Andrea and Steve - Cuvier Park, La Jolla

Andrea and Steve were the first couple with whom I initially "met" over Skype.  Skype is now my best friend when it comes to working with out-of-town couples and destination weddings!  This awesome couple was living in the UK at the time, in London, although she is from the US and he is from Canada.  Being North Americans amongst Brits is definitely part of what brought them together!

Well, when they realized that I had lived in London for a year in 2002-03, and had been back and forth there on business trips many times over the five years prior to that, so I knew all too well what life was like there as a Yank, it felt to us all like fate, that they should find me for their planned San Diego wedding!

This wedding was only for about 10 guests - just their immediate family.  Such an intimate celebration!  When it is so small, I have been tempted to not include as much of the stories of the relationship, but I realized that that would be a mistake.  Instead, I focus it more on certain questions and certain pieces, as even our closest friends and family members don't know as much about our relationship, and how we see it, as we (and they) think.  Now, in this case, since their entire relationship had developed when overseas, and hence their families only saw them in snippets on vacations, their families thanked me for helping them to get to know the relationship better.  I loved that!

Since it was so intimate, we decided to include a ceremony that I find so meaningful - a ring warming ceremony.  In a nutshell, we send the rings around to everyone, early in the ceremony, so that everyone has a chance to "warm" them with their thoughts, prayers, wishes, blessings...  And then the rings come back around to us in time for the ring exchange portion of the ceremony.  It's such a neat thing to do!  But really only possible with small weddings - not enough time to get the rings all around to a 100 person wedding, that's for sure!

Andrea and Steve also wrote their own vows - and boy, did they write great ones!  They were very wonderful, personal promises that they were making to each other, and we all loved it!  Yes, they got me a bit choked up too, when they emailed them to me!

** NOTE:  It's funny that I almost feel a need to mention that there was no religious components in this wedding, even though approximately 75% of my weddings have no religious component or wording in them.  Maybe by not mentioning it in my post about the wedding, it is clear? **

So glad that fate brought this couple my way, as it was such a pleasure to work with them and create something so personal together.

I am thrilled that Phill and Melanie of Goodnickels Photography were the ones Andrea and Steve chose, as they did a wonderful job, and they are so generous about sharing their work with me!  We have worked together since, and will do so a few more times this year already...  And here is their blog post about this wedding as well, showing a completely different side of the celebration:  Andrea and Steve - Wedding.

Aivi & Sven - Ponte Winery, Temecula

I am going to hop around between weddings in 2010 and in 2009 to showcase some of the great couples and neat weddings I've been lucky enough to be involved with.

Aivi and Sven contacted me only two weeks before their wedding, through the terrific Jennifer Molloy of Amore Events.  But we were still able to work together to create a custom ceremony in the 10 days between meeting and wedding!  They are such a loving couple, and that clearly came through!

They planned a very small and intimate wedding at the beautiful Ponte Winery in Temecula.  The ceremony was out on the lawn, with a gorgeous view of the vines and the nearby hills (see picture below), and the dinner was in the barrel room afterward - such a neat and rare experience, to eat a meal in a barrel room!

For their ceremony, they wrote their own beautiful vows - as Aivi put it, "we aren't ones for big airy words - it feels the best to write our own as we can say what we really mean,"  - they were so meaningful and so real.  Everyone loved them!  They chose three neat and different readings, from different cultures and traditions - appropriate since they both were born and raised, and have lived, in multiple countries around the world.  And, since it was such a small group, they loved my suggestion for a ring warming ceremony, which meant so much to all there.

Thanks, Aivi and Sven, for making me a part of something so beautiful!

For me, it's all about making your wedding your own...

Cheers,
Bethel

** Pictures by Jessica Ruvulcaba **