the event!

several of you have been asking about my wedding and i realized i haven't really said much about the actual event. but boy have we planned something fun!

neither of us are very traditional people. i've been to a million traditional weddings and they all feel exactly the same. i'm also a pretty big rebel and if society tells me i should walk down an aisle, have certain matching colors, or carry around flowers during my commitment, i say "screw you." now if you had or want a wedding like this i think that's wonderful. i am certainly not saying a person shouldn't have these things if you like that. i just don't find any meaning personally so i don't want to waste my energy with things that don't feel special to me. we are not formal people, so we didn't want a formal-feeling wedding. i also didn't want to feel stressed about this at any point {here's hoping!}.

so... dannon and i pretended we had never been to a wedding or heard of one before. we thought about what we were wanting to do on that day and came to the conclusion that we want a short ceremony focused on making promises to each other with our very closest loved ones as witnesses. then we want to have a super fun celebration with said loved ones. there will be no main officiant. our dads and friend will have certain parts, but mostly the ceremony will just be us, committing. there will be no attendants. we want a super small guest-list, so basically all the people witnessing would be the attendants.

for the location we found a beautiful vacation rental house in the hills above malibu with views of the ocean. we're so happy going this route - for the same price as a 4 hr rental we get a huge house for an entire week!! we can take our time decorating, use the massive kitchen to make all the food ourselves, and have some of our guests stay there.

it has a giant grassy yard which i was really wanting and worried we wouldn't find in southern california. our plan is to lay out beautiful picnic blankets and pillows in the grass where people will sit. when they get there they'll grab a fancy fruity drink and make their way to the blankets where dannon and i will be mingling and welcoming everyone - that means no aisle to walk down {i tried to convince dannon we should zip line in from the roof, but that's getting tricky to plan. :)}. when we're ready to do the ceremony we just will.

afterward, we'll have lawn games like bocce ball and croquet, an art book in lieu of a guestbook, yummy {and pretty} picnic food, miracle berry tasting, a typewriter where guests can type up their favorite jokes {we'll compile them into a coffee table book}, and live gypsy jazz music for dancing. there will also be a couple other fun things that i don't want to divulge here since we want to keep a couple surprises for our guests.

here are some pictures that have sort of the feel we're going for:







so that's the wedding! so far, all our planning has been a breeze. we'll see how long that lasts though. ;)