the wedding edition

Hello loved ones,

so, the wedding.

You might remember our engagement at christmas and my subsequent freak out complete with PTSD craziness, but

but

My darlin was raised by a loving and very young mom with lots of help from a beloved grandma- but no dad. And for him, being a Dad, a capital letter D Dad is really important. It is his story to tell of course, but it brings us to this: he wanted to be married before the baby came.

He also wanted to be married in the fall.

The baby, who may actually BE coming, is coming in the fall.

So, that left me with what felt like two options: get married asap, or wait until I am a whale (aka wait until the fall), or wait until after.

Summer is not possible since his job is 24 hours a day in summertime..... so....

our anniversary is Earth day, the anniversary of our first date that is, so I said (in a crazy moment the night before the last ultrasound at the clinic), why don't we elope on Earth day? or something close?

and then I panicked, because that is what I do.

and then we had a great ultrasound and this looked like it might actually work out...

so, then we decided on the 17th.

We knew where to get a cake from previous baked goods experience (Bread and Roses, Ogunquit Maine. WORTH THE DRIVE people, I'm just sayin'). Cake is really the thing for my darlin, so we started there.

And then, since the cake was in Maine, we decided to elope there.

Found a Justice of the Peace online (Julie Draper- wonderful wonderful)

and

yeah. Started to think about really doing this.

Then got kidney stones.

then we went up a weekend of 80 and sunny and met Julie, whom we adored. Found the town hall.

looked for venues and places for dinner and hotels for our friends...

we wore ourselves out, and did not make much progress.

Somewhere in there I decided to see if I could find a photographer so our friends would not have to do everything. And I found one, a MAGNIFICENT photographer, Susan Mullen. I was bold enough to ask, and she was sweet enough to say yes even on such short notice and such a small budget. She was willing to do one hour which made it all possible, and she is such a wonderful person. All these crazy beautiful photos here today were taken by her.

And, in a crazy search online for hiking trails, I accidentally found our ceremony site, a nature reserve in Wells.

the next weekend, 60 and sunny, up again- ordered the cake, found a fabulous florist by asking a random shop keeper and could not have been happier with the wild tangled bouquet (created by the totally hip and intuitive Heather at Calluna) who somehow got me, and somehow got me fiddleheads... we found a restaurant (the oh so wonderful Angelina's, expensive but really great food and service), and visited the reserve.

As soon as we saw the dried grasses in that high field, oh, I cried. Yup. It was the place.

So, the next weekend, cold (30's) and rainy, cold cold, damn cold, we woke up to snow on friday-- then, up we went for the license, our friends came up on saturday, and the rain stopped just long enough for us to celebrate.

You asked for more photos and I am torn-- there are many good ones! But in the interest of internet obfuscation, I am only including a few here, all of which you will see are lacking in, shall we say, identifying details. If you find us elsewhere, it won't be surprising, we are not hard to find. But I'd rather not just put it up and out here.

Please note the amazing loveliness of the place. The true magnificence. And the grass. Oh, the grass.

Then, we went to the beach.