we did it!

so maybe blogging isn’t really my thing?  I’m obviously having a bit of a hard time getting started here, but I chose an arguably busy time to begin.

The wedding was WONDERFUL, and Tony and I spent the whole reception marveling to each other, “omg, this is the BEST wedding I’ve ever been to!”  (ok, his statements were probably a bit more intelligently phrased, but the sentiment was there.)

Tony's sister Stephanie made this ridiculously awesome cake topper for us!

All of the little details came together perfectly, our guests were so much fun, the photographer was AMAZING and such a joy to work with .  The DJ did a spectacular job of keeping the party going, the cake was SO GOOD, and everything fit together in such a way that the things that didn’t quite go as planned (and there were plenty of those things) just made the experience more personal and special and memorable (instead of just more awkward).

Tony's brother winging his best man speech (this would be one of the things that "didn't quite go as planned").  I think my reaction really says it all.

Tony’s sisters came down on Wednesday morning to help with the final preparations, and they were absolutely invaluable.  It was really liberating to delegate tasks, and they did an amazing job with everything they touched.

 We ordered our flowers from 2G Roses, and Tony's sister Patricia was a rockstar at arranging them for us.

Two days before the wedding I still hadn’t thought of what I wanted to do for our guest book, since traditional guest books seem so pointless – when would we ever, ever look at it again?  I was afraid it would end up being one of those things that we didn’t want but couldn’t throw away, and while our new place is big, I’ll never have room in my life for stuff like that.

So we came up with this (pardon the photo quality - this one's from an iPhone and not a photographer):

The idea isn’t original by any means (I think I saw it on the Knot or iDIY at some point) , but we absolutely love it. Tony’s youngest sister’s boyfriend is an amazing artist, and he drew the tree after the rehearsal dinner (we didn’t even see it until we were leaving the ceremony to go take pictures!).  I was nervous about asking all of our guests to get their fingers dirty and about ink stains on white table cloths and about throwing together something so elaborate the day before the wedding, but I’m sooooo glad we decided to do it.  On the whole, our guests seemed to love it, and we’ve already got it framed at home and hanging in our kitchen to look at and love every day.

We’re anxiously awaiting the rest of the pictures from the photographer, and I’ll post some more when we get them.  He did put together this specacular stop-motion video of the whole night, though.

Untitled from andrew wilkinson on Vimeo.