Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!
Do you mind elaborating about your wedding a little? I'm getting married in the middle of the year, your experience could help my own...
Not sure what you want to know exactly. I think I may have mentioned that we got married overseas. We were living in Australia at the time and we got married in Finland.
We had a relatively small wedding of about 28 people (including us) the rest were mostly my wife's Finnish family (she's half Finnish) and some friends.
Even though what we did and where we got married sounds pretty fancy, our wedding only cost around $5000 AUD, that's not including flights/accommodation of course. We stayed with family at a summer cottage (near where we got married) prior to the wedding and had a hotel room for the night before and night after. We then went to Sweden for a couple of days by ferry. Then went to Canada after that.
So to explain this whole thing.
We got married in a castle, that sits on a lake in Savonlinna Finland. The castle's name is Olavinlinna Castle. The chapel sits at the top of the foremost turret of the picture below. Thing to note, wedding dresses and high heel shoes are not the best for going up a spiral narrow stone steps.
Reason why we chose this great place? My wife's Finnish grandparents migrated to Australia in 1959. Her grandfather was a bit of an artist and liked paint in oils. He had a picture of this castle that he had painted hanging over the mantle of their house. My wife saw this picture since she was a little girl and thought it as a fantasy castle then, not realising it was real and she could go to it. So we decided to get married there as a way of honouring her grandparents. My wife spent quite a bit of time with them while growing up.
We decided to use horse and carriage to get us from the hotel to the castle. Approximately 2km. It just seemed appropriate. The horse and carriage drew a crowd at the hotel and we got a big cheer when we came out. We had people congratulate us on the way. A group of people at a cafe we passed all stood up and clapped. Was very memorable.
The wedding ceremony music was provided by a Finnish instrument the kantele. Sounds similar to a harp.
During our ceremony we had a Finnish love poem recited and song sung by one of our friends accompanied by one of my wife's family on violin. The ceremony was performed by the magistrate. Everything was in Finnish/English.
Then we went out to one of the parapets to release butterflies.
We then had lunch in the castle and had some music that was played by some music students. Finnish waltz music on accordions which everyone liked. Ah the Fins...
After all that, we met up with some family and friends for a boat tour around the castle.
We kept our wedding very simple and as cheap as possible. This was the other reason why we got married overseas. Kept the numbers down. Overseas weddings can be as simple or extravagant as we you want them to be.
Of course everyone's situation is different so having a wedding overseas is not for everyone but it worked for us.
My main advice would be this:
Plan your day to sort the timing out.
Figure out where you want to get married and book it immediately, followed by the rest of the stuff, flowers, dress, suit, DJ (if you have one) and all those things. Get them done as quickly as possible that way you don't stress about them.
Then relax. If you get overly excited about things going wrong then it will just stress you. Just keep in mind two things. You're there to enjoy yourself and so is your friends and family. It's a celebration, a party. Timing can go out, something may be missed, but it's no big deal. What's the worst thing that can happen? Think of that then make sure that you take that into consideration. Anything after that is manageable. It's just one day. Make it as perfect as you can and let slide anything that might cause hiccups.
That's not always easily done but the simpler you make things the less chance that things will get messed up.
It's all the quirky things we did that made our wedding memorable for us and for the people who attended and that's all that matters really.
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