The Long-Awaited Post: OUR WEDDING!

I have had a very hard time sitting down to write a post on our wedding day. Yes, life has been busy and crazy and unsettled, but also because it just seems such a gargantuan task, trying to put into words such an experience. So, I'm afraid I can't really try.

All I can say is, on the 1st of June 2013, I put on my mother's dress which I had altered to my taste, took the arms of my Grandpa and my Dad, and followed my 4 darling flowergirls, 2 adorable ring-bearers, 4 beautiful bridesmaids, and 4 handsome groomsmen down a baby's breath lined aisle in my parents' lush and green backyard. At the end of the aisle, in front of a hundred of our dearest friends and relatives shivering in the chilly, grey afternoon, stood the handsome man who won my heart. He extended his arm and I took it.

And it was the most precious, beautiful day to start our life together with.

Photo courtesy of the incredible Megan Robinson Photography

We were married in my parents' beautiful backyard, on Mom's little wooden bridge. It was STUNNING!
Photo courtesy of Paul Cannon Photography.

My darling Grandpa and my dad walked me down the aisle together :)
(My cousin Veronica and her husband Daniel were snapping some great photos like this one!)

Seeing him standing there at the end of the aisle filled me with so much peace after such an emotional morning!
(Photo taken by cousins Veronica & Daniel)

Charles and I had a time of communion in our ceremony just the two of us during a beautiful duet performed by my dear friends who came over from England. They sang "The Only Promise that Remains" by Reba McEntire (Hear the original version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKf-Vmba3zk). I love this photo. Charles was praying over us...
Photo taken by Veronica & Daniel

Our Communion table. The bible belonged to my great-grandfather Max Karo, the father of my dear Grandma who passed away last summer... She was so very missed at my wedding...
Photo courtesy of Paul Cannon Photography.

Our first kiss as husband and wife!!!
(Veronica, this is one of my favourite photos of the whole day :))

We JUST said "I Do"!
(Photo taken by my lovely Aunt Mary :))

My gorgeous bouquet. Our amazing florist was a lovely lady named Kelly Sandquist of Kelly's Cottage Gardens
Photo courtesy of Paul Cannon Photography

Details of our day. Photos courtesy of Megan Robinson Photography.

Photo courtesy of Megan Robinson Photography

Details of our reception tables. Each table held a different framed quote from love letters Charles had written to me over the years! And vintage dessert plates.
Photo taken by my Bridesmaid Emily

At our wedding feast :)
Photo taken by my bridesmaid Emily

My beautiful bridesmaids: my cousins Emily and Jackee, my dear friend Amanda who came all the way over from England, and my favourite big sister Hannah :)
Photo taken by my Aunt Mary

Charles and his groomsmen: my brother Jonah, his "brothers" from England Jon, Tim, and Paul
Photo courtesy of Paul Cannon Photography

Hehe!
Photo courtesy of Paul Cannon Photography

We had our "first dances" on the patio before starting the traditional British Ceilidh dance on the lawn. Charles and I danced to "Time in a Bottle" by Jim Croce (hear it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO1rMeYnOmM), then he and his Mum danced, and my Dad and I danced, and then we had a celebratory dance with the nieces and nephews who gained a new uncle that day ("Move it, Move it" because, after its Madagascar fame, it's become a big favourite amongst these little ones :)) Tucker was too shy to join us for this dance :(

Getting ready with my bridesmaids
Photo taken by my bridesmaid Emily

I am IN LOVE with my dress-- my mother's wedding dress redone for me! So very perfect! I didn't want to take it off in the end :)
Photo taken by my Aunt Mary

My handsome groom. Love him!
Photo courtesy of Paul Cannon Photography

It's a mix of available photos as we wait for our main pictures, but hopefully it gives you a little glimpse into our momentous day. Thankfully, so many friends took photos for us, and we were blessed with having a number of pro photogs there! I cannot wait to see them all and would love to share them with anyone who would like to see. I wish everyone could have been a part of this first day of the rest of our lives!

Many of my incredible friends back in the UK got together and prepared a very special video which was shown at our reception, to our surprise. I have the coolest friends ever :) Check it out here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dNPGGxHz9So

It was a perfectly beautiful beginning. It went far too quickly and I do wish we could go back and do it again now so I could savor each and every moment all over again. 

There are not enough words to describe the monumental feeling of pledging my life in faithful love to this man, my husband. All I can say is... thank You, Jesus. For him, and for what You have planned for us.

...I loved our wedding celebration :) 

The Wedding Dress by Rachel Hauck

One dress with a story spanning a century. Four brides with four unique lives in four different generations. 

Those two lines probably have you thinking you know exactly what this book is about. Aw, it’s been done before, you say. Maybe so, but never like this. 

Charlotte is a modern woman running a successful wedding dress boutique in the American south and suffering from twinges of panic without understanding why at the thought of marrying her wonderful, family-man, architect, studmuffin  of a fiancé. Orphaned as a young child, she can hardly remember a time she wasn’t lonely, until Tim showed up and won her heart in a whirlwind romance. They were each everything the other had always wanted. So why, then, the feeling that it was all just going too fast?

Emily was desperately in love with Daniel when he left to play ball semi-professionally in 1912. By the time he came back to claim her heart only 5 months later, her father had given his blessing to an offer of marriage from the son of one of the weathiest families in Birmingham…

 Mary Grace fell in love with her childhood chum and in the midst of the Great Depression, he asked her to be his wife and to go away with him to serve the Lord by hosting tent meetings all across the country...

Hillary married her Marine fiancé on a whim just before he shipped out to Vietnam, and only a few months later she received back his dog tags, threw them in a trunk with the dress she wore the day she married him, and welded the trunk shut...

 

One day Charlotte found herself wandering through a random auction when something made her bid on a worn out old trunk, welded shut. The auctioneer wore vibrant purple and when he looked at her, it felt as if his eyes bore into her soul.

Little did she know that the contents of that trunk would connect her life forever to these other three women, and to one of them in ways she could never have imagined…

My cousin calls me a book snob. I don’t read many novels these days unless they are old enough to be considered “classic.” But if I do, they generally have to be Christian ones, because I often find contemporary secular novels a bit too graphic and crude (There are always exceptions, though :)). But, being a supposed “book snob”, I am very sensitive to contrived spirituality or overly-done religiosity in these books, leaving a story flat or shallow (Walking with Christ is REAL LIFE, people, and Christians are human too). Thus, I generally reach for my classics when needing a novel break. That said, it’ll mean something when I tell you that I have literally been purposely dragging out my reading of Rachel Hauck’s The Wedding Dress, luxuriating in its lines, in its love stories, in its twists and turns; savouring the feeling of being lost in the plot of a contemporary Christian novel without a hint of that tell-tale cringe. 

I still wish I hadn’t quite reached the end…

*I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255