On Saturday, June 25th 2016, I married the love of my life. I’ve known John since I was only 9 years old, and being 32 that is a very long time. We didn’t start dating until high school, but since I was a teenage girl I knew that he was the one. 2 years ago in September, he finally popped the question and now we are hitched!
If you are still dating someone or are freshly engaged, you probably think that life is as good as it can get. I thought the very same thing, but now that I’m married I know how wrong I was. There is no better day in my life than our wedding day, and the only thing I can imagine being even close will be the day we have our first child. Without further ado, here are some of the highlights of our wedding day.
The Venue
We live in a suburb of Chicago, and there is a beautiful little park with a gazebo where we had our ceremony. It was very quaint by most wedding standards, but to us it was the perfect venue since it’s where we had our first real date. The best part of renting out the gazebo in the park was that it only cost us $150 for the permit, and since our best friend did the ceremony the only other real fee was obtaining a marriage license from Cook County where the ceremony was being held. It couldn’t have been more perfect, and I’ll cherish it for the rest of my life.
The Reception
After the ceremony, we moved the celebration to an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town that one of our close friends owns. We had an old-time country band play, put hay bails out for seating, and didn’t need to do much to decorate since the theme matched the venue so well. I even slipped on cowboy boots after the ceremony so I’d be more comfortable and blend in a bit more and we spent the whole night dancing to our favorite country songs.
My Favorite Part
Probably the most memorable part of the wedding was when we first arrived at the barn to be announced to our guests. Since the park only held around 50 people, we had a lot of guests who were only invited to the reception portion of our wedding celebration. My maid of honor surprised us by handing out sparklers for all of the guests to light and hold as we came through the big barn doors. You can’t find sparklers during the early parts of summer in our area, so she ordered theme from this store that sells wedding sparklers online and ships them to your house. Needless to say, it was totally unexpected and made for a wonderful memory.
No matter where you have your ceremony and reception, sometimes it’s the smallest things that you remember the most. Make sure you skip all of the stress of planning the details and just focus on your friends, family, and of course your partner and every part of your wedding day will be amazing.
