What does it mean?

A year and a half after my own, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we spend so much time, energy, and resources on creating the “perfect wedding”. Brides (and their mothers!) often feel great stress and anxiety about the whole thing and sometimes I think, “for what?!”. I mean weddings can be a beautiful reflection of a wonderful union between two people, but they can also become overwhelming and much more involved than anticipated. To me, the ideal wedding should be an afterthought to the decision to get married, like “we’re so thrilled about this new step in our lives that we want to celebrate with those we love the most.” So, I thought I’d step back a bit on the wedding frenzy and focus on the meaning behind it with this new column, “What does it mean?”. Every month I’ll feature a different blogger and ask them what the most meaningful part of their wedding was. I’m quite excited to see how those I admire have celebrated their union, but first, you have to hear from me.

When it comes to keeping things simple, I shouldn’t be talking because I really used my wedding as an excuse to get my craft on, but there were a couple of things that I’m really glad we did. First, Paul and I gathered photos from our parents and grandparents on their wedding days and I glued them into the front and back covers of our guestbook. My grandparents always had a guestbook in their home and constantly played host to guests visiting their home in Los Angeles. I wanted the guestbook to be something that we could use after the wedding in the same way and because of this, I’m always reminded of our dear family.

Second, I sent out about 25 blank canvas flags out to friends and family before the wedding accompanied by a color palette with the theme “Scandinavian garden” and asked them to go wild. We knew that many invitees wouldn’t be able to attend our wedding because of distance so this was a way they could be there with us. Each time a flag showed up in the mail we were floored. They were SO creative! One friend used the format of the Danish flag and in one quadrant painted a daisy, the symbol of Denmark where Paul was from, another quadrant featured a California poppy where I was from, another quadrant featured a Canadian maple leaf where Paul was born, and the last were DC cherry blossoms where I was living at the time. I mean, how thoughtful can you be?! We felt so lucky to have our friends spend time on us in that way.

Can’t wait to see more “meaning” posts? Me neither! Stay tuned for more!

-by Brittany Watson Jepsen of The House That Lars Built 

[images from Ali Degraff]