Day 2-Our Wedding

Day 2 of my '30 Days of Blogging' challenge. 

Topic?

Our Wedding

We were engaged for 2 years before we got married and only set a date about 8 months before the actual day! We both agreed that we would do the wedding on a budget as we didn't see the need to spend a fortune. We paid for almost everything ourselves. My parents paid for the caterers and my grandma paid for the photographer as her wedding present to us. The rest was up to us!!

We got married on the 14th April 2007. We actually picked a date in March (the date DH proposed) but my cousin jumped in and took our wedding date!!!! Unfortunately we couldn't do much as we were holding our reception at her parents house (my aunt and uncle) so just had to figure out a new day to be married on. 


Planning our wedding was slightly stressful. DH didn't really want to get too involved so it was up to me. I had a lot of help from my wonderful mum though. I was in my final year of uni at the time and doing my first field placement. I also worked a part time job so was leading a very busy life. Mum did lots of the groundwork for me-making phone calls and booking things in. 


The biggest issue I had was finding a dress. I must of tried on at least 100 dresses and visited god knows how many shops. I had this vision of a dress in my head, but unfortunately nothing I tried on seemed to match it. I found my dress about 2 months before our big day..yes I know-cut it a bit fine! 


We got married in a local park filled with beautiful trees that are several hundred years old. They form an archway through the park and it makes for a beautiful spot for a wedding. 

We had a lot of fun having photos afterwards in the park. Our photographer told us that it was the best wedding he had been to in a long while and that he had so much fun with us. He was not into staging photos so much which I loved. So we got lots of natural looking shots as well as some fun ones like this one!

I loved that the boys didn't wear suits or shoes! So many people asked me how I felt about the boys wearing thongs and my response was 'I wish I could have worn them too!'. I wanted DH and his mates to be comfortable and when I asked DH what he would like to wear, this is what he came up with.


I loved our wedding music and even listening to the songs now makes me tear up slightly. I walked up the aisle to 'All I Want Is You' by U2, during the certificate signing we played 'With Or Without You' by U2 and we walked back down the aisle together to 'Brown Eyed Girl' by Van Morrison. I spent WAY too much time trying to choose music and didn't end up making my final decision until the day before the wedding!

The reception was at my aunt and uncles house. They have a beautiful place with a huge outdoor entertainment area which looks down over the pool and balinese hut in their back garden. My uncle even put in a gorgeous water feature for the occassion. There were paper lanterns and fairy lights strung up everywhere and fresh oriental lilys (which were also my wedding bouquet flower) in vases throughout the house. It was intimate but casual. We had a catering place in to serve finger food (none of which I got to eat) and guests helped themselves to drinks. I made a bunch of CDs with all our favourite music which played throughout the evening. 


I think the cake was my favourite part of the wedding!! It was from a gorgeous coffee table recipe book my parents bought when I was young called 'Death By Chocolate'. Ever since I can remember I had always said that I would have the 'Chocolate Wedlock' in this book as my wedding cake...and after much effort to find someone who would make this amazing cake for us...'Chocolate Wedlock' was to be mine!! Beneath the white chocolate ganache was a chocolate speckled cake with a chocolate raspberry mousse centre. It was delicious!!

Our wedding was a wonderful day and we had a wonderful time celebrating with all our guests. I will admit there were quite a number of tears on my part. Mostly over silly things, but towards the end of the evening over an incident involving my SIL. I won't go into details as it would involve trying to tell the whole backstory behind mine and SIL's relationship. The incident ended with SIL being asked to leave by my aunt and then being escorted off the property. Not a nice thing to happen on your wedding day, but to be perfectly honest I knew she would pull something and had begged DH that to not invite her. 


So if I had to do it over again I would enforce the lack of invite to SIL!! 


DH and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary earlier in the year and I have no idea where time has gone...but everyday I am thankful that we are still very much in love and that I have a wonderful husband who I will grow old with.