Yes, that is Yoda on the blackboard behind us. No, he didn’t officiate our wedding.
LOVE FEST!!! That little word with so much force was the whirlwind that Alex and I were in when we made it to The Audacity & Cafe. On the (tiny) street of historical downtown, we got to our rehearsal dinner of Dagwood-style sandwiches and ice cream sundaes.Yum!
Roughly an hour before this photo before our crazily decorated chalk board (the board is the centerpiece of the cafe’s wall), we had rushed home to change after decorating the reception hall. We had loads of help from all of our wedding party, their significant others and family so really it wasn’t bad. It’s just that we hadn’t slept much the night before at our bachelorette party down the Klamath River, which had come directly after the English Tea wedding shower my mom and maid of honor threw for us.
Behold the yummy, home-made goodness.
If you’re losing track of which event we were at on Friday night: so were we! Nonetheless, it was amazing to have the extra time with our bridal party of 9, some special friends and a lot of my family who had converged on my hometown, oh, around 6pm that day. Mingling, introducing Alex for the first time (so much of our relationship has been in remote corners from my family–them not being from Santa Cruz, LA, or London!), and grabbing food when we could. In some ways, eating at the rehearsal dinner was harder than the wedding! (I know, it’s usually the opposite…) Luckily, Alex’s maid of honor was gracious enough to snag us glasses of wine. And when the ice cream sundae buffet came out, the shop owner presented Alex and I with ours first! As my favorite ice cream sundae is with mint chocolate chip ice cream, we only served mint chocolate chip!
Once everyone had had their fill of sandwiches and ice cream, we got up to make a little speech and present our family members and bridal party with their sassy buttons and love-filled wedding gifts.
Demonstrating to my dad where his pins should go.
Alex’s mum giggling about which part of the London map pins she got (‘National Maritime Museum’).
Each bridesmaid got a brightly wrapped book, 2 buttons & a postcard from the London Transport Museum.
It was really lovely to be able to tell the group (about 35 people of family & friends) about how special each of these ladies is to us, how we met, what our stories are, and why we wanted them standing up there beside us. Plus, there was a good deal of teasing too, which is always good.
Then, my mom got up and lovingly made us blush by doing a little speech about both of us: how we’d had a beautiful wedding in Fowey, both finished post-grad degrees this year (me an MA, Alex a PG-Dip), and gotten our first real jobs.
Aw, Mom.
We mingled some more and then, then we carried out what might have been the single best decision we made in all our wedding planning: we went back to our little hotel room, alone and all our own. In England, we’d spent the night before apart and man, the following morning had a few stressful moments without the other. I wouldn’t take away the ‘first look’ moments from before, but being able to close the door to our little, run-of-the-mill hotel room, exchange presents, and catch a few minutes to ourselves was a perfect piece of bliss before the Big Day #2…
All of this is SO LOVELY
Too sweet!!
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