More from Melinda!
As I mentioned before, it was so important to me to feel that everyone was involved and a huge part of the day. A long time family friend of the Moore family, who married Danielle and Lee on their wedding day, also married us. We included a reading in our ceremony that was read by Cass’s sister, Danielle. I carried my grandmothers rosary and a handkerchief that Danielle had embroidered with my wedding day, and the word “Sisters” above the date.
Upon entering the reception, there was a tray that I had made with old wine corks with little escort cards tucked in it. However, they were not escort cards, but handwritten notes that we had written for each and every guest to thank them for coming, telling them to have a great time and to sit wherever they liked. Our favors, wine bottle stoppers, were placed in burlap bags, with tags I found off Etsy.com. Again, everything was in black and linen. My guestbook was non-traditional – I bought vintage Georgia postcards off eBay and lined the backs with card stock and a postcard stamp. My parents mailed them from the Dahlonega post-office back to our house the next day, and we have a fun album filled with cards from our guests.
Other little details: music is a huge part of our life, and we did not want traditional wedding and ceremony music. Our parents and grandparents walked down to my grandparents’ song, “Always”, by Rosemary Clooney; the bridal party walked down to the Magnetic Fields “The Book of Love”, and I walked down the aisle to a children’s choir recording singing “To Know Him is to Love Him” – a surprise for Cass, who pretty much cried the entire time (along with my photographers, I found out later!) That song, I felt, encapsulated every thing I felt about my husband to be – and I wanted him to hear that as I walked towards him.
At the reception, as a surprise for my parents, whose wedding anniversary was that day, I had their song, “Leaving on a Jet Plane” played. Cass and I danced to Bob Dylan’s version of “You Belong to Me”, and my dad and I swayed to “Stand by Me”. We surprised Cass’s mother for the mother-son dance with Willie Nelsons, “Don’t Let your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys” as a nod to Montana and their family. In addition, I managed to track down each of my bridesmaid’s first dance songs from their own weddings, and made sure that each song was played during the night. For my one remaining single bridesmaid, I chose a song that was a favorite of ours when we were roommates, and danced with her myself.
We did the traditional cake cutting, with my parents cake topper from their wedding years before, to the sounds of my bridesmaids’ impromptu serenade of “Going to the Chapel”. We did not do the bouquet toss, as almost everyone there was married.
We ended the night in a shower of white rose petals on the way out the door, where Danielle and Lee drove us to the Dahlonega Square. We observed the lore of the square, where you are supposed to walk three times around it for good luck, and we bade them farewell and went off to our wedding suite.
Cass and I floated through our wedding day – we were both so genuinely happy to be getting married. Throughout the ceremony, I laughed and wiggled with joy while Cass would be choked up and then laugh and smile. It was a wonderful day, which perfectly encapsulated who we are as a couple.
Thank you SO much to Melinda for sharing this incredible day with us! And thank you to Danielle (from yesterday’s posts) for introducing me to Melinda! Your weddings are incredibly inspiring and filled with lovely touches that many of us are sure to incorporate.
