Jan 21

Our Wedding!!

At long last, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to finally be sharing every last detail of what was honestly the best day of both of our lives. As an aside, former me would have secretly rolled her eyes at that last statement, but you guys, I’ve turned a corner – it really was that special. It’s really and truly not a lie! I’m actually going to spilling alll of our wedding details in great length this week, so if that’s not your thing I totally get it and promise to be back to our regularly schedule programming shortly.

In addition to a week filled to the brim with all things wedding, we’re also doing a Style Me Pretty takeover today, which feels pretty special. One of my old co-workers, and wonderful friends, is writing all of the posts, too, which I’m so pleased about. So please head on over there for lots more, if you’d like!

And now, for a little peek at our wedding. To be completely honest, I’ve never really been much of the bridal-type. Looking back, most of my childhood daydreams revolved around renovating houses (usually complete with drawbridges and epic spots for hide and seek). I always hoped that getting married and raising lots of babies was going to be in my future, but I never really imagined the actual wedding day – not once.

So when Justin proposed back in February 2017, I was absolutely elated – marrying him was definitely one of the best decisions I’ve made so far – but despite working under the Style Me Pretty umbrella for years, the whole wedding planning process felt really daunting. You see neither of us are the type who like a lot of attention (um why do you think part of my career includes me hiding behind a screen?). And if it were up to us we would have eloped and exchanged our vows on the peak of a mountain somewhere magical. But with a massive extended family on both sides, whom we’re very close with, it just didn’t feel right to leave them out of such a momentous moment in our lives. So we decided that a simple wedding at home, surrounded by only our closest friends and family, was going to be the name of our game. The only caveat: we were going to do it our way.

We questioned almost every wedding tradition we had heard of, or experienced, in the past, and participated in the ones that excited us. We began crafting our picture perfect day with a focus on a lot of small, personal details – like signature cocktails, homemade vow books, and a custom monogram we sprinkled virtually everywhere we could think of.

The resulting day itself ended up being an intimate event with our nearest and dearest, complete with cocktails and champagne aplenty, and tons of food (and fabulous fixed food stations) being passed around all evening. And, perhaps my favourite moment of the night, was when a delivery man showed up in the wee hours with bags overflowing with Big Macs and Junior Chickens – dare I say the best way to wrap up an elegant evening? Months later, our friends still talk about it (which, to me, is a wedding win, as far as I’m concerned).

In addition to skipping a whole bunch of traditions (many of which you can read about here, if you’d like) we also decided to skip the traditional “first dance” – which was really the only decision we made that a few people fought us on. I actually adore the first dance tradition for other brides – it’s one of my very favourite wedding moments to witness. But knowing full well that a room full of people staring at me while I dance would be the quickest way to instant anxiety, I really didn’t want to participate. Instead, without telling a soul, we asked our DJ to play our song the moment she saw us both near the dance floor. It was our cue to hop on, surrounded by our favourite people, and enjoy a secret first dance that only the two of us were in on. And while there are so many wonderful memories from our wedding day that are happily burned into my mind forever, this particular moment, in the arms of my husband, literally on cloud nine, is one that I’ll truly cherish forever. It makes me almost weepy just thinking about it.

And while our intimate cocktail party in the heat of the summer downtown Toronto was anything but a mountaintop with no soul in sight, it was perfect in every sense of the word. It truly was everything we could have imagined and more. Although I used to be a bit of a skeptic, I can say with confidence that our wedding day really was the best day of our entire lives. It was an impeccable way to kick off this next phase of our lives, and I’m forever grateful for the entire experience.