick a different song, one he wanted for us.
When I got married, I wanted beautiful pictures and flowers and was willing to splurge on that. We had a small destination wedding ceremony at Grand Superior Lodge, Two Harbors, MN. We only invited immediate family, of which only 11 showed up. It was the best 10 minute ceremony ever! We had a very nice dinner afterwards and a bonfire on the beach.
Two months later we had a reception to celebrate with those that couldn’t attend. The reception was more for my husband than for me, he wanted to party. We had it all catered so we didn’t have to ask a bunch of family to serve food/cake/punch. My favorite memories of the reception are getting pictures taken with our grandparent’s and the food.
What I didn’t want was to have to pay an organist/pianist, clergy, bridesmaid gifts/dresses, groomsmen gifts/tuxes, and the list goes on. I figure no one really gives a darn if they are the 5th bridesmaid or the guest book attendant or if they are serving food at the reception, so I chose to eliminate all that.
Best of luck to you in your wedding planning details