~39~Our Wedding: Reception

It's hard for me to believe that it's been a whole year since our wedding.  I spent most of last night thinking about where we were and what we were doing exactly 1 year ago.  A year go right now, I had just finished getting my hair and make up done and was waiting for my mom to show up with my dress.  It was such an amazing weekend that I would love to do over and over again-so.much.fun!

Yesterday, I caught up with details from our ceremony and pit-stop at the lakes, and now we're on to the reception!

We held our reception at the Radisson-University hotel on the U of M campus in stadium village.  I really wanted to have our reception in the city (not a suburb) to show off my hometown and what I love about it.  

When we first booked the room, I was a little unsure how everything was going to look all set up.  By itself, the room was really ugly with your typical tacky carpet and heavy dark green drapes.  Oh and don't forget the beautiful burgundy and gold chairs to show off the golden Gophers colors.  All of these were going to look great with our royal blue and silver colors...  (you understood my sarcasm font right? When we first walked into the room, I was floored by how amazing the room looked.  Huge props goes to the Radisson catering manager, Sara, and our florist Deven Nelson.  I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful reception hall!

Over the course of the night, we had great food, amazing speeches, and a fantastic dance party with all of our dearest family and friends.  Jake and I were in such awe of the people in our lives having a great time, celebrating our marriage.  We are truly blessed!  One of the craziest things that happened that night was a flash mob performance to ABBA's "Dancing Queen", by my parents and their friends.  They had been planning it for months and even hired a professional choreographer to help them.  

Now I'm off to get ready for Jake and I's anniversary extravaganza.  I'll be sure to come and post more on that later.

~38~Our Wedding: Party Bus!!

Between our ceremony and reception, we wanted to go to my favorite part of Minneapolis, Lake Harriet and take some pictures on their historic trolley and in the rose gardens.  To do so, we hired a bus to take us from the ceremony to the lake, to the reception.  Aside from saying "I do" to my HUSBAND, this was by far my favorite part of the day.  It was just so much fun.  We took our entire wedding party and their dates on, along with some good tunes, and good drinks!  I think it's safe to say-everyone had a blast.

The first stop we made was at the Lake Harriet Trolley.  My mom and I had stopped and talked to the museum manager the day before and he let us know that we'd be able to stop and take pictures as long as it wasn't too busy.  When we got there, there was a whole line of people waiting, so we were given a 5 minutes window.  Our awesome photographer quickly got to work setting up each shot and we definitely got some good ones!

From the trolley, we went around the lake to the rose gardens and took some awesome wedding party pictures 

and my favorite picture of Jake and I. 

Funny Story: Our photographer had us ladies do a race to get some fun action shots with the boys cheering us on behind us.  While we were running, one of my bridesmaids fell and landed on her bottom with her dress up to her waist.  Being that amazing woman that she is, she took it all in stride and laughed it.  We did get some great sequence shots, but I will spare her and not put any of them up ;)

~37~ Our Wedding: Ceremony

With the crazy-ness of this weekend, I didn't get a chance to blog, so I'll be playing catch up today.  

Next up for wedding week is: Our Ceremony.

We held our ceremony at Gethsemane Lutheran church, a church that has been a part of my family for a very long time.  My maternal grandma has been a member (with my late grandfather) for 60 years.  My mom, aunts and uncles were all raised and married there.  It meant a lot to me to be able to carry on that tradition and get married at Gethsemane as well.  The church has an absolutely beautiful sanctuary surrounded with stained glass windows.  

Another aspect of our ceremony that was extremely special to us was having my uncle David marry us.  He has been a Lutheran pastor for many, many years (and actually just retired this past April) and was so touched to be asked.  We were even more thrilled that he agreed.  It made our ceremony seem so much more personal than hiring an officiant or using a pastor we didn't know.  Since Gethsemane isn't David's home church, we also had their pastor, Pastor Nelson, preside over our ceremony as well. 

As a musician myself, our ceremony music was of special interest to me.  I really wanted something unique and different from the "tradition" wedding music you typically hear.  One of my favorite pieces of all time is a Bach piece that was written for the cello, so I knew even before we were engaged that I wanted a solo cellist to play at our wedding.  We used that song for the bridal party entrance.  For my entrance, I had a hard time finding something that spoke to me at first.  After a little more searching, I found something absolutely perfect.  To tie in my Korean heritage, I decided to use a very traditional Korean folk song called, "Arirang." It is sometimes known as the 2nd Korean national anthem.   My trouble was finding a good version for my cellist.  I eventually found a great version on Youtube that was arranged by professional cellist, Julian Lloyd Webber-but of course there was no sheet music to go with the video.  On a whim, I found his website and emailed him asking about where he found that version.  To my surprise he emailed me back and let me know that he had arranged it himself and would be willing to send a copy of the sheet music for free! I couldn't believe it, what luck!!

As I think back to that day, walking down the aisle and the ceremony itself went by so fast, it all seems like such a blur to me.  Walking down the aisle with my dad, all I did was focus on Jake and getting to the end of the aisle.  Since Jake and I had already had our 1st look, so I wasn't sure if I'd cry or not….but I definitely did.  And then once I took a deep breath, I was all smiles.  I couldn't wait to say "I do".  

During our ceremony, my uncle tied in our conversations during our pre-marital counseling and some other wonderful words about marriage.  After we said our vows-which I barely got out through the tears-we had a sand ceremony, symbolizing our individuality and our intertwining as husband as wife.  During our sand ceremony, we played a recording of "The Prayer" sung as a duet between Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion.  

After the sand ceremony, we exchanged rings and then….

had our 1st kiss as husband and wife!!!!

~36~Our Wedding: 1st Look

It's day three of wedding week, and we're on to our 1st look.  Jake and I opted to do a first look for a couple reasons.  The first reason is that we only had the church for so long after the ceremony, and we wanted to make sure we had enough time to take pictures together with our families and bridal party.  We also knew that we wanted to have some time to ourselves that day to take it all in.  As much as it would have been nice to have Jake see me for the first time walking down the aisle towards him during the ceremony, a first look really ended up being what worked out the best for us.  

We originally planned to have it in the outdoor quad set in the middle of the church, but it started raining on our way there, so we ended up doing it in the chapel.  Jake stood at the altar with his back to me while I walked down the aisle toward him.  It was one of the most incredible moments of my life.   As I started to walk towards him, time seemed to slow down.  The whole world turned into a population of 2 and it was just me and him. 

The moment he turned around and we looked in each others eyes, I of course lost it.  Those 45 minutes together, just the two of us (well, and our photographers) were so incredibly special, and I will forever cherish those moments.