I know that I've been detailing everything from my engagement, to the bachelorette, to the wedding dress diet on this blog, but I promise, this is the last wedding-related post. I wanted to share with everyone some pictures of the most incredible day of my life. I had an early morning and late evening, but every minute in between was not to be missed!
I actually got a "countdown app" starting about 30 days or something before my wedding. I screenshotted and texted a picture of how many days left to my maid of honor every day for at least 20 days. The text would be a picture of the days left, followed by "AHHHHH" or "I'M FREAKING OUT!!" This is the last one I sent:
Nothing left to freak out about now! I had prepared a super careful itinerary and individually emailed, texted, and called everyone in my wedding party to go over it to make sure everyone knew what was going down, where, and when. I'm not a Bridezilla, I'm just prepared! I woke up at about 5:30 AM to start the "getting ready" process, even though I didn't walk down the aisle until 4:30 PM... There were a lot of details! First item on the list, get beautified! My lovely maid of honor, Jessica, had already treated me to a manicure and pedicure the day before, and I had my hair colored and cut the day before as well, so now all I needed was the updo and makeup! My regular hairdresser did my hair, and all of my bridesmaids' hair. There was a makeup artist at the same salon to do my makeup for me. Ta-daa!
After hair and makeup, we came back to my parents' house to get ready and eat something. My dad put out a cute spread of fruit, crackers, and Miyoko's cheeses!! He also made us a batch of my favorite green smoothie from The Abundance Diet, the apple pie smoothie.
My mom helped me put on my dress, and it fit perfectly! All those salads were worth it!
Here's a selfie with my maid of honor, Jessica, and my new sister, Mia!
Forgive the blurry quality of these pictures. We were all flustered. My dress is cute though, right??
Jessica and I!
We decided to take pictures before the ceremony, since the venue isn't totally scenic and we wanted to go somewhere that was beautiful and didn't think cocktail hour was enough time. So the boys met up with us at my parents' house and took our "first look" picture.
We also rented a party-limo-bus to get us all to the picture site, and to the venue, and to drink champagne while getting there. Super fun!
We took photos at the beautifully scenic Ashley Reservoir in Holoyke, MA, about 15 minutes from our venue. It was hot out, but it was a totally beautiful day and I couldn't have asked for anything more than that! Big Ups to all my bridesmaids' and my mom for helping me carry my dress around the reservoir for 2 hours! The bridesmaids dresses are super cute though, right?
We arrived at the venue about an hour before the ceremony and we got to take a peak into the event space where the tables and cakes were all set up! We ordered 5 vegan cakes! The lovely and talented, Maresa, of Sweet Maresa's was good enough to come up to our hometown to deliver these to us, and we are sooo happy she did, because these cakes were not to be missed!!
The venue we chose is called Mill 1 At Open Square, an old paper mill that's been converted into an event space. The mill is a green-space because it powers itself and all it's surrounding buildings from it's own energy! It made our wedding even more vegan!
Before the ceremony, the girls went up to the art gallery where we were having the ceremony to wait while the boys ushered the guests to their seats.
Here's a great one of my mom and I before the ceremony. My mom helped me with SOO much of the planning. I hear so many people say that planning their weddings destroyed their relationship with their mother, but I feel the opposite! I think my mom and I are closer after having planned together! It also made me realize that I have her to count on when I need help, and that she will be a fantastic resource when I one day have children. During wedding planning, I could call her and say "WHAT DO I DO???" and now I know she'll be there when I have screaming kids and ask her the same question. Phew.
I wish I had some pictures from the ceremony, but it was beautiful. You'll all have to believe me. We had a non-denominational service, and were married by a "marriage celebrant" who was fantastic and professional. As a unity ritual, we decided to write letters to each other, place them inside a box along with a bottle of wine, and seal it shut. We'll open it on our tenth wedding anniversary and read each other's letters and share the wine. I look forward to that day!
We practiced dancing our first dance so much before the wedding, and I'm glad we did because we danced pretty well! We ended with a dip! Look how cute!
As previously discussed, we had Mesob Ehiopian Restaurant cater the wedding reception. The food was so unbelievably amazing!! I had probably 15 guests tell me that it was the best food they'd ever had at a wedding! Out of those 15, I think only 3 or 4 had even tried Ethiopian food before, and pretty much everyone raved about it! Such a huge win!!
We cut the cakes together, as newlyweds do. We got five flavors: Chocolate Peanut Butter, Chocolate Salted Caramel & Rosemary, Lemon Raspberry, Peaches & Cream (gf), and Vanilla (gf). We cut the vanilla first :) I loved them all, but I think the lemon raspberry was my favorite. No. I can't choose.
I had such a blast dancing with my dad. We danced to "My Girl" by The Temptations, and he and my mom had made up some choreographed moves for our dance! It was so unlike them! It made it really fun to dance to and everyone kept commenting on how good our dance was, and asked if we took dancing lessons (we didn't).
This is my friend Julia and I! Julia just moved across the country and very far away from me and I am sad about it. She also recently went vegan. Now she's far away. The universe is cruel. We look cute though right??
Here's a picture of me and Berekti, the owner of Mesob! I'm so happy she came all the way from New Jersey to cater our wedding. She and her staff did such an amazing job and I couldn't have been happier with how the food turned out!
We felt so much love from all our friends and family on that day, and felt high on good vibes from the day all throughout the next week! Thanks to all of our vendors for helping make our wedding such a great success and a win for vegans!! We are so spoiled and are two of the luckiest humans to ever share time on this Earth.
Soon I'll post about our vegan honeymoon!!
With Love for Vegans, Nature, and Ethiopian Food,
KZ <3
2 comments
Congratulations on your wedding; it sounds like everything went fantastically! What a stunningly beautiful pic from the photographer! :)
ReplyDeleteAw, congrats all over again. So glad it was so wonderful and you know I wish you guys the absolute very best!
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