Wedding Week: Dancing

This is the final post of wedding week. I've really enjoyed using these photos to give you all a peek at our wedding day.

I think it really hit Ryan and I after our Friendsgiving party last November how much fun our wedding was going to be. We had all our friends together that day: getting to know each other better, eating, drinking, and dancing. Afterward, Ryan said he was really excited about dancing with everyone at our wedding.

Ryan created some incredible playlists for our wedding and asked his cousin to DJ, so we had great music all night long. Our friends and family love to dance, and we all had a blast that night. I was really surprised and impressed by all the great dancing photos our photographers were able to capture. Here are some of my favorites.

Photos by Braun Photography

Wedding Week: Food & Drink

It was important to us to have delicious food at our wedding, and our caterer, Eat Well, did a great job. We had wintery bride-and-groom cocktails, a pasta bar, a grill station, and a pretty dessert table. We also had champagne, of course, and one of my favorite moments of the night was when everyone gave their toasts.

Photos by Braun Photography

Wedding Week: Details & Decor

I had a lot of fun coming up with decor ideas and making things to decorate our space. I organized several craft days with friends and family in the time leading up to the wedding. Even though the decor was a lot of work, I think it really helped add a personal element to our wedding that was well worth the effort.

Thanks to everyone who helped create and set up the decor!

Photos by Braun Photography

Wedding Week: The Ceremony

Ryan and I designed our own secular ceremony to suit our needs and I wrote the script for it. It involved traditional vows as well as personal ones, a bitter-sweet wine ceremony lead by Ryan's dad with music by our friend Megan, and poems ready by Ryan's sister and my sister-in-law.

We put a lot of thought and planning into crafting the ceremony, and it was great to hear our friends and families tell us they found it meaningful and beautiful. It especially meant a lot to me that Ryan's family liked it because I knew they must be at least a little disappointed that we weren't interested in being married in the Catholic church.

My parents built the evergreen chuppah, which ended up looking amazing. When we initially began planning our wedding, the first thing I thought of was an evergreen chuppah, and I'm so thankful to my family for transforming that dream into a reality.

When I stared walking down the aisle, the reality of what was happening hit me, and I started to ugly cry. I mean, I fell apart! I always thought I would look beautiful walking down the aisle, but I ended up looking like a total mess. It just goes to show that you can't control every moment, and a wedding isn't a performance, it's a real life event.

Photos by Braun Photography