My wedding 💍

Yes, it was a few months ago. Let’s pretend I’m not a massive procrastinator and get on with the topic at hand:

I married my Markus on September 15, 2018! 💕

The wedding took place in my home village, near the rapids called Storforsen. I’ve blogged about that place before. In the rocky landscape by the river is a little wooden stage that we used. We’re not religious, so the ceremony was secular with the local municipal commissioner as our officiant. Afterwards, we had dinner and a party at a community house in the village.

As a whole, we did things very casually. A laid-back rustic wedding for laid-back rustic people.

Traditional wedding attire isn’t our style, so I got our clothes from Etsy and EMP. My bridal bouquet was made from branches off a rowan tree in my parent’s yard – and so were most of the other decorations. Dinner was a home-made buffé where people could help themselves to whatever they wanted. We had Spotify provide the music. There was no dress code for the guests, so people showed up as themselves.

And you know what? It was perfect. 😊

It was I who insisted on doing it in September because of the beautiful autumn colours, but that meant a lot of worrying about the weather. Actually, that was the only aspect of the wedding I was seriously nervous about.

This far north September is an unreliable month. It can be 25°C and blazing sunshine but it can also be 0°C and light snow. We decided that if shit really hit the fan we would move the ceremony indoors, but that would’ve been such a bummer. For me, one of the most important things about the whole wedding was the location. To get married there by the rapids.

Of course, we woke up to heavy grey skies and cold drizzle on the day of the wedding… The rain kept coming and going all day, and the rest of us started getting worried, but for some reason, my dad wasn’t.

All day he kept reassuring us that it would be alright, it wouldn’t rain during the ceremony, he knew that. An hour before the show, the skies turned dark and it started POURING down! Just crazy heavy rain. And STILL dad was adamant that no, we wouldn’t have to move anything, the rain would pass.

Well, it turns out my dad was right. Mere minutes before we were to begin it did stop raining. Completely stopped. Like magic. And immediately after the ceremony, the clouds disappeared altogether and the sun started shining.

People were talking about our luck with the elements all evening. I now suspect dad is secretly a weather wizard or some kind of cloud psychic.

The most touching part was seeing all the people come together for us.

Our parents put in so much effort to help out! My step-mum Maria did like 99% of the food. The only thing we bought ready were the cakes. Markus’s parents helped make the decorations. My parent’s neighbours also helped with food and setting things up, and their daughter did my hair. All of them helped drive things and people back and forth and with cleaning up the day after.

Our friend Peter offered to be our Toastmaster, as a gift. It wasn’t his first time running a wedding and he’s a natural speaker, so he did a remarkable job. He also sang and played the guitar at the ceremony.

Another friend, Carina, took all the pictures – also as a gift. She’s a professional photographer, so we got some great photos!

And all our friends being there… The only guests living in the village are my parents, so everyone else had several hours to drive to get there. I still can’t believe these people like us enough to waste a whole weekend + drive all that way + spend money on hotels and whatnot just to come to our silly wedding. ❤

It was the perfect day, really. So much love and laughter and beauty. It couldn’t have gone any better!