What does it mean? Ashley & Andreas

What does it mean?” is a continuing series where we ask a blogger how they used their wedding as an expression of their union with their significant other. Today we are honored to hear from Ashley and Andreas Ludaescher. Ashley is a photographer of travel and weddings and blogger of Chasing Heartbeats. She and her husband live in Berlin, Germany.

I am originally from California and met Andreas while I was working in Germany’s beautiful Black Forest.  When we started to plan our wedding we knew we wanted something small and intimate, a long weekend for our families and friends to relax and get to know one another.  The location was the easiest decision we made, as we got engaged in Cape Cod and it has always been one of my favorite places in the world, in addition to the fact that it is pretty close to half way between our two homes.  Another reason it is so close to my heart is that my family has so much history there.  My grandfather grew up in Cape Cod and later in his life built his sister a little lakeside cottage there, which is now my family’s little home away from home.  The property it sits on has been in our family so long that it was originally paid for in British Pounds!  Andreas has also grown to love Cape Cod the way I do, and we wanted to share it with the rest of our family and friends who had never visited before.

The ceremony and reception was held at the same location where our guest stayed, a rustic lakeside resort with 9 little cabins complete with canoes and sandy beach.  The ceremony itself was held under a grouping of trees next to the lake and our 44 guests held hands in a circle, which literally surrounded us with love.  We wrote our own vows, mine were spoken in English and Andreas replied back to me in German so everyone there could understand- and the vows were both playful and romantic.

We were married by my uncle who is a fantastic writer and incredibly creative.  He came up with the idea of having all our guests literally “tie the knot”- each guest wrote their name on a piece of fabric and used rope to tie their piece to those next to them, which tied not only Andreas and I together as a couple, but our family and friends together as well.  It was not only a lovely idea, it is a keepsake from the wedding we will always cherish.

After the ceremony we had planned to go out in my boat “Lady Jane” to spend our first few married moments just the two of us out on the lake.  Unfortunately it looked like a storm was rolling in as we started the ceremony, but magically as soon as we headed out in my boat, we were graced with the most incredible sunset I have ever seen- it was extraordinary.  My mama said it was my late grandparents wedding gift to us, as they were there in spirit, celebrating right alongside us.

photography by Davina + Daniel

by Brittany Watson Jepsen of The House That Lars Built