List #43: How Our Wedding Was Different

Laughing during the ceremony. Photo by Aki Mimoto.

This week's Listicles topic, brought to you by Stasha of Northwest Mommy, is 10 things wedding. I wasn't sure what to write for this one, but I thought I'd go with something about our wedding, as it was almost exactly nine years ago: September 23, 2003. We had a pretty non-traditional wedding, so I decided to write about ten ways that it was different from the Hollywood movie white wedding.

1. It was a planned elopement. We told everyone when & where we were getting married, but only invited the officiant (a friend's father who was a minister, though it was a secular ceremony), two friend/photographers to the ceremony.
2. We hiked for several hours to get to the location where we had our ceremony: on top of a mountain (the Third Peak of the Stawamus Chief).
3. My 'wedding dress' was a running top & a trekking skirt from Mountain Equipment Co-op. Neither were white or ivory.
4. Neither of us proposed to the other, we just eventually agreed to get married. 
5. I wasn't interested in a diamond engagement ring either. We just got simple gold bands (mine's white gold, his yellow) & had the jeweller do a hammered finish on them.
6. We went on our honeymoon before we had a reception. We took a Modo car to the Gulf Islands for ten days.
7. We invited about three dozen people to our reception, held in the common room of our housing co-op. We decorated it with the help of some friends & the room booking cost a grand total of $10.
8. We didn't have a cake, but instead made a tiered stand for a few dozen cupcakes, decorated by Oliver & my sister.
9. We didn't serve a meal at the reception, having local wine & cheese (we got kilos of it from Costco) instead.
10. For wedding favours, I hand painted a wine glass for each guest to use at the reception, then take home with them.

Why Monday lists? Reading the lovely Chloe's blog, Tea Swamp Park, I found an idea I had to 'steal': a list of all her Halloween costumes, with quite a few photos. She got the idea from Hula Seventy's List Project. I've decided to do the weekly lists for a year that Hula Seventy is doing. 

Tea Swamp Park & Hula Seventy are not the only ones doing lists, however. Click on the Listicles badge to the left to check out NorthWestMommy's list & 'assignment' for next week.

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