Do you wanna know about our wedding? Do you love super photo-heavy blog posts? Do you have a super-high tolerance for narcissism and giggly, sappy explanations of someone else's happiness? Well! Have I got the blog post for you! And if you answered no to any of those questions, just be so happy we're not friends on Facebook, I made those fools look 600+ wedding photos. I'm 38 years old, happily married, have birthed two babies with no drugs and I have zero shame. ZERO. Let's get started.
I never thought Ash and I would really get married. All the people that we love are scattered far and wide and I knew that we would never be able to have them all together in one place, so really what was the point? Then! All of our immediate family happened to be in the same country, at the same time, THE STARS ALIGNED and BOOM our wedding (and more importantly, our wedding theme) was swung into action. We had a window of 1 month to pull it off and a pretty small budget, because we love limitations and hate sleep.
Luckily, our closest circle of friends and family includes, a former wedding invitation designer, a wedding photographer, a professional make up artist and a wedding celebrant. And, you know, we've made a few wedding rings in our day. So! That's the deal. Here's the porn.
This is the invitation my insanely talented Sister created for us. It's perfect. I love it. I have extras that I look at a lot. She made sure to put in both mine and Ash's star signs as well as the Matariki constellation that Ash mapped out in diamonds on my engagement ring many years ago.
These are the boys swimming at the beach down the road from our house the morning of the wedding. Lucky, lucky.
This is Ash reading one of approximately 17,000 lists I made. I still have them all in a special box, because lists are the best thing ever. My Dad taught me that.
Ash and I share a similar personality flaw that makes it nearly impossible for us to buy things. It's taken us 5 years to buy a duvet cover. Which made it hard to organise a wedding in 30 days, we both had to buy shoes. Luckily, Ash already had a suit. He never found the right shoes, so he bought these at the op-shop the day before the wedding. In that box is an antique pocket watch I gave him. He carried that and a compass my Dad gave him the year before he died. When Ash pulled that out and showed me just after ceremony I almost lost my shit.
This is Ash's Dad Jim. We call him Jimbo, but I don't think he likes it. He doesn't usually get too excited about parties, but he was super sweet leading up to the wedding and was super helpful. He even let me decide if he should wear his pink shirt or his purple shirt. I went for purple.
This is Tom, Ash's cousin and best man. His family gave us 1/2 a cow for our wedding present, which was the best present ever. Don't ever play cards with him.
Henry was so, so excited to wear fancy, fancy clothes for the "wetting." I found the cutest vintage suit from the 40's and he wore blue glitter ballet flats.
Ok, so, you guys. Ash made me a gold constellation necklace and tiara for my wedding present. Full disclosure, I did ask him to make me a necklace, but I told him to make it in brass. He and my Sister designed it in secret and then he made it in gold. It's the scariest thing I own. Also, the most beautiful.
These are my wetting shoes. And the necklace and tiara. I bought my shoes second hand (yuck!) and the lady said in the listing, "they just sit there in my closet like sad princesses waiting to be worn." And I was like, "whatever, I'm gonna wear those everyday." Nope, still sad princesses. But, they make me happy. Unless I'm wearing them and then I hate everything.
Remember our ridiculously beautiful wedding invitation? Well guess what? My Mom turned it into our ring bearer pillow. I have absolutely no idea how she got these wizard-like abilities, but it's the prettiest, most perfect pillow in the whole, wide world. She embroidered a font! Two fonts! And then stipple-painted the milky-way and hand embroidered all the constellations. How can she do this? I can't even write my kids' names on their lunch boxes without making an embarrassment of myself.
Ok, so I maybe stole the colour theme from my bedroom. Dark blue + gold 4-life.
This is me applauding my ridiculously talented husband and his tiara-making skillz. Can your husband make a tiara? Mine can.
Let's take a minute to appreciate how beautiful my Mama is. It seems I did not get her skin and its inability to wrinkle. Thanks Dad.
This is the face that you want your friends to make when they see you all made up for your wedding day. The whole day could have stopped right there, because this look on my beautiful friend Fie's face made it all worth it.
And also this one.
Oh, and also. My beautiful friend Poppy is a makeup artist. You should hire her for your wedding, this is her web site. I really do have the best and most talented friends ever. #blessed.
If Ash ever infuriates me and I think I want to leave and go back and work at a cafe in Texas and drink only margaritas and eat only queso for the rest of my days, I look at this photo of myself and remember that this was how excited I was to marry him. And we were already 9 years, two kids, a mortgage and a business in, so I knew exactly what I was getting myself into.
This is Jonny. He married us. He was one of the first real friends I made in NZ and he's kept me laughing ever since. He and Ash have known each other for 20ish years and he's just like family. Thanks Jonny!
Ok, these are Ash's two siblings besides Siggy. Tom and Zoë. Aren't they cute? Zoë has her PhD, knows how to play all kinds of instruments, is teaching Henry how to rock climb and is smoking hot. We all kinda hate her a little bit :) She learned a song, a very special song, to play for the wedding ceremony and then just happen to pick out the two other songs I really wanted her to play but was afraid to ask her to learn on such short notice. I'm surrounded by wizards.
This was the most magical moment of the ceremony and I missed it as it was before I walked in. We got married in the woodsy part of our back yard over a little bridge. Henry, who was 4 at the time, was in charge of pixie dust. He had a little pouch of superfine glitter and threw it into the air as he twirled and jumped. The gold glitter hung in the air and it was like magic. Wish we had a video.
My nephew Jacob is a martial arts super hero and gave a display of his skills just before I walked in. It was awesome by all accounts.
