Thursday, May 01, 2014

Our Wedding

In just a couple days we will celebrate our one year wedding anniversary. Before writing this post I went through all our guest book entries and was immediately flooded with emotions and gratitude for everyone who made our wedding so special. The words written are so filled with love and sincerity that I couldn't help but smile as I read them. Knowing how much our friends and family love and support us makes our relationship that much more meaningful.

We decided to get married in Barbados. A simple ceremony by the beach with our closest friends and family followed by a fun dinner, dancing, cigars on the beach and then clubbing in town. I remember wishing that it would rain that day just to cool down as it was the hottest day during our time there. Getting ready was easy and relaxing (we didn't get married till 4:00pm so we had all day to relax). The days and weeks leading up to our wedding I had been an emotional mess. I cried the day before we left for Barbados. I cried on the airplane. I cried when we got there. I cried when we got our marriage certificate. But on the day of our wedding I tried really hard to hold it together. When my dad and I were waiting to walk up to the alter I had a moment where I was alone with my thoughts and it came to me that I was marrying my best friend and in that second I couldn't breath I was so overwhelmed with emotion. I quickly forced myself out of it and didn't cry again until I was listening to the amazing speeches by my best friends, family and husband.

We had opted not to do a "first look" and also made sure not to see each other all day (we were restricted to different areas of the resort) so when we saw each other for the first time we both had goofy, excited smiles. Our ceremony was simple and quick. We wrote vows ahead of time that we each repeated and we had some funny laughs throughout it. Once the "I dos" were done we had a little cocktail hour with a steel pan player, lots of rum punch for our guests and we took photos on the beach with our bridal party. One of my favourite moments was after the cocktail hour my husband and I jumped into the room where he got ready just to make sure we had everything and we had a moment to say "hi", give each other a hug, and then a high-five. The reception was held in one of the resort restaurants. It was so beautiful with high ceilings and open air windows. After dinner we started the dancing and when it was time to vacate anyone still wanting to party with us was invited to the beach. We had cigars, more drinks and made our way to a club in town. After partying the night away we headed home around 3am and finished off the night with a stop for some street meat! It was the perfect celebration and when we returned home we had a mini stay-cation/honeymoon touring the Prince Edward County wineries and then a huge reception party with everyone in the Toronto.

PS: You can read about our engagement here, our planning here, and my shower here.
































































These wonderful photos were taken by Gina Francesca Photography

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