Wedding Graduate: Angela And The Golden Gate Park Picnic Wedding

I am particularly touched by Angela's wedding graduate story because it (like so many of the recent graduate stories) comes with the gift of some perspective. Angela wrote to tell me that life over the last few months has been hard, and looking back at her wedding this summer through the lens of a difficult fall, she was able to see very clearly what mattered and what didn't. I particularly wanted to share this story for each of you who is dealing with the big stuff, the hard stuff, and trying to grapple with what a wedding means in this context. From the bottom of my heart I can tell you that it means something. It means hope. And it means precious memories. And with that, I'll let Angela do the talking:
If I would have written this a month or even a couple of weeks ago, I probably would have had a different perspective. The truth is - the farther away I am from the wedding, the little details that I spent months agonizing over start to fade to the background, but the true meaning of the day still shines through vibrantly. The love, the laughter, the sheer happiness of marrying my husband, and sharing it with our family and friends, that is what mattered. Life happens, you know, and while sometimes it brings you the highest level of happiness, sometimes it leaves you in a puddle on the floor. We aren’t really guaranteed anything in life, so we have to make the most of what we have at the moment. I am so grateful for all of the memories of my wedding day. And as time moves forward and life happens, those memories transform to mean something greater than I ever could have imagined they would have.The planning process was difficult because I was never the type of person to dream or even think about my wedding. I really had no idea what I wanted. I bought 2 reasonable looking wedding magazines for ideas, felt like vomiting, and never looked at them again. I went online, discovered APW and other blogs of real weddings and never looked back. I used the blogs for ideas and vendors (I found my amazing photographer, Jessamyn Harris, and got the idea for a picnic wedding on APW). I tend to analyze things in excruciating detail, so I will admit I probably spent way too much time thinking about very minute details. The worst part was that I knew they were silly at the time but I couldn’t stop agonizing over them. But in some respects my busy schedule of working full time and going to law school at night was a blessing. If I would have had more time, I would have just worried about things more, and they really couldn’t have turned out any better. My husband gets a lot of credit for keeping me sane. He was excellent at balancing between letting me analyze the details, and helping me to make a decision, and move on. And we had TONS of help from friends and family. They were there every step of the way - from the initial planning, to making the invitations, picnic blankets, ring pillow, and homemade beer, to setting up and striking when it was all over, we quite honestly could not have done it without them.We considered eloping, but decided that wasn’t really for us because we wanted to celebrate with the people we consider family (relatives and friends a like). When we came home after the wedding was over I said to my husband, “that was totally worth it.” And he said “yeah, it really was.” I can’t really put into words how powerful it was to say our vows while literally surrounded by a group of people who were emanating sheer happiness, love, and support for us.Marrying my husband and celebrating with our loved ones was important. Everything else really wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the hand-made picnic blankets my mom, aunt, and mother-in-law made, and I enjoyed our delicious organic and locally grown food. Our flowers were gorgeous and our Polaroid guest book I will treasure forever. And I was extremely thankful for the sun. But all of those things I really consider a bonus - they paled in comparison to the overwhelming sense of love and happiness of the day.For example: I can’t count the number of hours I spent planning the cute save-the-dates that we wanted to send (but never did). We were together for 11 years before we got married and we’ve had a long tradition of taking photos together in photo-booths, so it seemed fitting to do a photo-booth inspired save-the-date. But between work and school, I just didn’t find the time to put those darn save-the-dates together or mail them out. Oh well. Instead we picked up the phone and started calling people to let them know that we were planning to get married on Labor Day weekend. And we sent a few casual emails. And guess what? Our guests made it to the wedding. Later we decided to make a little clothesline of and hang photos of us through the years to have at our picnic. We hung up one of the photo-booth shots we took as a save-the date, so I guess we ended up using it after all.

The one piece of advice I'd pass on is this: trust your instincts. If something feels right, then it is, if it doesn’t feel quite right, then it probably isn’t. The trick is just quieting all the doubts in your mind and not letting yourself get inundated with too many ideas or be influenced by what others tell you to do (and by others I mean society/magazines/blogs/friends, etc.).Here is a prime example: when we first started thinking about where we wanted to have our wedding, my husband and I agreed that Golden Gate Park would be perfect for many reasons – we live in SF, we have wonderful memories there, it is gorgeous, it is affordable, etc. But we were worried about the weather and timing. SF weather is notoriously unpredictable and is usually pretty cold and foggy in the summer (when we both had off of school) and it didn't seem ideal for a picnic. So we spent a considerable amount of time researching and visiting other venues around the area. It was so painful; nothing felt right. Everything seemed way outside of our price range, and we didn’t feel a connection to any of the places. Finally after months of this hell, we both admitted to each other that despite the weather and timing issues, we both really felt that Golden Gate Park was the best place. So we booked it for Labor Day weekend. We got lucky on the weather, but even if we hadn’t, it still would have been the right spot for us. And I love that we can go back to our spot next year and have a picnic (in the sun or the fog).Things work out. We learned through the wedding planning process that when you trust your instincts and follow your heart, things work out. I’d say that is a pretty valuable lesson to apply to the rest of our lives and marriage as well!

Pictures by the fabulous Jessamyn Harris, one of the first ever supporters of APW, who Angela found through the blog. Hurrah!