Weddings. We love them. We love to hate them.
As the child of a preacher who also led worship and played the piano, I sang at many, many weddings. Being a wedding singer was heightened during my time as an artist, where there were periods (during in-season) that I performed at two weddings a Saturday every week for around two months at a time.
I’d seen people declare their love and pledge their allegiance to a partner, saying they would stop a bullet and yet the following year turn around and want to kill their partner. It’s safe to say that I attended so many weddings (big, small, pretentious, simple) that I knew what I didn’t want.
Mario, my husband — had seen his fair share of weddings on his side as well. And, well, we both knew we were going to do exactly what we wanted.
Making The Engagement
Contrary to popular belief (not sure what the popular belief is), while we had been friends for 7-years, Mario and I didn’t rush into dating; we spent a year doing the following:
- Praying separately and speaking to each other;
- Seeking out the wisdom of our church leaders and accountability leaders;
- Seeing psychologists to help us work through our crap;
Eventually, with a lot of peace in our hearts, we decided to date (slash) get engaged on the 29th of November and made it official on the 1st of December when we told the world.
The process mentioned above was catapulted into motion by my father, but that’s a story for another day.
As Christians, who also believe in honouring God with our purity (i.e. no sex before marriage), we felt it would be best practice not to drag out our dating (slash) engagement and get married. We had been friends for 7-years with the purest of intentions (we didn’t even hug or touch for the majority of our friendship, we kissed for the first time on the 7th of December), and now that we were sure that we wanted to be together, why not get married? So, the 13th of March was decided for the wedding date — it was two days after my 29th birthday and enough time to determine how we would celebrate our union.
PSSSST. Mario was my first kiss. And, his kiss is the best kiss I ever had. No regrets.
Making The Wedding
Like many other couples during this time, COVID made it easy for us to cut through the fat. But not without a grieving process. Grieving everything we thought we had ever wanted for ourselves.
In the end, we decided the following was most important to us:
- Marriage to each other, before God;
- Capturing the event (we are both not fans of the traditional engagement and wedding pictures — and wanted something different);
- Living life together as one unit;
- Celebration with our friends and family in the conventional sense;
Even though I had already bought my wedding dress by then — another story for another day, we decided that we would have the celebration when it was safe for our international family to travel — whether that’s in a year or two, or even three. We’re okay with that. It’s about our union, after all.
Mario and I align on most things. Don’t get me wrong; we are fundamentally different people — we process, communicate, and have very different love languages, but we align on a lot. There’s a lot about our relationship that is “relieving” for both of us. We are each other’s safe place and solace, having both grown up largely misunderstood with thinking processes that are not the same as the family of our births.
We didn’t deliberate about how we would say our vows for too long; here’s the down-low:
- Location? A studio — like our Instagram references — the most controlled area. We used Studio on Raats; I had worked with them before, and other than being reasonably priced, they are just lovely people!
- Time? Morning pleaseeeeee.
- Photographer? The hardest decision. As a photographer himself, Mario is super picky (SIDE EYE). We eventually settled on Xavier Vahed because 1. We’ve worked with him, and he’s a studio lighting genius, 2. Vahed is a nice person. We like him around, 3. He’s black.
- Wardrobe? We knew what colour scheme we loved and one day had the brainwave of approaching our friend Lukhanyo to dress us. That was the most lovely experience — we are so privileged;
- Makeup? Another no-brainer — my beautiful friend and colleague Kristin Baker took it away;
- Live Stream? An afterthought after family begged us;
- Cake? As soon as we announced our engagement, our friends offered to buy the cake for our wedding. We took them up on their offer and ordered a unique beauty from our faves, Sweet Lion Heart!
Disclaimer: Being adults who fully support themselves, Mario and I had complete freedom to do what we wanted (within reason). I highly recommend getting married at the ripe age of 29, 32, or 42 for that matter.
Making The Wedding, Part Two
Once again, for both Mario and I, living the life God has predestined for us together is much more important than the actual wedding. In this vein, we did a lot of things to prepare for our life together. Read about that journey soon!
Making The Day
Our attendance list? The officiator (my dad), a witness each, the photographer, our live stream facilitators (my sisters), hair and makeup and (at the last minute) my grandparents. Those were the only people allowed into the studio with us. Everyone else would join us on a Livestream.
Generally, if we weren’t hiking or serving at church, it was Mario and I’s tradition to meet each other at Espresso Lab for coffee at 10 am every Saturday and then go about our day.
We thus decided that we wanted our Saturday to go as usual and planned a coffee stop at our friends, Espresso Lab, first thing (8 am) with our family before making our way to the studio for the ceremony at 10 am.
Anyway, our ceremony lasted as long as I took to do my driver’s license test — 20 minutes. We took pictures and then drove to my grandparent’s house to eat cake, laugh and enjoy our union with our close family and a few friends before driving off on honeymoon for a week (a gift from my parents)!
The rest is (His)story — God has been so good to us, and ultimately, we are just so happy to have the privilege of knowing and experiencing life together!
