Our Wedding was blogged!

I've posted this on Facebook, and emailed it to my family, but I thought I would also put it here for memories' sake.

My photographers contacted me a few weeks ago to inform me they had submitted our wedding photos to a magazine called Southern Weddings. And, Southern Weddings liked all of our details so much they wanted to do a story on us for their online blog, and eventually put us in their print magazine.

This was HUGELY unexpected. Our wedding? Really? Being published was never our goal, my goal, for our day. I spent time on the details because it was fun, I love being crafty, and I am absolutely obsessed with everything having meaning - I wanted there to be a reason for every single thing we did for the wedding. And there was, I promise.

So SW sent me a questionnaire to fill out, which you will see most of on the blog. However, a couple question/answer sections were cut from my article, parts I really wanted to share because they were important to us - parts I know would resonate with other brides/grooms somewhere, and things we really felt were important about our wedding and planning process.

So, I thought I'd share them with you all here, and also include the link to our blog:

Josh & Kim Touchton's Wedding on SW's Blog

What was your favorite design element of your big day?
The home-made tree stump cups, table number holders, and directional sign. My dad made all of these, and they were truly a labor of love. We filled the tree stump cups with coffee beans to hold custom ball-point pens for guests to fill our our Guestbook Scrapbook pages, and the table number holders were stumps holding our engagement pictures with table numbers on them. He worked so hard on these!

What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome while planning your wedding?
The budget. The wedding industry is booming and prices were overwhelming for us. It was difficult to stay on budget and focused with so many options. However, our goal was to have as many people as we could afford come witness Josh and I being married. We did not focus on the "party" aspect, rather the ceremony itself and the meaning of the day. I'm proud to say we stayed on budget, and by doing so much ourselves, were still able to have the extra "details" we wanted without breaking the bank.

Did you write your own vows? If so, what was your favorite phrase, verse or line?
We used pretty traditional vows and did not write them ourselves. Neither one of us were really up for that task. But, we definitely had "for better or for worse" and "til death do we part" in there, because those are the two most important promises. Love is not a feeling; it is a daily decision. Marriage is a life-long work in progress with amazing rewards.

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For those who don't know, our wedding was almost completely DIY (which means Do It Yourself), and only about one quarter of the average wedding budget nowadays. I'm not speaking down on our wedding at all - this is exactly how we wanted it.

Our wedding day's focus was on Josh and I's marriage. Us joining together, in the presence of our family and friends as witnesses, to walk through this life together, forever. We did not want the focus to be on a party, or the money spent. This was our choice, and how we wanted our day to be. I'm pretty sure we accomplished that goal.

Thank you to everyone who made our wedding possible. It was truly perfect for us, so special and meaningful, and a day we will never, ever forget... we are so completely blessed.

Love,
Josh, Kim & Abby