Wedding Day - The Ceremony

 

 

It's been a few months (err 8 but who's counting?) since our wedding and though I totally meant to do a recap soon after, married life simply got in the way :) But I'm finally ready to spill some details. Though it's incredibly hard to sum up how I felt throughout our wedding day I'll try, so here goes..

So the morning of the wedding I woke up pretty early, around 6 am and it felt kind of like the first day of school. I was excited, nervous and anxious all at the same time. My family greeted me warmly and force fed me breakfast which was great considering I didn't eat again till hours later. lol. I then felt this calm buzz, I felt at ease and everything was happening on time but also anxious looking forward to the day's events. I mentally tried to keep reminding myself to be in the moment and savor every second. Hair and makeup went smoothly with me laughing and joking trying to keep my mood light. And then before I knew it, it was time to put my dress on. Eek!! That's when reality started to hit and I began to process that I WAS GETTING MARRIED THAT DAY.

After that things started to move very quickly with the arrival of the groomsmen and very importantly my groom! hehe We chose to do a first look prior to our pre-ceremony Polish blessing and I'm so glad we did. Patryk was facing away from me and I walked up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and it felt so damn good to see his huge grin and be wrapped in his arms. I naturally had to ask what he thought about the dress (the anticipation was killing me!) and he of course loved it, or rather me in it. :) From that moment on the whole day was kind of in fast forward mode... I remember everything but sadly it is true what they say, your wedding day is kind of a blur. But a good one. Well mostly lol jk ;)

During the blessing we were all nervous. Looking back I thought maybe we should have done some things differently (in all the frenzy we forgot to kneel oops) but we were all so nervous and really had no idea what to do considering no one had ever done it before. In the end, it was more important to include this tradition rather than executing it perfectly so it served its purpose :)

After our blessing we all hopped on the party bus and made our way to the church for the ceremony. The mood in the bus was definitely light and fun, and as we got closer I started to feel more nervous. Funnily enough all my worrying about being late were unnecessary since we showed up about 5 minutes early!! Quite miraculous I have to say. Once we got the go ahead to leave the bus and get lined up to go inside for the ceremony I started to get even more anxious... Our awesome wedding coordinator swooped in and got everyone lined up and then one by one each pair started walking in. And then it was my turn! After our adorable little flower girl made her way down we shut the doors to prepare for my entrance. At the rehearsal the day before we had practiced a sign with our priest to signal for me to come in. Naturally, somehow this got mixed up resulting in a very tense several minutes (which to me seemed like hours) until finally our coordinator ran upstairs to signal the band to start playing and my dad and I nervously walked in. (Funny sidenote: I later talked to some wedding guests and mentioned this little mix up to explain my delay in entering fully expecting them to tell me they hadn't even noticed. I was wrong. Everyone totally noticed and even joked about me being a runaway bride. Haha oops! In the confusion I also forgot to put down my veil before I walked in, I realized once I got to the front of the church, again oops! What they say really IS true things DO go wrong on your wedding day and you have to just go with the flow!) Regardless, once those doors opened it was surreal. I felt like I was floating outside of my body, kind of like watching a movie and not really thinking about the fact that it's YOU that this is happening to. The rest of the ceremony went off without a hitch and then it was time for our vows. We had a traditional Polish Catholic wedding, so yes it was definitely on the long side. Needless to say, once we finally got to our vows I was excited to get going with them! This part of the ceremony is when I kind of floated back down to earth. Throughout our mass I even whispered to Patryk "don't you feel like you're watching a movie?" and he answered "yes!" hehe Looks like we were both thinking how surreal the entire experience was! But when it came time to say the vows, I have never felt so completely present. Cliche as it sounds I really felt like everything around us stopped and it was just me and him, sharing this incredible moment together. My eyes were fixed on Patryk's and everything else became a big blur as I focused only on him and recited my vows. And then it was finally official. We were husband and wife! It was a great feeling :) It wasn't perfect but it was totally us. Sure there were some mishaps — in addition to the signal mix-up during the ring exchange Patryk accidentally gave me his right hand (so the ring didn't fit)! And then my ring didn't fit either, since my fingers had swollen due to the stress of everything. But in the end we were MARRIED. Holy crap!! It took me a long time to post something about this because I guess I was still processing it all. I still can't believe how much time has passed since the wedding though it seems like only yesterday. My dad tells me that this is how your life goes by, especially after you have kids so I suppose I better get used to it. Anyway all in all, the wedding day was great. Went by all too quickly and some minor things went wrong, etc. etc. But it was our wedding day and in the end that's all that mattered :)

Photos by the talented Delbarr Moradi