I have very exciting and happy news during this crazy time, I got married! My fiancé and I decided to have a micro wedding for many reasons. We are planing on having a bigger wedding in the future for our friends and family. I think that will be more of a vow renewal and a big party! For this wedding we decided to keep it small— 10 people including me, K and my parents.

The Flowers

I was so lucky that my family friend has a farm and she does flowers for weddings from time to time. She gifted us all of the flowers for the wedding and I just love how they turned out

Everyone threw rose petals after the ceremony

The Food

We live in a green state but things are still crazy in the country so my mom and I decided not to hire anyone to do the food or to buy food and bring it in.

For dinner we had paella and pesto pasta with a salad that K and my mom made together on the morning of the wedding.

For dessert we got cupcakes from a bakery near us and we made a fruit salad.

For drinks we kept the options simple— belinis, which are my favorite, and a variety of beers that k and my dad like so if anything was left over they would enjoy it.

We decided to only serve alcohol and food we like, I’m not a huge drinker so I didn’t have much, the same thing applied for soft drinks. We only served food and drinks we enjoyed and knew we would like as leftovers, because why force yourself to eat and drink the leftovers you don’t like.

My Dress

Because we aren’t having a typical wedding finding a dress was really hard for me. I looked at first at a lot of white cocktail dresses and semi formal ones, but I just don’t wear a lot of white! I’m really pale and my arms get red easily, like when I’m nervous or hot. So I decided not to wear white!

But that was also a challenge. I was looking for a dress in between seasons so all of the summer dresses were on sale, which is good and bad because a lot of sizes are out of stock. And the fall dresses wouldn’t really work.

I ended up getting really lucky with the dress I found. It was on sale for $42! I try and imagine our garden party wedding celebration in the future and I don’t know what I’ll wear for that either. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a bride who wears white.

The Ceremony

K and I are not religious in the traditional sense, both of us believe that there is a higher spiritual being or creator but we don’t completely agree with one religion. I grew up with a lot of buddhist, celtic and native american influence and K didn’t have much. So for the ceremony we wanted something that wasn’t very traditional, like us.

Our family friend was our officiator and she helped us with creating a ceremony we both loved. We started by having someone who is like my third grandmother light a candle for our ancestors. Then K and I exchanged short letters and vows. After that our friend led us through a Peruvian ceremony called Despacho.

A despacho is a prayer bundle or offering that can be used for weddings, opening new businesses, births, deaths or to help heal people. Similar to a mandala or sacred creation, the despacho holds symbolic elements and the prayers of the participants. We added things like matcha- for harmony and spicy chilly peppers or lavender- for calmness in our relationship.

Each of our guests got to add to it what they wished for our relationship— good health, wealth, harmony, communication— each represented by something. Afterwards it was wrapped up and we blessed it before putting it into a sacred fire.

For us this ceremony was interactive and felt like a beautiful celebration.