Taking a break from the details and getting to what everyone wants to see – the ceremony.

Keith and I took advantage of the fact that we live in Pennsylvania and had a Quaker self-uniting ceremony. What that means is we didn’t need anyone to officiate our wedding and declare us married, we could do that ourselves – we just needed two witnesses.

But we did want a sort of traditional ceremony, so we asked my cousin Adam to officiate. He had never done anything like it before, but did a wonderful job. The caveat to him performing the ceremony was me writing it.

After googling for weeks, I ended up buying a book – The Wedding Ceremony Planner – and I highly recommend it if you find yourself needing to write a wedding ceremony. It takes you through a ceremony, the typical order of things and then gives you options to play around with to make it religious, secular, traditional, modern. I used it for the structure and some of the wording, but I also used some internet sources and rearranged some stuff. I’m really happy with how it turned out.

So when we left off from getting ready, Ryan, Jason and I were zooming up to the barn to meet Keith. Since I wanted to do all of our pictures beforehand, we did a first look. It would have been sweet to have us see each other for the first time when I walked down the aisle, but it just made more sense to have all the photos done beforehand.

As before, all photos by hot metal studio.

this is my “tada!” face

After we were sufficiently first looked, we took some photos, then the bridal party joined for more photos and then we moved down to the basement until the ceremony began. We had drinks and snacks and although we were down there for longer than planned – whoops! it wasn’t too bad!

And I had an onsite makeup artist.

The song that started the ceremony was Regina Spektor’s cover of Real Love…

At the end of this song, Adam, Keith and Dave (best man) walked upstairs.

The rest of the bridesmaids and groomsmen walked down to Death Cab for Cutie – I Will Follow You into the Dark…

Mayyyybe a little morbid, but beautiful, nonetheless.

Then I was escorted down the aisle by my mom and stepdad to Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova’s cover of Into the Mystic…this was one of the first songs I settled on, love it so much. I could have populated the entire wedding playlist with their music.

As soon as the song started to play (still outside) I started to cry. And I didn’t stop until the ceremony was over. But luckily I was only crying out of my left eye, which only Keith and Adam could see, haha.

Then, 15 minutes later, we were wed!

Oh, I stopped the ceremony to take a picture on my phone. I had seen someone else do that online but with their real camera. I didn’t have anywhere to stash a dSLR and I unfortunately use my phone for more photos than my camera, so I thought it would be a fun thing to do. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it, except Adam and Ryan, who had my phone, so it was pretty funny to see everyone’s reactions.

The best part of the entire ceremony, minus being married and stuff was how many people cried! Haha. I didn’t want to be alone in my tears and I definitely wasn’t. Keith even cried. That was really the best part. These are some of my absolute favorite photos in life.

Next up, the reception! And some posed photos! And more details! Hooray!