However, I must say my favorite to this day is still MY own wedding.
I did not have a coordinator, I did not have little girl dreams that played out in real life, I did not have it all planned out to a T like you think I should. Instead my wedding was a BEAUTIFUL mess.
A little bit of a timeline - Jason and I were both in school at CSU and wrapping up yet another semester of classes and finals. We both got all of our finals moved around, so we were able to wrap those up Thursday evening, and fly out to Hawaii bright and early Friday morning. Yes, you did read that right... we tied the knot in Hawaii:) Destination wedding? Kind of but not really. For years I lived in Hawaii from December to May because my parents are snow birds, so it wasn't like we packed up, flew to a resort that had everything planned, and got married. We got to my parents place Friday afternoon and spent the weekend getting ready and making runs to the airport for more family. We had never met the pastor before the wedding day, but he turned out to be absolutely perfect for what we were wanting. Awesome how God orchestrates his plans like that. We rented a tent, tables, chairs, tableware, etc from a place in town and pretty much just winged it all.
My wedding day pretty much went down like this - got my hair done, picked up flowers which were an hour late being ready, grabbed my dress from the dry cleaners on the way home, and rushed home to get ready. THEN once I was already in my dress I put centerpieces on the tables, did my sister and best friend's hair (bridesmaids), and we all loaded up into cars. Now, I should put a little side note here: we got married in a private beach. While I can see everybody's jaw dropping at "how awesome" that must have been.... it took some serious work. The men all went down to the beach and cleaned rocks up, set up chairs and an arch, and got the sound all set up (a CD player run on electricity from my Aunt's car). Because Hawaii is a lava flow, the trip to the beach involved bouncing around in 4wheel drive cars for about 20 minutes for all of the guests. They were troopers, let me tell you.
The ceremony was perfection. It was as beautiful as they come in my mind.. We had about 35 people there and we tied the knot around 5:30 pm on May 14th with waves crashing in the background. Scratch that - it was probably about 30 minutes later because that is just how it goes when you don't have a coordinator and have a long bumpy drive to the beach.
Afterwards we took pictures and everybody loaded back into the cars and we all headed up to my parent's house for the reception. The reception was BEAUTIFUL too! My awesome family cooked all the food, and we enjoyed a traditional hawaiian dinner followed by lilikoi cake, and Hurricanes. Dancing followed on the porch with the music coming from an ipod playlist I threw together during cocktail hour. Finally, we hugged our favorite people and headed off to our honeymoon.
We got married in Hawaii... on the beach... in the perfect dress and a linen shirt, khaki pants, and flip flops. We celebrated with our two families, ate amazing food, got awesome pictures, and loved every second of it. AND ultimately we married the person that God had put on this earth for us. This was and is by far my favorite "Happily Ever After." There may be a few things I would have changed, but in the end I tell my brides - your guests will remember the food, you will remember the pictures and who you married... so think about what REALLY matters.
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