Our Wedding Day - Things We Learned, Things to Remember, & Our Story
Well before beginning as a wedding photographer 10 years ago I definitely had thought about my wedding - mostly the photography and how chill it would be to be honest. Now, as I sit here on my 3rd wedding anniversary I reflect and I am so grateful for how we did “our own thing” and made our day exactly what we wanted.
I knew I preferred to be married in what most people would call the “dead” months (May or November) but I like to call the absolutely beautiful in between seasons. We also knew that we wanted to get married in Newfoundland, where I grew up. Other than that, when we got engaged we didn’t really know much about what our day would look like, but we knew we just wanted to celebrate our crazy international (literally) love story and celebrate in a relaxed, intentional, and meaningful way.
For those who don’t know our story, it’s pretty wild. We met at a pub when mutual friends had invited us all out with a group of people. I had just moved to Ontario six months prior, and little did I know Andrew was actually living in Texas and just home visiting family for the weekend. When Andrew walked in I was digging into a basket of wings, with my hair in a bun, boyfriend jeans on, and a striped baggy t-shirt. I’ll never forget it because let’s just say it was noooot my best look. Long story short we sat next to each other and he said he was leaving for Texas again in the morning, but we talked for the whole three hours disregarding everyone else (sorry friends!!) and the next day he contacted me asking if we could Facetime. (from the airport) Again, long story very very short, one month later he moved back and the rest is history - we never looked back.
Given how wild it was that we even met in the way that we did what mattered to us at our wedding was just that we had fun, our guests had fun, and that we celebrated us - whatever that looked like.
Being a bride and planning our wedding ourselves forever changed how I look at weddings and also how I capture them. Some lessons that I learned:
Do your own thing - don’t give into the traditions, ideas, or opinions of others that aren’t actually your own.
Get organized. After we were done celebrating our engagement we sat down with a friend who had planned her wedding the year before and picked her brain and got all her tips - it honestly helped so much.
Start a wedding notebook. Stay organized with to do lists along the way (ie: to do 9 months before, 6 months before, 1 week before, etc.)
Hire vendors you connect with. This is HUGE!
Do what YOU want. The wedding can bring out weird pressures and opinions, but stick to your guns, have open and honest conversations with those you love, and do what makes sense to you.
Most importantly, before you do anything talk about what matters most - like absolutely most about your wedding day. What do you want to remember, what do you want guests to notice? Is it the food? Is it the incredible venue? Is it the black tie event? For us it was the emotion - we wanted to help people feel our love and remember that. Every decision we made revolved around that, and honestly thinking of that first really helped us have clear direction for our day.
Be present. It does go by fast. What matters is how you feel, not how perfect everything is!
So let’s see the day! I’ll include some tips & tricks and things we did differently along with the photos below.
First things first, we knew we wanted to have a first look - and leading up to our wedding, we also knew that our wedding day was calling for total crap weather. Since we had travelled to NL along with our closest family & friends, including our close friends and incredible photographers, Julia and Tim Hutchison, we decided to do our first look and portraits two days before our actual wedding. It was random, fun, and one of the best spontaneous decisions we made. Obviously this doesn’t work in all situations but for us and perhaps for other destination weddings, its a fun idea! We went to one of our favourite scenic areas and literally hiked for three hours for our photos. And yes, I wore my Blundstones, haha!
To start our actual wedding day we wanted it to be relaxed and fun so we each had breakfast with our immediate families! It was such a nice relaxing morning. We chose a 4:30pm ceremony so nothing was rushed in the morning, and I loved just waking up at 8am and relaxing while getting ready!
Fun fact: we bought all of the guys ties separately. I had a vision of fun mismatched jewel tone ties and had no idea how it would look all together! I was soooo happy with how it turned out.
We did our wedding party portraits and a few family portraits at the same location on our actual day. As you can see - the weather was not so great! I wanted all the ladies to wear black because it’s my favourite colour. I also wanted them to pick their own dresses and couldn’t have been more happy with how it turned out. In the end I think I was jealous of how amazing all the black dresses were - I’m still searching for the perfect little black dress for my closet.
