I always love to come to my parents’ house in the summer and look through the stack of wedding announcements that sit in the basket by the desk. Envelopes in cream, white, and ivory, laced with tissue- paper squares, and ribbon embellishments. Sprinkled in are photos of smiling couples—bearing resemblance to those kids I used to babysit or teach in Young Women—now sporting diamond rings and cuddling up next to guys I don’t know.
Weddings and receptions come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I’ve been to LDS weddings, and weddings of people of other faiths. I love the ceremonies and also the celebrations. I’ve been to churches, temples, plantations, bed & breakfasts, cultural halls, reception centers, houses, clubhouses and big white tents. I’ve seen some very interesting color schemes—which were probably regretted a few years later—my share of atrocious dresses, and flowers gone awry. I have also admired flower arrangements two stories tall, enjoyed the glamor of getting dressed up for black tie, and a taken a turn on a few ballroom dance floors. I’ve consumed much wedding food—ranging from delicious to unusual (politely describing it). I’ve eaten plenty of slices of cake in all its varieties and downed more than my share of punch (both of which I unabashedly express ardent love for). Man might not be able to live on bread alone, but I think this woman could get by on punch and cake pretty nicely.
I had very definite ideas for my own wedding all the way down to typestyle for the invitations. I didn’t want extravagant, just simple and beautiful. I designed my dress and helped make the veil, designed the bridesmaids’ dresses, made the five-layer wedding cake, made every bouquet and corsage, hand addressed every invitation, made the favors and cut out typewriter style “g’s” in my wedding colors to be stuck on the front of the out-of-town guest bags for the hotel, gave my photographer very specific instructions that I wanted no cheesy shots, not a bunch of kissing, or soft-focus pictures. I wanted everything just so. Mostly these opinions were formed in reaction to perusing the wedding albums of many people who had gone before me, which taught me all the things I didn’t want to do.
It was a whirlwind, but delightfully marked at every turn with memories. Like assembling and transporting my over three-foot-tall cake in our dear friends’ kitchen, or wiring tons of flowers with my best friend as wing man with the floral tape in my aunt’s kitchen, or finding my then fiancé asleep on the hotel lobby couch at 1 am the night before our wedding, where he was diligently attempting to wait up for me, as I came racing in after a full day of preparations and the two-hour drive from my parents’ house to our hotel by the Washington, D.C. Temple. I am still slightly miffed that I didn’t throw the daisies on the floor that the caterer put around my cake without asking me and I wished I had worn my hair down part of the day, but eleven years later I look back with few regrets and still think it was a pretty great day and the beginning of something amazing.
So tell me about your wedding. Did you love it or hate it? Do you look back with regrets? Do you laugh or simply smile fondly? Did you run the show or turn over the reigns? Did you have any funny mishaps? What was the most memorable one you’ve attended?
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