Wedding Week - The Morning Of and the Actual Getting Married Part

The week before the wedding was crazy. Seeing Zach for the first time in months, getting used to being in the same physical space again. Trying to spend enough time with all the wonderful relatives and friends who had flown in. Crazy awesome (by Mormon standards anyways) bachelorette party. All the last little bits of planning.

And then it was finally that day. The big day that had been all I could think about for months. After all that stress, I woke up perfectly, serenely happy. Since I had to run over and get hair done, I was up far earlier than everyone else. It was a quiet morning, me eating a bowl of cereal, putting on my makeup, all alone. I can see the appeal to a big suite of happy women, all getting ready and sharing the happiness and excitement of that day. But for introverted me, it was really special to start the day with just me and my joy.

Even when everyone got up and started getting ready, even after we realized that we hadn't planned how I was getting to the ceremony site (the Portland Oregon temple) and got a late start, I was still perfectly calm and happy. It was finally happening and nothing else seemingly mattered.

Unfortunately my zen like calm attitude to things had sort of had the opposite on my groom. On the way over, I got a panicked phone call from Zach, wondering where I was. Given that I'm almost always early and he's usually the one running late, I think not having me be there before him on our Wedding Day freaked the guy out a little bit. I'm not sure how much of his big smile when I pulled up was due to happiness over getting married, or happiness that he wasn't being stood up.

Once I showed up we were quickly whisked around to fill out various forms and otherwise get ready. Everyone was very sweet, especially the one poor woman trying to figure out how to tell me that I couldn't wear my dress to be sealed in. (In the LDS Temple, dresses have to be white, mine was ivory. Which I knew, and had no intention of even trying to wear mine. Besides, you have to put so much stuff on top of the dress for the ceremony, that what dress is underneath barely shows.) Each of us quickly changed into Temple white and went up to sit in perfect silence. Neither of us knew what to say, all we could do was hold hands, grin  like loons and sink into our last few single moments before being called into the sealing room for the ceremony.

The Temple. Grey skies might not be as pretty, but they kept things cool for August and didn't rain, so I'm more than ok with them.

I know that the actual sealing ceremony is a big deal for many Mormon brides. For most of my life getting married in the Temple had been raised up as the ultimate pinnacle, to the point where everything else about the day is supposed to be just fluff. It didn't feel that way to me. The actual wedding part of the day, the thing where we said our promises and were married was probably the least emotional, meaningful part of the day for me. It felt like just something we had to go through. I suppose it was nice enough, but it had nothing to do with either of us. The very nice elderly gentleman who we met about 5 minutes before hand said some generic things about the importance of marriage, and mostly the importance of God and Church to marriage, and how important it was to do various churchy things. And, well, I wasn't there to marry the church, I was there to marry Zach. I felt similarly disconnected from the generic one size fits all vows. They did what they needed to do, and saying I do did bring a small surge of emotion, but all in all it felt odd to be doing a ceremony that had so little to do with either of us.

I wouldn't say that I regretted it. It was nice to have one element of our wedding that took almost no planning. All we had to do was call to reserve, get recommends, and show up. Easy peasy. I know that it meant a lot to our families. Besides, what else could we have done differently? A ring ceremony or something else like that would have been a decent amount of work, and probably viewed as a silly waste of time by our guests. I like the idea of stealing away with Zach for a few minutes and saying our own vows, just the two of us, but I think that would have felt forced. Still, for such a big moment in our personal lives, I wish we had somehow made it more personal.

Regardless, the ceremony happened, and we were married. Yay! Of course the sealer finished things up by pronouncing us as the wrong name, Mr and Mrs. His Last Name, as opposed to Mr. and Mrs. My Last Name HYPHEN His Last Name, as we had so carefully decided, as meant so much to us and as the paperwork clearly said. Fortunately one of my favorite aunts corrected him so we didn't have to. He literally bit his lip and raised his eyebrows after being corrected. Clearly, he did not approve. Whatever. The little old temple ladies thought our name choice was awesome. More importantly, so did we. And my aunt and I exchanged a subtle victory high five, which cracked me up and almost makes the name snafu worth it.

 

 

Gratuitous happy photos to break things up.

One more quick change into our "real' wedding clothes and Zach and I met up in the lobby, ready to make our grand exit out of the Temple doors. There is a really fun, celebrityesque feeling of joy and excitement to simply stepping out of a door and being greeted with cheers from gathered family and friends. Unfortunately we forgot to mention to our photographer before hand that capturing that was kind of important to us, so I have no pictures. Oh well.

There were a few shots like that, things I just took for granted in others wedding albums that aren't in ours because I never said anything, assuming they were just standard. Like I said, oh well.

After the grand exit and numerous hugs, we started distributing flowers. The one flower request I made was no roses of any kind. I don't like them, I think they're way to big and cliche. Of course all the boutonnieres were traditional roses. But that's the nice thing about the actual wedding day. By that point it is far to late to change anything, so it's best to just laugh and move on. Looking back I probably should have tried harder to fix Zach's tie, which had a very obvious ugly black clip that shows in all the photos. Still, black tie clip and all, I thought he looked quite dashing. Even if it is odd to look back and see him without his beard. I really like the beard.

Trying not to poke anyone. Blood on a Wedding day in general, and on a Wedding dress in particular can't be a good omen.

I also had mixed feelings about the bouquets. I love irises more than any other flower, and wanted them to feature prominently in the bouquets. I assumed that asking for irises in the bouquets would mean other flowers would be there too. I kind of liked the simple clean feeling of the basic bouquets with just a few half opened stems, but at the same point I wouldn't have said no to a fuller bunch of flowers. My gorgeous bridesmaids, however, I had no mixed feelings about whatsoever.

Once all flowers were attached to the right people the whole giant group of people went over to the reflecting pool to get the group shots out of the way. It meant so much to me to have so many family members there, but I felt kind of bad that only two people from Zach's family were able to come in. Of Zach's family only his parents and his brother are LDS. You have to be LDS and endowed to attend weddings in the Temple. Since only his parents were endowed, only they could come in for the actual ceremony. On the other hand I had my parents and step parents, all but one of my Dad's six siblings, plus their spouses, plus two of my Mom's siblings, plus some cousins, plus my Grandma. (None of my siblings could come in either, I did miss having them there.) He says it didn't bother him, that of his extended family he's only really close with his Grandparents.

Still, for such an important event, it did feel a little wrong to not have everyone who matters to us there. One more mixed feeling about the Temple I suppose. I get the importance of starting married life with such an important religious ceremony, but with the family exclusion and the impersonal sealing I kind of wish that we could do things like they do in Europe (due to legal restrictions) and have one personal, civil wedding with all those we care about, and than a separate, quieter Temple sealing soon after. Basically, though we were married in the Temple, without everyone there and the ability to make the promises in our hearts it felt like an entirely different religious ceremony than a wedding. We are just as married and as happy as we would have been otherwise, but there is something to be said for how things start mattering, even if just for the sake of symbolism and nostalgia.

My Family is huge

After the big group shots, most people trickled away to either get ready for the reception or rest for a few hours, while Zach and I went off for some quality time with the photographer. And that's where I'll pick up tomorrow. Prepare for a photo extravaganza.

Walking off chatting with my favorite brother. One of the only pictures of the two of us from the wedding. Good thing it's such a sweet one.