We Got Married
We Got Married!
When we got engaged in April, there were two things we knew for sure when it came to our wedding:
We wanted it to be in June.
We wanted it very, very small.
These two things became the fundamental pillars we planned our wedding around. My original idea? Elope—just us, our witness, and the judge at the courthouse. It’s hard to explain but something about eloping (a very private ceremony just the “two of us”) that felt fitting and romantic. There was a time when the idea of a more traditional wedding was appealing but sometime after I hit my 30s, I got really into the idea of having something small and personal. So shortly after we got engaged, I started planning our elopement.
An ELOPEMENT Grows into a Wedding
Our “elopement” grew into a micro-wedding pretty fast, and I’m not mad about it! It started with a walk. Simon proposed at the Portland International Rose Garden (you can read the full story of our proposal here) and afterward, we walked around the gardens. On the south side is the Shakespeare Garden, a beautiful little space tucked away from the rest of the gardens. We both fell in love with how pretty the garden is and the following day, Simon suggested having the wedding there. With a little luck (or more likely since so many people have put off weddings during the pandemic) the Shakespeare Garden happened to be available on the day we wanted—it felt like fate and we booked it!
Now that we had a venue and a date (not to mention family who wanted to be a part of our celebration), we’d officially grown out of elopement territory, and I needed a dress! I’m really happy I decided to go dress shopping (something I wouldn’t have done if we’d just gotten married at the courthouse). It was one of the only “traditional” things I did, and I had a lot more fun than I expect. I went into it with a very clear idea of what I thought I wanted (nothing ball gown-y) and then immediately tried on enormous dresses that made me feel like a beautiful cupcake. I learned a couple of surprising things: 1) I prefer a sleeve on my wedding dress and 2) while I love how they look, beaded gowns just don’t feel right on me. I love the dress I ended up picking: Lace, cape sleeves, and just the right amount of train for a garden wedding.
Here were the two dresses I narrowed it down to:
The Big Day
Since we had such a short engagement (more on that below), everything flew by incredibly fast. Before I knew it, it was our wedding day. All my free time leading up to the wedding was fully consumed with wedding prep. However, since we were having a miro-wedding instead of a large wedding, it wasn’t super stressful planning. I’ll go into the full detail of our wedding planning in a follow-up post, but for now, I’ll just stick to the highlights.
We decided to continue the tradition of not letting the groom see the bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony. So the morning of, Simon left to get ready at a friend’s house (and watch the soccer game), and I got ready at our apartment with my family. I did my own makeup and my mom did my hair. The weather couldn’t have been more beautiful. At the gardens, my two young nieces got to walk down the aisle as flower girls before my dad brought me in. We had no music, no bridesmaid, no groomsmen. We had very minimal decorations as the Shakespeare Garden is very pretty all on its own and already had an archway for us to stand under. Afterward, we had people back at our place for pizza, cake, and champagne. It wasn’t super traditional, but it was still just as beautiful as I’d pictured it being.
Why We Kept things Small
The big question I always get though, is why such a short engagement? Why not wait until June 2022?
The answer is slightly selfish. We wanted a super small wedding with just a few representatives from each side of our family (biological or self-made). My husband’s family lives in France so having a bigger wedding with more people would mean asking one or both of our families to travel halfway across the world to come. It was important to us that our wedding didn’t put that level of demand on either of our families. There is also the pandemic to factor in. Our wedding was timed so everyone in attendance was able to be vaccinated, Covid rates were declining, and our small gathering could be outside. But when we got engaged, things were still murky enough that we had no idea how big a gather would be “safe.” In the name of safety, we could have the tiny wedding of our dreams without offending anyone we didn’t invite. If we waited another year, there would have been a lot more pressure to invite more people.
When all was send and done, I loved our wedding. It felt very us as a wedding should, in my humble opinion. It wasn’t a secret elopement at the courthouse or a fancy elopement out on the beach (both scenarios I’d been imagining for us). But for us, it turned out to be perfect.
Stay tuned for a post all about how I planned our micro-wedding, lessons learned, what went wrong, and what went great, as well as my DIY guide for our reception. Have any wedding questions? Leave them below!