The Wedding

On September 16, me and Lee-Anne got married

It was on Lee-Anne's parents property in Brampton. It was sunflower themed, partly because of the season and partly because of our shared love of sunflowers. Main colour was purple, because it's my favourite colour while Lee-Anne's is yellow which gets worked in with the sunflowers, and they contrast. We had it 11:30 AM to 4:00 PM.

Lunch was sandwiches, wraps, potato salad, and bean salad. There were lots of desserts, mostly made by Lee-Anne's mom. Instead of a cake we had a tart tower. For drinks, we had mimosas, Caesars, beer, wine, and Grand Marnier. I don't know where the Grand Marnier came from, I think someone just slipped it behind the bar.

There were a lot of spacing concerns. We had invited about 70 people, and looking at the backyard, I thought it would be a little cramped. A professional had come through and verified that it would be sufficient and I thought to myself that it's a good thing we have experts, because I don't have a good vision for this type of thing. I showed up at the site a day early, and a tent had been put up, dividing what I already thought was a small size in half.

Plans for the location of the ceremony were changed the day before the wedding. Lee-Anne felt the second part of the backyard was too hilly, so we shifted it to a small park right outside their gate. Apparently you only need a city permit if your event is for 250 people.

This worked out, as the park was more visible from the vantage point of the church that had agreed to lend its parking space. Most people saw the altar and crowd while they were parking and made it over that way.

Since it was outdoors, we were vulnerable to unexpected shifts in the weather, but it turned out perfect. Neither too hot nor too cold. That didn't stop me from sweating bullets during the ceremony. 

I was holding Lee-Anne's hands and didn't want to break form. If I wiped my forehead, I'd have to touch her hands and get them sweaty, and if I wiped on my clothes I'd mess up my outfit. Couldn't do it covertly with everybody watching. I tried to endure but it got too noticeable, and feeling it was the lesser of two evils, I broke form and quickly tried wiping my forehead. The crowd laughed. Then, Lee-Anne broke form and, laughing, wiped my forehead vigorously.

Somehow, a lot of people felt touched by this. Someone cried when she was describing to me how Lee-Anne she reached out during the ceremony to clean my forehead. I don't really get it.

We were in direct sunlight. Lee-Anne's light sensitive so she was really squinting. Later, she would say "I was squinting, you were sweating".

We ended it with a tree-planting ceremony. Well, the small tree was technically already in a pot, but we took soil from my grandparents place in Northern Ontario, and from Lee-Anne's grandmothers farm and poured it into the pot, representing the union between the two families and new growth in the family tree.

That was workshopped between us and the person that performed the ceremony. When we talked to her beforehand, she was looking for shared interests and knowing that we both like to garden, she threw it out as a an idea and we ran with it.

People went back to the tent while me and Lee-Anne stayed back and had pictures taken. I'll have a post on my Gallery blog with the photos when we get them. We already have a bunch, and I've included a few at the top of this post. When we had our engagement photos done, the guy sent us a sampler package really quickly, but it was basically half the final collection. I'll still hold off until I've got all of them.

After the photos, we came back to the tent where everyone was having lunch. Turns out there was enough space for everyone to sit comfortably.

Speeches were done by Lee-Anne's dad, my Grandpa Rob, my brother, one of Lee-Anne's friends, and me and Lee-Anne shared a finishing speech. We hadn't written a script, but we had "sections". So Lee-Anne started by thanking everyone for coming, and the work put into organizing things, then I talked about the people that couldn't make it and people we wanted to remember, then she talked about what the symbol of the sunflower meant, then I went into our specific sunflowers, she talked about our cat Kieran convincing her of my quality, and I talked about how I adopted Kieran to impress her, she spoke to how my family invited her in, then I spoke to how hers did so for me, and then we both declared that we were looking forward to living the rest of our lives together.

As for the people that couldn't make it, a close family friend on Lee-Anne's side passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack. It was recent enough that she'd been aware of, and looking forward to coming to the wedding. One of her aunts also had a heart attack, and lived but wasn't in shape to attend. This happened as she and her husband were travelling to Brampton.

On my side, I spoke of a close family friend that used to always say she couldn't wait to come to my wedding. I used to tell her not to get her hopes up, as I was a natural introvert and comfortable on my own. I held this stance with her even after I met Lee-Anne and was intending to ask her out. Unfortunately, she passed before mine and Lee-Anne's first date, so I hope somewhere she knows she was right. I also mentioned my granddad, who is alive but with significant dementia.

As for the sunflowers, when me and Lee-Anne were dating, I finally managed to grow one in the backyard of the townhouse I was living in at the time. It was my first success after two years of failure. We dated throughout the summer and I got it in my head that if I could make the flower blossom, then the relationship would work out.

On the morning of the wedding, I got a Facebook notification for a memory. Turns out, the flower blossomed on September 16, same day as the wedding. We hadn't even thought of that.

Otherwise, our first sunflower of the year blossomed while we were having our wedding shower, and when I left Kitchener, it looked like our last sunflower would blossom on the day of the wedding. Unfortunately, this turned out to be false. We had three sunflowers set to blossom before I left, and on coming back two had blossomed. So I'm just going to say the one that is still working on it is a promise of future happiness. I know I'm playing with the rules a little here.

There are a few other things that happened at the wedding. My grandma got me some literature on our family history, and Lee-Anne's sister in law brought some kittens to be adopted by my mother and brother.

We got Finn from the same person, and in fact these new kittens are his half-siblings (at least). I thought it might be too soon after Cassidy, but these two were in need of a home before Cassidy's passing. Mom and Duncan were aware of them, and the fact that they they would be in the same place as Lee-Anne's sister in law felt like fate.

They're at home now. The black one with the stubby tail has been named Castor and the tuxedo cat is Pollux. I'll have to do a post dedicated to them.

After the wedding, me and Lee-Anne stayed over in a hotel in Brampton. In Pokemon Go, my buddy gave me a bouquet as a gift. I'd never seen that gift featured in the game before. Felt like a wedding present.

 The next day we visited Granddad since he couldn't make it. The uber driver dropped us off in slightly the wrong spot, but it was okay because he put us in front of a sunflower mural. It felt kind of fated

Granddad can't speak for the most part, but when he saw me he shouted and reached out to me, smiling. Pretty well the best I could hope for. We had lunch with him, Oma, and two of my uncles that had flown in for the wedding.

When we got back to Kitchener, we found a red rose taped to a post on our home street, welcoming us back.