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Monday, May 6, 2013

10 Year Wedding Anniversary - A Look Back.

 (photograph taken by our friend Tyler Geel)

In June of this year, my husband and I are celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary. We're looking forward to a vacation abroad without our kids to celebrate. Thinking back on our wedding, I smile at how different some of the details of our day would be today. At that time in my life, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted for our wedding. I wasn't one of those girls that as a child, had dreams and visions of what her wedding would one day look like. I was down here in Myrtle Beach planning our wedding on my own. I had just graduated from University and moved down to be closer to my soon to be husband. My parents were in Canada and my friends were spread all over the continent of North America. At that time in my life, it never occurred to me to hire a wedding planner!

(photographs taken by our friend Tyler Geel)

We planned our wedding on a small budget. Although my parents never gave me a formal number, I wanted to be respectful to them and tried to keep prices as low as possible. They not only paid for our wedding (which consisted of two hundred and fifty guests) down here in South Carolina, but also put on a sit down reception (of a hundred guests) up in Canada a couple weeks later. So with all this in mind, I tried to keep our wedding day budget around 5,000 dollars.

(photographs taken by my husband's aunt)

This is how we were able to achieve our wedding on such a small budget. I was very thankful for my husband's paternal aunts. Since I wasn't familiar with this area at that time of my life, they gave us great suggestions on a budget friendly photographer, a budget friendly caterer at nine dollars a guest, and helped keep our wedding running smoothly on the big day by instructing the bridal party when to walk, letting us know when it was time to cut the cake, when to take the "professional" pictures, etc.

(photograph taken by my husband's aunt)

My husband and I asked a lot of friends and family to participate in what we knew were their strong areas. For example, a friend of ours played the piano for our ceremony, my husband's classical guitar professor (Tom Yoder) played during the reception, another friend of ours sang a solo during the ceremony and took great photographs (in fact, better photos than the "professional" photographer that we hired), my husband's cousin made our wedding cake for us, and another dear friend of ours made all of our wedding decorations and spent the week of our wedding decorating the church and reception hall. One of the details I wanted for our wedding was inspired by Martha Stewart's Pews In Bloom, and I had our friend recreate the look.

(photographs taken by our friend Tyler Geel)

My husband's father owns a landscaping and plant nursery business, and he created a beautiful setting using plants to transform the reception hall of the church we were married in. He provided all of the lives plants (the palms and ferns) we used for the front of the church building as well as inside of the sanctuary.       


(photograph taken by our friend Tyler Geel)

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