Mel and Kelly’s atmospheric October wedding

Listen. I know we got married in October… 2019. And it’s now… December 2020. I started drafting this post at the beginning of the year, but then 2020 happened. Also we bought a house and moved to Philly, so. Anyway, I’m finally wrapping it up.

(Unlike our wedding thank you cards. Sorry.)

So, here’s a rundown of my beautiful wedding to my partner of 10 years, Kelly.

I really wanted a wooden wedding ring, since I don’t like feeling metal on my skin. Kelly wanted some metal to hers, so we ended up buying similar rings from TIAM Wood Design on Etsy. The wood is Grey Koto, and Kelly’s ring has an inner band made of stainless steel.

Venue & Decorations

We wanted a small, local venue. Our friends K.Adam and Emily got married at Warehouse XI, a completely DIY events space, and they had a tremendous amount of creative freedom that we also desired.

Our catering company has a partnership with a furniture supplier, so we were able to furnish the space to our own specifications.

Our decorations overall had a fall aesthetic. Our primary color was sage, with wood tones brought in throughout.

We knew we wanted round tables for the kind of community and intimacy they bring to dining (always reminds me fondly of college!). We put together our own centerpieces, mostly from materials from Michael’s and a pack of LED string lights. Each table was named after a spaceship from sci-fi shows, books, and movies.

We did a ton of our own decorating. Abby, our wedding planner, was able to find some wood palettes we could repurpose to show off photos and greenery. We also used a bunch of my paintings and prints to decorate the walls and ledges within the space.

The weather cooperated with our theme — it ended up being an absolutely perfect fall day. Brisk but not cold, sunny but not too bright, with a blanket of fallen leaves.

Ceremony

When the original officiant we were hoping to work with fell through, my friend and coworker Kjell recommended Gail Smalley, who had officiated his wedding. Gail was fantastic — she worked with us to craft a totally custom ceremony to honor our relationship.

We even worked my niece and nephew into the ceremony as ring bearers/flower kids.

Catering

We went with a local catering company — so local, when we first started chatting with them, they were in the same block as Warehouse XI!

We worked with our planner Abby, who is also an expert bartender, to create two custom craft cocktails. We also provided all of our own beer, which was my own personal love letter to the local craft beer scene.

Absolutely amazing crudite

Hell yeah we had a raw bar

Wide variety of dinner dishes for every dietary need

We copied K.Adam and Emily and had a Union Square Donut / FoMu ice cream bar for dessert

We have a lot of friends with different dietary needs, and it was absolutely integral for us that the meal be able to feed everyone. We wanted everyone who came to our wedding to feel welcome and well-fed. We worked with Forklift to create an inclusive and absolutely delicious meal plan.

Reception

Honestly we weren’t planning on really doing speeches after welcoming in our guests, and then they happened anyway. 🤷‍♀️

My older brother is a DJ, and my little brother works in A/V events production, so we had those two wrangle all the music.

Our first dance was to Islands, by Hey Ocean!:

We got to hang out with so many of our friends, it was so nice 😭

My band decided pretty early on that we’d play the wedding. We put together a set list months in advance of our more wedding-appropriate songs, along with one new cover, one new song Nadya composed, and a surprise song we composed for the wedding, as a group. It was fun as hell and I’m really happy we got to play together, especially as it was the last opportunity we had before the pandemic started.

tl;dr A++ would wed Kelly again.

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