The Shrine

It was actually supposed to rain that day, but instead it rained the night before cooling the temperature off to a reasonable level (where I wouldn't be sweating in my suit). There was very little wind, and lots of sunshine. I have to admit, I was more nervous beforehand; practicing the vows beforehand, I screwed up 25/25 times. In addition, the singer was practicing the song (Eyes on Me) at various locations to get the right acoustics, and I was almost falling over trying to hold back the tears; it turned out to be far more emotional than I ever previously thought. We were very lucky to find someone with such a great singing voice, who knew the song, and executed it so well. It was more than we could have hoped for, our original plan was to just play the recorded version of the song from the FF8 OST.

When the ceremony began, and Steph walked down, everything began to feel right. Yeah, I publicly had tears in my eyes with the song Eyes on Me, but she looked stunning; and I was far from the only one there who got emotional. I mean, I can hardly watch the ending of FF8 without getting emotional, getting married to the same song is a whole new level. Anyway, nailed the vows - while the wedding was a secular wedding, we adapted a Jesus saying; being that the seed created by our love is planted today, and we will nurture it until it grows into a mighty tree. For those not familiar, Jesus would compare the growth of an idea and wisdom to that of a mustard seed (very tiny), which if taken care of correctly, would grow into a tree. Neither of us are religious, but we both have a strong respect for religions and their ideas.

We did some photos down on the boardwalk, by the water, where we first met on a noon-hour walk; then off to the reception. I got my head shaved at the Bachelor party, and apparently punched a guy in the face (but that's a whole different story); so there was some grilling me about that from various people. The first slice of cake ended up in my face, courtesy of the bride; the second piece ended up in her face. The recorded version of Eyes on Me was the song that played for our first dance; originally we were going to do the ballroom scene, but never found the time to practice that.

Gifts were all very nice, we still have to write the thankyou cards. Seriously, it's like Christmas times 5!

Congratulations! I didn't realize you were this close to getting married!

I teared up when I got married, too. When I saw my wife come down the aisle, it got me. It even got my Dad and neither of us are "criers".

Congratulations! Hope she still lets you have your balls from time to time.

All of my close friends are married or about to be married. I have two weddings to go to this October on back to back weekends. Man these things are expensive and never end.

Thankfully I'm single, which means the bridesmaids are fair game!

Grats sir.

Congrats, Seek.

Congrats Seek.

Grats!!!

Good job, man. The wedding thing is great, but it'll drive you crazy trying to get everything set up. Everything costs 4x as much. I did end up doing the soundtrack to our wedding, though. We started dancing with Sia's Breathe Me and ended with Sting's When the Angels Fall. Those two songs always remind me of the wedding now.

Congrats, you nerd! Did she dress as Miyamoto for the wedding night?

Pics or it didn't happen!

Thanks for the congrats everyone.

Lox, it's just one of those things that happen; even to the most sturdy of us. Luckily there have been a lot of crying warriors in the past that set the precedent =P

At the time I was thinking something like this to myself "Tears, here they come...... I wonder if anyone notices this? Did Tony Montana have tears at his wedding? Crap, I forget!".


Barret, good luck on the boom boom with the Brides Maids =P


Sine, tell me about it. Living where I do (on an island with lots of tourism and a thriving wedding industry), it is insane how many hawks came in and tried to rip us off as soon as they hear about a wedding. We had a lot of good fortune though:
- the singer during the ceremony is a friend of ours who used to lead a band which toured around the provinces in this area, so that was free.
- I'm friends with a lot of local DJ's, so the music at the reception and stuff was all free, and very well done.
- Many of the people had very large coastal houses, with gardens, etc.. catering services, etc... but were insanely expensive. Instead we just went with a hotel which gave us a very nice room with 200 capacity and a $100 price tag (included use of all their sound equipment, decorations, tables, etc... everything!), catering and bar tending services that were literally a half to a third of what everyone else was asking. They also let us blast the music until 1:00 AM, and didn't shut us down for having people who got way too drunk either =P

All in all though, it was still a HUGE price tag when everything was factored in; it's just crazy that it could have been so much higher than it already was.

We did get professional photography; lucked out there as well, getting a photographer who gave us a discount of a few hundred dollars because she was on vacation down here. This is the area that we spent the most time on, a lot of photographers we looked at kind of sucked (I could get the same sort of quality, or better, from family members who have done photography); although I wanted to go professional here. The only adequate ones around here charge in the ~2000-3000 range, we managed under $1000.

So yeah, I can easily see how weddings can get up to the $20,000-$50,000 range.


BL, Despite what you get your jollies imagining, Steph's wedding night lingerie did not include a mask of Miyamoto =P

Heh, yeah, our wedding was sort of a mess. We prepared custom vows, but forgot them at the wedding. So, I ask the preacher if he remembers the standard ones, and he did those. Caterer was a friend of ours from work, but they just came down, dropped off the food and left. I was expecting them to serve it, too. We had too much beer leftover, so a couple of friends basically took the rest of it (since we weren't going to drink it), several cases worth. I bet they had a good time afterwards. We go to Atlanta for all four of my cousins' weddings (individual trips), and none of them show up to ours. The DJ (who came with the ballroom) kept fucking with my music CDs. (Yes, you can have your damn electric slide when it comes up on the CD.)

Half of the time was us worrying about what's going on in the party. We did have an interesting after party at The Back Door (a bar), with my mom getting drunk and all. I think we ended up good with a $1500 or so price tag. All in all, it's just a big party with friends, and that's all that really matters. That, and the actual marriage part.

Hey, congratulations man!