Love and Marriage

Are you only here for the quilts? Then please skip this post, we’ll be back to the usual programming shortly! This post is about my wedding and honeymoon.

I am, it turns out, not really a wedding person.  At least not as a bride.  Being a guest can be fun if there’s good music and a dance floor, but I’ve never been interested in being The Bride.  I’m not interested in being  up on display for everyone, doing something that is both so intensely personal and banal.  I like attention for things that I have thought or that I know. 

I would happily have gone to the
courthouse and been done with it, but Jon wanted more, so we worked out
something that was good for us both.  We had a small ceremony (12 guests) and big party (150 guests).   I designed the save-the-dates and invitations (Jon helped).

We were married at Jon’s mom’s
house, by Jon’s dad, in front of our parents and siblings and their
families. Jon wrote my vows and I wrote
his; the vows thing (that he would write mine and I write his) started
as a joke, after a look at standard vows in a book from The Knot showed we didn’t really have the same leanings.  We decided to think about what we wanted the other person to promise, and we were doing this is a really silly way, but it ended up being serious and working beautifully. 

As you can see from the pictures, Jon wore a tux and I wore an emerald green gown. My hair was in its usual
style, but blown out properly by the lady who has cut my hair for 5+
years. My make-up was the usual sunscreen + quick swipe of eyeliner and
mascara. I wore a mushroom jade necklace that once belonged to my Grandma. 

We rented out a 100+ year old barn for our reception. This barn has
been used largely for square-dancing parties for the last few decades
and has a simple charm that just doesn’t need additional decoration. We loved it at first sight.
Our immediate family met up at the barn early for photos. As guests
arrived, each took a photo with Jon and me. We ate a buffet dinner in
the barn’s lower level, which Jon’s dad had decorated. Then we partied.
We had a live band and an open bar and a few toasts. Jon and I did our
first dance to Amazed, but with my cousin Kelly and Uncle Ken doing
the vocals so that it was in both a man’s and a woman’s voice. Jon and
his mom did a dance. We had some additional songs that family sang
with the band, each of which was an absolute highlight.  Everything was
awesome and simple and fun.

We skipped a lot of stuff. We skipped flowers, decorations, having “colors,” bridal party, wedding shower, bride/father dance, garter throwing, bouquet throwing, party favors, cake cutting, morning-after brunch, guest book, photobooth, the white dress, veil, and heels.   We splurged on real flatware and plates, the best food the caterer had to offer, a live band, and ensuring the bar didn’t run out.  It was a good day: we were happy and married and it all worked out.

ANYWAY.
It turns out that while I’m not much of a wedding person, I am totally a honeymoon person. Jon and I waited 6 months to go on our honeymoon (this was largely out of necessity given our work commitments). And then we went to England and Germany. We had the best time. 

The England leg was required; my Mom is English and her entire family is in England.   While they would have loved to come to the wedding, it is expensive and the thing about weddings is that you don’t really get to spend much time with the bride and groom. So, the plan from pretty early on was that Jon and I would go to England on our honeymoon and have a visit of a few days; my parents paid for our flight as a wedding gift.   We went to London first, where we shook off the jet lag, did a few touristy things, ate well, and I even stopped at the Village Haberdashery to teach a quilt class!

From London, we went to Gloucestershire (about 100 miles/ 150 kilometers) to spend time with family. We tried to time it for right after lambing season (my Aunt Gill and Uncle Graham keep sheep.) These lambs are about 6 weeks old.

I love visiting with my English family and we had a great time. However, I have to say that we didn’t really feel like we were on our honeymoon until we were in Germany. 

Here’s the part where everyone asks “Why Germany?”
Answer: (1) We wanted to go somewhere that was new to both of us. This was especially important to me since I know the ropes in England pretty well and would inevitably take the lead there and be more comfortable there…I didn’t want to have to lead (or follow) on the second leg of our trip.

 (2) This scene: 

When Jon and I first started dating, one of the things we did was watch Season 1 of BBC’s Sherlock together. We were watching them via PBS’s Masterpiece broadcast, so they had a few advertisements before they started, one of which was for Viking River Cruises and contained an image like the one above. We would both ooo and aaah at the landscape and basically said,”we want to go to there.” 

Every week, as the new episodes aired, we saw an image of the river and admired it. It didn’t take too long to figure out that the scene was from the cruise along the Rhine and specifically the stretch of river between Koblenz and Mainz, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Vague travel plans were born. Which became actual plans when we planned our honeymoon. We didn’t do the organized cruise; we’re both pretty capable travelers who like to set our own pace. 

We did 2 days in Cologne.  Then we took the train to Koblenz, followed by the ferry to Bacharach. 
After two days in Bacharach (which included a train ride to Oberwesel and hiking from Oberwesel to San Goar) we zipped down the river to Boppard (which included ferrying back and forth from the Marksburg castle–which is a remarkably intact castle that dates back to the middle ages) and finally, we spent a day in Bonn. We saw many castles, took many walks, ate beautiful food, partook of the local wine and beer and cheese, and generally had a magnificent time.

It was heaven. We loved every minute. For an introverted homebody, I sure do love to travel.  So, that was the wedding and honeymoon scoop!  Tune in next time for the quilt the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild gave us as a wedding present!

This seems related, and is definitely beautiful and worth watching: