A big thanks to Megan and Talina for writing such a detailed and amazing account of their wedding.
All images by Jelani Memory Photography
We are blessed to be surrounded by talented, giving family and friends, who made our wedding day even more beautiful than we imagined. From the family friends who lent us their home in the country for a whole week, to the cousin who flew up from Arizona just to do Megan’s hair, to the newborn goddaughter whose tiny, sleeping belly acted as our ring pillow, all the important details just fell into place.
Our favorite moment was after the ceremony, when everyone was sitting down to eat. We had designed the tables so that we sat alone at a small table in the center of our friends and family, who had arranged seating around us. We got food first, so when we were done we got to sit there in the middle and just listen to our favorite people in the world talk and laugh and get to know each other.
The part of the wedding we struggled with the most was actually the invitations. In the end, we based our theme around the comic strip we used as the invitation card (xkcd:), and Talina found a really wonderful woman on Etsy who designed and made two stamps with input from us. We used the stamps on all the paper crafts for the wedding – invitations, RSVP cards, nametags, table decorations, thank you cards – AND we get to keep them and use them for the rest of our lives together!
Three adjectives that describe the day are: Warm, Communal, Perfect
We selected a small group of friends who had arrived early, sat them down the night before and gave each of them a kazoo. We taught them to kazoo The Wedding March (the whole thing, not just the intro!), and then made them keep it a secret from everyone else until it was time: the video of everyone laughing as the kazoos begin is exactly what we dreamed our wedding would be like. The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W44wuljZ2s
We planned the whole event on our own (in retrospect we think our parents might have liked to have been more involved), but, we have to give credit to all of our amazing family and friends who came days early to the wedding site and pitched in by cleaning, cooking, decorating, and generally making preparation for the event so much fun.
We decided early on that the photographer was one of the areas where we would NOT skimp on cost, so we were prepared so spend whatever it took to get the memories we wanted. Unfortunately, we had a really hard time finding a photographer. Most of the local ones were either not very good (who puts a photo of the bride with her eyes closed in their online portfolio!?), or just okay and very expensive. The few we found who we could get excited about were already booked. When we found Jelani, we fell in love immediately with his style, and we were so glad he was willing to shoot our wedding!
We wrote the ceremony ourselves, with a little help from the internet. Megan’s Godmother, Carol, acted as our officiant, and at our request inserted some personal comments about her own marriage. She worked with us to adjust wording until the whole ceremony felt right. The day before the ceremony, the brides and the officiant went out into the field where the marriage would be held and read through the entire ceremony, which we think really helped make the actual ceremony go a lot smoother. A lot of guests told us later that their favorite part was Carol’s comments – “We are, all of us, confident and sometimes headstrong. Remember that we are also fragile. Hold each other close, and also encourage your separate lives and experiences.”
The bride’s younger sisters were asked to recite a Pablo Neruda poem together – Megan’s sister Ana had just returned from 6 months in Panama, so she recited the poem in Spanish and Talina’s sister, Khylia, recited in English. We left the performance to them to design, and they did an amazing, beautiful job working the two versions of the poem into one. Also, in the spirit of making our wedding a community event, the ceremony was held in the round, with all the brides friends and family surrounding them and each other.
We switched things around and held the reception before the ceremony. Our friends who came early pitched in and made great food (mango salsa, caprese bites, and bowls of cherries), and everybody mingled and met while we had the first round of photos taken. We made nametags for everyone to fill out, with the sentence beginning “I met (one of the brides) when ______”, to get conversations flowing. At the end of the wedding Talina’s mom ran around and collected everyone’s nametags for us to keep, because everyone did such a great job creatively filling them out!
After the ceremony, we served more handmade food, and then wrapped things up with a fantastic band and square dancing caller. Everyone was very skeptical of our square dance wedding, but once they got on the dance floor and gave it a try, we had a crowd of converts. Since no one knows how to square dance, we had no wallflowers: there were smiles and laughter and general bumbling, everyone held hands with everyone else, and our guests have still not stopped telling us how much fun the dance floor was.
Mother Nature was our florist! Since the wedding was outdoors in a beautiful setting, we felt that extravagant floral displays would have just been overwhelmed by the natural beauty. Instead, we sent some friends on a mission with scissors and a paper bag, and they returned with armfuls of lovely roadside flowers. These accompanied living catnip seedlings that the brides had grown on their deck beginning earlier in the year. The brides did not carry bouquets – we didn’t want to compete with Mother Nature!
Megan’s amazing mom, who sewed both of the bridal gowns, including designing Talina’s completely from scratch. Megan insisted on fabric covered buttons on her dress, then ended up having to make them herself, learning in the process why fabric covered buttons are so expensive – what a pain to make! The dresses came out looking fantastic, fit great, and they cost only a few hundred dollars combined (plus a lifetime of indebtedness to mom, of course).
Love this wedding. Both brides are beautiful and the setting is gorgeous. I linked to this on my blog today, fyi. The NJ State Senate is deliberating the gay marriage bill (let’s hope they make it happen!) and I thought these photos were lovely. Thank you.
What a beautiful wedding!