Truman was in charge of the pillow. He knew he had to hand it to Evan, but then he took it straight back after the rings were detached and hasn't let go of it since. He also refused to wear a shirt or have his hair brushed. Everyone seemed very concerned about this. It just felt like home to me.
My BFF told me she loved this pic because I'm literally dragging my Mom up the to the altar. I was super-psyched!! I also love all the smiling happening in the background.
This is the exact image I had in my head when I was imagining our ceremony in our backyard. I still can't believe how lucky we are to have the incredible talent of Victoria Vincent in our lives, but more on her later.
Definitely the sweetest moment of the day, Ash made wedding rings for the boys and we gave them to them during the ceremony.
These are our wedding hands. Here's a little secret, I've never been much of a jewellery person, and even though our whole lives revolve around making and selling wedding rings, I never **really** understood what the big deal was. Until I had my own. And especially once Ash had his on his finger. It's the only part of the wedding that's with us every, single day and I really do get excited when I catch sight of his. It's so tangible! Plus, the whole unbroken circle of infinity thing is pretty cool too.
These are my girls!! My sister Autumn on the left and her daughter Suzannah on the right. They are the sassiest, funniest, sharpest, smartest, most beautiful ladies in the whole wide world. I'm waiting, waiting, waiting for the day when Autumn does something stupid so that Suzannah gets so mad that she comes and lives with me in New Zealand. It's never going to happen because my Sister wins everything.
After the ceremony was finished all the guests went back to our place for some snackies and drinkies and Ash and I had some portraits taken. See? Plenty of wrinkles, thanks Dad. But, they're happiness wrinkles, so it's ok.
This is my smokin' hot husband. That made me a golden crown. And homemade donuts. But not on this day.
Truman came over to me and gave me lots, and lots of kisses and cuddles. Note the pillow.
This is Ash's Granddad, also named Ash. He's stunningly awesome and hilarious and makes sure your whisky glass is never empty.
This is Ash's Aunt Mary, his Grandma Shirl (Granddad Ash's wife and the sharpest, funniest lady around) and my Mother-In-Law from Hell, Jude. What can I say about Jude? She's the styliest, hippest, loveliest lady around. She will kick your ass at tennis, hang up on you if call while the cricket's on, meet you in Europe at the drop of a hat and make you buy the nicest shoes in the shop. She's who I want to be when I grow up. Except for the cricket part.
This is Astrid, our amazing photographer's daughter. Since I don't have any daughters, I've decided she's also my daughter. Hope that's cool Tor and Lico.
Ash has always been a van guy. Not a creepy van guy, but a, "let's just put it all in the back of my van" kind of guy. This was the first van we bought together. We gave it to Jimbo a few years ago, but are still allowed to borrow it for special occasions. Now it's painted with political protest messages in bright red paint.
Wedding Party party time.
Just strolling and being smug as hell.
This one just speaks for itself. It's saying, "I'm a badass photos."
We read a lot of those, "how to look great in photos" articles. This is our best work of the day. We were squinching, but not too hard.
This is our album cover:
So, not only did my sister make the invitations, design the vintage celestial theme posters and get way drunker than me to distract from my embarrassing level of drunkeness, she also arranged all of the flowers. SHE WINS SISTERS.
This is one of said posters. We got free images from the Library of Congress and then had them printed on plan printers in dark blue ink. Now, they decorate our house. Except for the one that Truman pulled off the wall and ripped into a million pieces. He's a terrible human. Apart from his dimple, that's really cute.
This is Saali. He and Ash grew up together and he couldn't make it to the wedding on such short notice. Except that Siggy is the best Sister/in law/friend/badass ever and flew him in to surprise us! WE WERE SO SURPRISED. He sang a beautiful love song that he wrote. It was amazing upon amazing.
Ash and Autumn cutting the wedding cake. Wait. What? So, I have this ridiculously amazing Aunt Gail. She made that wedding cake and it almost killed her. I thought I was asking for something easy, but apparently ombre blue icing is not easy. Not at all easy. It looked exactly, exactly how I wanted it to and it tasted freaking amazing. She also made lots of allergy free treats for all the kids and pretty much just blew all of our minds.
You know how I said that mine and Ash's family and friends are sprinkled all over the world and couldn't all be there? Well, they all got together and made a video. A video I still can't watch unless I don't have anywhere to go for several hours because it makes me cry so, so hard and when I cry I get this crazy red patches all over my face. I have no idea what I did to gather up so much love in my life, but I did and it's all in one video. The absolute best wedding present ever. This photo of me watching shows approximately 1/1,000,000th of the emotion it evoked in me. The rest of it was dumped all over the poor caterers in the kitchen where I hid out and sobbed. I really wonder what they thought happened to me. They were highly concerned and made me eat cake.
This is one of many, many favourite dancing photos of the night. My beautiful friend Anna is proving that she made entirely of light and pure joy, my Mom's in behind her gettin' it on, I'm totally in the zone, and Ash is drunk-hugging off to the left. There's a lot of dance photos. We danced till 5 AM. It was epic. It was my wedding wish come true.
Not only did the super-talented Victoria Vincent take all the photos, she also showed up to set up and clean up. This is a day after photo and I love it. All the amazing work from all my super-talented wizard friends and family had been enjoyed and eaten and drunk and loved and danced up into a mess. A beautiful mess.
Like what you saw? You can have it all too! Hire my amazing friends!! Poppy Make Up Artist is seriously legit. I had no idea I could look like that. She has this incredible way of making everything around her just look better (probably because she's so hot). The Old Saint John's Hall is totally beautiful and right in the center of town so you can be as loud as you want and everyone can take a cab home. And Victoria Vincent is the most talented photographer ever made. She's also a good dancer and her husband is super hot. Her (my) kids are pretty ok too.