One budget item that we decided to save on was flowers. This is one (looking back) that I maybe would have wanted to change, but it just didn’t make sense. I absolutely love florists and think their work is spectacular. However, we knew our reception venue would not allow live flowers because it’s a museum/ archive site, so it just didn’t make sense to spend so much money for only the ceremony. So, we ordered flowers from Costco and made our bouquets the day before the wedding! I wanted a wild flower look with some jewel tone flowers, lots of green, and daisies, and Costco delivered, at a fraction of the price!
Another item like this was my dress. To be honest I always wanted a two piece (skirt, shirt) long sleeve dress, but I just couldn’t find anything like that locally. When it came down to it I liked a ton of different styles but decided I just didn’t want to spend a ton of money. My biggest thing was that I felt good and could move in it (specifically hike and go to a pub - not your usual wedding activites) so I went with a bridesmiads dress from Davids Bridal. Suuuper budget friendly and did the trick. I still love how easy it was on the day of.
We had a pre-wedding lunch at one of our favourite cafes, The Rocket Cafe and Bakery, with some of our favourite people. It was honestly so fun, relaxed, and just one of my favourite memories. Everything about the day felt relaxed and chill - which was exactly what we wanted!
Our ceremony was short but significant. We wanted music to be a big part of the ceremony and wanted people to feel and experience our love. We had a friend officiate and it was full of laughter and tears. We also wrote our own vows (that were quite long) and beforehand had a friend review both of them to make sure they were aligned. We talked about a format when we wrote them and it was amazing to hear them and commit them to each other. We also live streamed the ceremony via a private link so that family and friends could be a part of it at a distance. It was so special reading all the comments and messages after from all over the world, even friends as far as Africa tuned in.
We also had a family friend and our immediate families pray for us at the end of our ceremony and it was a moment I will never forget. Our faith is super important to us and this was such a special way to bring that into our ceremony.
For the reception we had such an incredible venue - The Rooms. We kept decor super minimal & simple. The venue had floor to ceiling window views of the St. John’s harbour. Really when it comes to decor we didn’t really need anything. I made all the stationary myself and in lieu of favours we made a donation to two of our favourite organizations. The week before our wedding we were visiting Paris, ON for a friends wedding and found some amazing little wrapped “Thank You” chocolates at a local chocolatier so we bought them and brought them to NL in our carry-on luggage - the joys of a destination wedding, haha!
For speeches we kept it short and sweet and significant. It was so special hearing what everyone had to say! We had our maid of honour, best man, and parents give speeches. We also had our siblings play/ sing for our first dance which was so special.
Because our reception was so small (50 guests including us) following the reception we decided to bring the party to our favourite Newfie pub O’Reillys (with live music) instead of having a dance/ DJ. It was unconventional but sooo much fun. We loved giving our out of province guests that experience.
Our wedding day was one I’ll never forget. Forever grateful to our friends & photographers TJ Weddings who captured these memories for us to look back on for our lifetime.
We also had an Ontario celebration two months later! We had sooo many family and friends from Ontario and all over the US that couldn’t make the trip to NL so we decided to have a party for them. We didn’t have professional photography at this celebration, just had family and friends take photos and videos throughout the evening, and also had a polaroid circling around!
We had a reception with hors d’oeuvres and a dessert buffet! I made our “cake” for this celebration (something I had always wanted to do.. I love baking!) Our pastors and close friends hosted the evening and made it sooo much fun for everyone. Instead of a “ceremony” we renewed our vows in the form of a speech to each other, and had our speeches from our wedding day.
We had my sister and some other friends play for a first dance at this celebration and it was so special. We also had our friend DJ and the party was AMAZING! Let’s just say it’s the first time I’ve ever seen my parents on the dance floor ;) It was an amazing way to celebrate again!
