Jennifer's Wedding, part 1

So, last weekend my wedding photographer got married. I teased you just a little on Monday--I promise that I seriously thought I would be posting wedding pictures earlier in the week. Anyway, life being unpredictable, here we are. We drove to the wedding in between tornado watches and through torrential rains. Which was ironic because this time two years ago we were driving to a wedding through torrential rain. We made it, praise God, with minimal delays and no major crash sightings. Always a happy thing. We proceeded to stay up far too late talking with our friends Rhyme and Reason (also a happy thing) and then got up to a somewhat rubbery hotel breakfast also spent happily with the same friends.

After breakfast we donned our wedding best, packed up the cars, and headed for the wedding site. Rhyme suggested a spontaneous trip to a farmers market--so we crashed a deeply rural farmers market in our wedding best. It was great fun.

They didn't even look at us toooooo weirdly, because they knew the family name of the bride and knew immediately whose wedding we were glammed up for. The farmers market was big and beautiful:

I could have wandered around there for quite awhile, but we bought a few things and hurried on our way to the wedding site to help with whatever setting up remained.


welcome to the campground

Most of the decorations were all done already, we ended up helping with all the last minute food stuffs.


photo booth, all ready to go.

Jennifer went with a National Geographic/Adventure theme that highlighted the wildness of a girl from the South falling in love with a Canadian that she met in Uganda.


guest book

 Burlap, National Geographics, pops of yellow, globes, suitcases, post cards, maps...

Trunks, momentos....

amen

It was Extreme Wedding DIY, with pinwheels and pennants and many many yellow picture frames hanging in the woods.


I suspect that half the fun of the reception was wandering around the reception hall to see what cool decorations were hiding here and there:

The roadsign is a little blown out in this picture, sorry....I hope you can still read it:

The path from the reception site to the ceremony site was lined with yellow frames hanging from the trees. I don't know if any of the other guests used them the way we did:

That's what they're for, right?

The next part of the path was hung with fairy-like string balls all the way to the campfire pit-turned forest chapel.

After prep was mostly done, and the ceremony site had been properly explored, we headed back up--met some more of the old college crew--and ate some lunch.

We also met the groom, whom we accidentally interrupted while he waited for his bride for the first look. We sneakily watched the first look from afar:

Being who I am, I think the coolest part of the wedding was this:

Yes, they had a horsedrawn carriage to shuttle the guests up and down the long hill from the parking area to the forest chapel in the woods.

After lunch, we ran around with even more last minute things:


the wedding coordinator and the chef

 Like the last throes of setting up the ice cream topping bar, or the lemonade and the strawberries and the popcorn machine.

And then it was time for the ceremony and we hurried to get seats on our benches before there were no seats left!
I forgot to take a picture, but they had hauled a real live piano out into the woods. So we sat and listened to live piano music, while looking up into this:

And doing what you should always do at a wedding:



the programs--very cool

And then, the bridal party started to arrive, and all that remained was the coming of the bride.