Just married

And here we are… married!

Because the wedding was small we didn’t have to worry about too much beforehand but there was still a little hustle and bustle.  Tuesday night Mike left work a little early to stop at the tux store to get his rented tux and I left work a little early to catch a bus to the alterations store to pick up my dress since I had to have a few alterations done (the danger of buying a wedding dress online I guess!).  That meant lots of time on the bus (for me) and lots of time driving in rush hour traffic (for Mike) and lots of time in the rain for both of us because Seattle weather was not being cooperative!  🙂  Mike and I both got back to the apartment around 6pm and had to stop to get a BUNCH of packages from the front office!  More wedding shower gifts!  🙂  We had to borrow the apartment building’s dolly to get them all carted up to our apartment, and even then it took two trips.  A little overwhelmed, we stood in the apartment surrounded by big boxes and a big red dolly.  We decided to run down the street and get a quick pizza dinner since our kitchen and hallway were taken up with the boxes.  Mike and I sat in the restaurant trying to decide how to spend the rest of the evening.

“Is there anything we should do or talk about or anything before we get married tomorrow?” I asked.

Mike blinked.  “Well.  I think we should eat dinner,” he said matter-of-factly.  Apparently he wasn’t in a reflective, philosophical mood over the whole thing.  🙂

I went to bed after trying my dress on to make sure it still fit after the alterations.  Mike and I made a few jokes about what we’d have to do if the alterations had been screwed up (i.e. get a ‘bride of frankenstein’ costume from the Halloween store down the street, get married in a prom dress, etc).  Mike stayed up later getting some of the boxes out of the hallway and the kitchen since they were in the way.

I woke up early on 12/12/12 to the sound of my alarm going off.  Time to get up and head downtown to get my hair done.  I got downtown around 7:30am because I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going to park, but as it turned out there were plenty of spaces that early.  I parked and headed to the salon in the misty rain.  At 8:05am I was in the stylist’s chair.  I get along really well with my hair stylist so we chatted the entire hour and a half that she spent washing and styling my hair.  Just as I was beginning to worry about the time because I had a makeup appointment at a different location at 10am, she announced that she was finished.  Exciting!  On to the make-up!  I’d never actually had make-up done for me before, but I’d heard that it helped pictures turn out better and I figured since that was all our family and friends were going to get to see of the wedding I’d better make sure the pictures were good!  I drove straight from the hair salon to the salon where I was getting my makeup done.  I had to drive four floors down in the Pacific Place Mall parking garage to find parking, but eventually I did and I made it to the salon at 9:56am.  Perfect timing!  I got inside and spent half an hour chatting with the girl doing my make-up and then at 10:30am I was ready to head back to the apartment for our (approximately) noon wedding.  I called Mike on the way and learned that his friend the photographer was already there and that Mike was just getting the tux put on.

We only planned on two witnesses (one for me and one for Mike) and the minister and his wife.

My witness was a previous coworker of mine named Stani who was really influential on me when I fist started at Amazon.  She really helped me grow both personally and professionally, so she seemed like a perfect choice and she was excited when I asked her if she would be willing to be a witness.  She showed up at our apartment building with several wedding gifts (which I had assured her she didn’t need to get) and a loaf of gluten-free bread and a little jar of honey.  She told me that traditionally in Bulgarian weddings the mother of the groom dips bread in honey and serves a piece to the bride and a piece to the groom after the ceremony.  The honey symbolizes the sweetness of their new life together.  I loved it!  🙂  She also brought a camera and busily snapped pictures here and there throughout the ceremony.

Mike’s witness was a coworker friend of his who is also a professional photographer (and also named Mike but whom I’ll abbreviate as ‘M’ in this post to avoid confusion).  Both of the Mike’s had the same sarcastic sense of humor, so it was really fun to hear them interact.  Since he is also a professional photographer we also paid him to take wedding pictures for us.  In an unfortunate turn of events, he sprained his ankle badly the week before the wedding so he had a little cart that he was able to place his foot on so that he could wheel around and not need to use crutches, but the poor guy still had decreased mobility.  However, he still seemed to get a lot of wedding pictures.  Mike and I are looking forward to seeing them!

The pastor was from a church about half an hour south of Seattle.  I found him while googling Christian wedding officiants in Seattle, and Mike and I had gone to visit his church the week before.  We hit it off with him really well, so we felt very comfortable with him performing our wedding ceremony.  We told him it would be the easiest ceremony he’d ever performed, but since he performed wedding ceremonies when he was in the army he said we wouldn’t be quite the easiest.  Apparently he’s married people while in his pajamas.  For our wedding he came dressed in a suit though.  🙂

M showed up around 11am to take preliminary pictures so I hurried to finish getting ready and then went down to the community room of our apartment building where we were going to gather before the ceremony.  Mike and I were hoping to have the ceremony on the roof of the apartment building, but it was very dependent on the weather.  It was raining lightly when I drove back from getting hair and make-up done so I was skeptical it would actually be dry enough to do it up there.  I met M and Mike in the community room and saw that my soon-to-be husband Mike looked very handsome in his rented tux. However, he was a little unhappy because he was really thirsty and there were no cups in the community room.  He went off to find some, and my friend Stani showed up while he was gone.  She had on a gorgeous berry-colored dress that I just loved!  I chatted with Stani and M for about twenty minutes before Mike came back with about 20 cups… definitely overkill for a wedding that was going to consist of six people total.  🙂  Although the wedding officiant hadn’t shown up yet even though it was almost noon and I was starting to get a little concerned.  Hopefully he had our event on a calendar or something so that he didn’t forget it!  Mike started a line of jokes around the wedding officiant not showing up.  Anyone up for getting a 5-minute license to officiate weddings on the internet??  I was looking up the pastor’s cell phone number to call him, but just then he and his wife arrived.  What a relief.  A bride, a groom, a pastor, and two witnesses.  All the required components of a ceremony.  🙂

Everyone was up for doing the ceremony on the roof even if there was a little rain so we headed up.  The rain had stopped, so even though the floor was still damp we didn’t have any rain coming down on our heads.  I knew it would be chilly (mid-40’s), but we wanted to do the ceremony on the roof and get pictures taken on the roof so we just put up with the cold.  It helped that the ceremony was really short.

The ceremony was really nice.  The pastor started by talking about marriage and its significance from God and then we repeated our vows after him while poor M wheeled around on his cart trying to get shots from all angles.

Afterwards, the pastor pronounced us husband and wife and suggested that we should move off of the roof since I was starting to get goosebumps.  🙂

Back in the community room, Stani gave us each a piece of her bread dipped in honey as part of the Bulgarian tradition and then we signed all of the marriage paperwork.  Then the pastor and his wife had to head back home because they had to go to Wednesday night prayer meeting at their church.  After they left Mike and I took our two witnesses out to lunch at a nice seafood restaurant named McCormick & Schmick’s.  That was the first place Mike and I went after Mike’s plane landed in Seattle when he moved here (not this specific restaurant, but one of their other Seattle locations).  So it held some significance for us.

We’re sending out thanks to all of you for your thoughts, prayers, and support, as well as your presence with us in spirit on the 12th!