Our Wedding Day

Seven years ago today I married the worlds more amazing man. Surrounded by friends and family we said “I Do” on a BEAUTIFUL Octobers day in San Martin, California. Our life together has surprised me at every turn, but I can’t imagine being on this crazy journey with anyone else. He’s my perfect teammate.

We started dating May 10^th, 2005. We attended the same church at the time and while I knew of him I didn’t know him. Each year our church put on a full-scale Easter drama and in 2005 the stars aligned—Adrian was cast to play a Roman soldier and I was put in charge of suiting the soldiers up in their armor. We spent a lot of time together over a three-month span and when the drama was over we realized that we didn’t want our time together to end.

Funny side note: a few months before we became “official”, my sister was in town and came to church with me to get a peek of the stud muffin I’d been going on and on about for the past few weeks. Adrian walked down the side aisle, I pointed him out and she turned to me with a devilish grin on her face and said, “holy crap, he looks like a Greek god!” From that moment on, his official nickname became “Greek god” (I can practically hear his eyes rolling as I type this out! Oh how we torture the poor guy).

We dated for six years before getting married. We were both in university at the time and wanted to finish our studies. We graduated and got engaged in 2010 and I went to work planning our perfect wedding day. I was ABSOLUTELY one of those little girls that started planning her wedding at 10-years-old. By the time I was eighteen I had four complete wedding options planned—Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. In my defense, I’m a party planning fanatic…always have been. I started working with a local event planner when I was about twenty. I was in school at the time and didn’t want to do it full time or even as a career, but I would manage events on the weekends, so I could be exposed to the wonderful world of weddings. One of the weddings I was managing was at Clos La Chance winery in San Martin. I pulled up to the main building where the wedding would take place and it was love at first sight. Everything about this little winery was perfect! I knew right then and there that I would have my wedding at Clos La Chance when the time came.

Fast forward almost ten years. Adrian has just proposed and it’s time to start planning the wedding of the century. Of course, Prince William and Kate Middleton also got married in 2011 which meant I had some tough competition…but never one to back down from a challenge, I set to work. It had been years since I set up that wedding at the winery, so I decided to take a look at a few other options. I was leaning towards City Hall in San Francisco when I decided it was time to revisit the winery. I set up a walk-through and drove down with Adrian and my parents. It was just as stunning as I remembered it to be! This was it. This was where we were getting married.

The rest of the details fell right into place. Adrian and I are HUGE readers, so I knew I wanted to go with a book theme. Our save the date’s and wedding invitations were storybook design, programs were mini books, table numbers were names of our favorite authors, and favors were individually chosen books.

I didn’t use a lot of flowers…actually I used very few. Our florist made bouquets for me, my sister and my niece. Adrian, the best man, my dad and our Pastor got boutonnieres and my mom and my mother-in-law got wrist corsages. Other than that, there were four small arrangements in bud vases on each table and a bouquet to toss. I wanted CANDLES and I had candles for DAYS! It was romantic and added just the most perfect glow.

In keeping with the book theme, I found a wedding cake bakery willing to create individual flourless chocolate cakes designed to look like ink pots. Each cake was finished with a pheasant feather to look like a quill. She also created a full-sized cake for us to cut…the bottom two tires were foam, but it looked real. She did such an amazing job. To this day I think the little cakes were my favorite part. On our one-year wedding anniversary she made us a replica of the top tier and we went back to the winery for a picnic. It was perfect!

Funny story about my dress: My first stop was to a shop called Trudy’s in Campbell. I sat down with the lady, told her what I was looking for and she came out with a couple options for me to try on. The very first dress I tried on was PERFECT! I felt like I’d found my perfect dress, but my mom kept saying, “you can’t only try ONE dress. We have to see more.” So, we did…more and more and more and more. Over the next two weeks I must have tried on two hundred dresses when AT LAST I found it…the second perfect dress. I was in the dress, in front of the mirror, examining it from every angle when my sister said, “isn’t that the dress Amber wore for her wedding?” IT WAS! I almost bought my cousins wedding dress! I went back to Trudy’s, tried on the first dress again, and KNEW it was MY dress. It was the first dress I tried on and the last dress…with only three million dresses in between. It was perfect!

The entire day went off without a hitch. Everything turned out exactly the way I’d hoped and dreamed. But it flew by! I remember back when I was working with that wedding planner she always told her brides to remember to look around and take mental pictures throughout the day because it’ll go by in a blink. Thankfully, I remembered her advise because she wasn’t kidding…the wedding took months to plan, but it was over in what felt like minutes. I remembered to look around and take lots of mental pictures. I remember lots and lots of wonderful things about our special day. One of my favorite memories was my first dance as a married woman…not with my new husband (he doesn’t dance), but with my beautiful niece. I remember her little face like it was yesterday…she was dancing her little heart out and she had the look of concentration to prove it. Auntie’s girl.

I only have one complaint from that fairytale day…Adrian didn’t get a haircut (*angry eyes*). Have you ever heard of a guy NOT getting a haircut for his wedding day? I tell him all the time that he ruined my wedding pictures! He didn’t really ruin them, well at least not the ones without him, and when he looks at the ones he IS in, he says he regrets his decision. I guess I’ll forgive him.

While our wedding day was meticulously planned, our life together has been anything but predictable—in seven short years we’ve moved six times throughout four different states. We’re on an adventure together and I’ve grown to LOVE that unpredictability. If we’re together, it’ll be a grand time no matter what happens or where we are…I wouldn’t change a thing about “Us”. I asked Adrian one time if he’d marry me again, he said “Yes” but that we’d elope! So, I guess a big 10^th anniversary vow renewal party is off the table, huh?