How to Have a Great Wedding

 

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In my last post I mentioned wedding decisions which turned out not to matter very much. I also mentioned a few decisions which were very important to me. Today I want to talk about some of the things that I was really happy with. These were some details that we did make the effort to realise and they were worth it. 

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One decision I spoke about in this post was the decision to cut down the cost of the overall wedding in order to fly out three of my close friends from the Czech Republic. This was one of my number one best decisions. We made it early on in the planning process. It took a lot of time, money and effort to make it happen. But boy, was it worth it to have those women by my side for the week of the wedding. Special thanks to my parents who planned the girl’s stay in the States. More thanks to our States side friends who hosted the girls and made them feel welcome. 

Another decision I held fast to was my manicure with Lisa, my Matron of Honour. We had to re-plan that outing several times in order to coordinate her arrival in the States from the Czech republic. But that was worth it as well, because I got a few hours of time to relax with her. I know I wouldn’t have got that if we hadn’t fought for it. I still have the nail polish on my feet! 

Professional make-up and hair. This was something that I decided alone. Even though my mother hadn’t done her own and looked amazing, I felt strongly that I wanted to have mine done by a professional. I wanted to know that I looked about as good as humanly possible. I also knew that if I were to do it myself I would be nervous about it all evening. I would be tweaking it and worrying about its getting messed up. But if professionals did it I would be able to purely focus on my groom and my guests. I felt gorgeous all night. And even when I started feeling exhausted, sweaty and cranky toward the end I knew I still looked fabulous. 

Sheldon’s wardrobe. This cost both of us some sweat and tears. Sheldon is very uncomfortable in the realm of clothing and shopping. Unfortunately, the issue of his wardrobe was put off until the last couple weeks. But I am very glad we decided to spend the time and money that we did in making him look his best on the day of the wedding. The fact that he looked great meant that I didn’t have to worry about the fit of his clothes and could just enjoy him. 

We kept the ceremony brief. We cut out a few things like the lighting of unity candles. We wanted to keep it down to the basics of vows, scripture reading, a song and a brief sermon. Given that the day was terribly hot and we were outdoors this was wise. Sheldon’s father, who is a pastor, officiated and did a wonderful job. We felt very confident in his choices as the minister. 

Postcards as favours. Wedding favours were another somewhat last-minute affair. OK. Who am I kidding. A lot of this wedding erred on the side of last minute. But anyway we decided to just print up a bunch of blank postcards featuring snippets of our artwork as the favours. People could choose from a selection of them and send them off to others or keep them. 

We had a set time to leave. Sheldon and I wanted to be with our guests a lot, because we knew this would be a precious time with people we rarely see. However we also knew that we would only have so much energy to give. So we had the hard and fast deadline of leaving at 10PM. We had our guests grab some of the lanterns we had strewn about the pavilion and escort us to a nearby bridge. We walked through a tunnel of our guests and off to our honeymoon!

Our honeymoon was extremely low-key. We had one night in a fancy hotel and then we went back to our apartment, packed up our little truck and drove five hours to a cabin in central Wisconsin. The cabin was not near any major sights. It was just in a pretty spot. This meant that there was no pressure to see sights or travel around. We just relaxed. 

We came back a couple days early. Both of us took a week off for the honeymoon. But we came back a few days before the week was out. We kept our phones off and didn’t see anyone, just like the honeymoon. That gave us some time to settle in to our apartment. We needed that time for Sheldon to move in and for us to feel like we were established as a couple in our home. discerning 

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