Wedding Date on Dec 17, 2018

How did we meet? Pat and I met our freshman year of high school in our 9th grade science class in 2006, we were 14. We were very good friends for the first few months that we knew each other, so much so that Pat even helped his friend as me to homecoming. But by December of that year we were inseparable and Pat ended up asking me out. We dated for almost 2 years and broke up at the beginning of our Junior year of high school in 2008. We stayed apart for over 9 years before reconnecting in December of 2017 and picking up where we left off. How did we get engaged? We actually never got engaged! We bought a house together in September of 2018 and around October of 2018 we found out Pat's grandfather was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. He was a minister and we knew we wanted him to marry us one day. We thought about it for a long time and decided we wanted him to marry us while he was still in good health and decided we wanted to get married on our high school anniversary in December (12/17/18) and the rest is history. I didn't need a ring or an engagement to marry him. We did buy wedding bands though to exchange the day of. (and he did surprise me with a diamond ring however a year later....well I actually spoiled his plans to "propose" by looking at the insurance bill that had added ring insurance on LOL... still super sweet though) Was there anything unique or surprising about our wedding? Our wedding was the epitome of unique. We got married on a monday afternoon. The reason being soley to have the 12/17 anniversary date since that was our original anniversary date from high school. (Also turns out weddings are super cheap on Monday afternoons). We planned it in 3 weeks with the help of my mom and the wedding planner at our venue. It was very low stress! Very fun to plan. In the end we had about 50 of our very closest friends and family in attendance. Our wedding was from 1pm-4pm so very short and sweet. Ceremony, signing papers and cocktails while they flipped the room, plated meals rights away, and then dancing and cupcakes. It was a work night so some people lingered around the hotel bar for awhile, but we were home before 8pm and went to work the next day! When all was said and done our wedding probably costed around 5k. Which was incredible! We always tell people there's no need to go broke for a wedding! We actually took most of our wedding pictures 2 days before the actual wedding. So we got all dressed up and went shooting with our photographer in downtown rochester and at Rochester high school. We did this for a few reasons: 1. We wanted our dog, Briggs, in the pictures (most importantly) 2. We didn't tell many people we were getting married other than guests, so we surprised people with an announcement picture on social media the day of 3. We didn't want to leave our reception since it was so small and intimate to begin with. We did take some pictures the day of too, but most of our favorites are from the Saturday before! (the sunset, middle of the street with the christmas lights pics, ones with the doggo, ones at Rochester High School) We also didn't do a rehearsal or anything. The day of we just winged it. We laugh because we had no idea what we were doing. Pat kept walking everyone down the aisle until at one point he walked back and he was staring at me and my dad and my dad goes, "What are you doing? You're supposed to be up there" LOL. We didn't have wedding parties. We decided to have one of each of our best friends stand up next to us, wearing whatever they wanted during the ceremony. One of my sweetest memories of my entire wedding was my daddy daughter dance. We didn't plan to do dances, let alone have songs picked out, so at one point our performer announced the daddy daughter dance and I was confused but proceeded to find my dad who whisked me away while singing along to, "Daddy's Little Girl", by Al Martino. My dad had contacted the singer without any of us knowing and asked him to have that song available to play. That was hands down was the most moving moment of my wedding. Vendors Our photographer was Joslyn Duncan (Lovelle Photography). She actually did my bouquet as well since she is aspiring to get into florals as well! Our singer was Matt Walch who sang a lot of jazz (mostly Frank Sinatra) and Christmas music per our request! He was fantastic. After a few cocktails my Dad grabbed a microphone and took over his show for a bit LOL. Our venue including food, drinks, cupcakes, decorations was the Royal Park Hotel. They were amazing. They had everything taken care of. We didn't need to bring anything in from elsewhere. To this day, our guests still talk about those cupcakes! Videographer: Tyler James Motion Picture The reason I reached out to him was truly because I had seen footage he posted from a wedding he shot and I made a mental note to myself that when Pat and I got married, he would be the one to do the video. So when it happened earlier than planned, I actually wasn't panicked because I knew exactly who I wanted! That was one of the only vendors I knew I wanted from the beginning.