FVC Day 4: Wedding!!

Another day and another linkup!  Today's topic is wedding!!!  I love hearing/talking about wedding stuff.  I know I already got married, but planning it and finding ideas is just so much fun.

 

Continuing on...we had an awesome wedding.  You can see on our wedding page the pictures, but I'll just talk a little bit about the actual wedding ceremony/reception.

We got married on July 3rd, 2011 in Yakima, WA.  Yakima isn't the greatest of towns, but my husband grew up there and we got married in a beautiful orthodox church!  We took pictures at the local arboretum a few hours before the ceremony.

From left to right: My besties Emi and Christin, good friend Allison, sister Emily and SIL Sarah.  

From left to right: Ben, Brian, Birkin, David and my brother Jacob.

In the gazebo at the arboretum.

We were running a little behind with the pictures so we had to stop early (...aww..).  We had a beautiful Christian Orthodox wedding with an awesome choir singing.

The two of us in front of the church

We had our first kiss and went in to sign the papers!! WOOHOO!  :)  We signed away, took a few more pictures, and then went out to the backyard of the church for our reception.

I loved our reception.  My mom and I (with the help of a lot of amazing family & friends) made the food all on our own.  My mom is completely awesome.  It was a lot of work, but totally worth it in the end (we saved some big $$).

Some of my favorite and unique things from the wedding were instead of a guestbook we had a guest scrapbook.  I cut up a bunch of scrapbooking paper and put out markers, pens, and paper on all the tables.  We asked the guests to write/draw/share anything they wanted to with us.  They were so much fun to read!!  We had drawings from some of our younger cousins, some other hilarious drawings/doodles from good friends and a lot of great stories and best wishes.  I compiled them all into a little booklet and I really enjoy reading them from time to time.

One of my younger cousins filling out a guestbook page :)

I found this great idea online for a line of photos for guests to look at.  It was so much fun and we got a lot of good compliments about it!  We just tied some string to a couple trees and attached a bunch of photos of us to the string!

We had the band Afro Panda (awesome name, right?!) play at our wedding (we're friends with them!).  I even let my husband join in on his saxophone for one song.

We danced the night away and even drove off during sunset.  How awesomely romantic?!  

That's just a taste of our wedding.  What kinds of wedding things do you have to share?