u/kitty_thugz

https://preview.redd.it/1wcan5qcxv6h1.jpg?width=2009&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=48ad30ecdcb8ac3d2cf1b0d1c2ef0dcb518d72b9

https://preview.redd.it/hkkup5qcxv6h1.jpg?width=3026&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5b8178418904b7eeec63f53dca6e02186bfc651f

https://preview.redd.it/7jfp75qcxv6h1.jpg?width=3013&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=700a9d1bbaa5503ac66a7dc27cd576c832104c74

I don't have any sewing/DIY experience but wanted to make a few things to make our elopement more personal. We got the photos back and I'm really happy with how they turned out, so I wanted to share!

Painted my dress hanger with the Double Happiness symbol

Embroidered my bouquet ribbon...

...and the lining of my dress...

...plus my veil (we eloped in Ireland so Yeats felt fitting)

Tiny detail of lacing my boots with lace and ribbons

Cross stitched the cover of our vow books. I had a lot of doubts about this one but it turned out to be my favourite detail of the day.

Just came back from visiting a friend in CA. We got a bunch of them from a city park and she made these really good flatbreads with the stalks and flowers that I'm itching to recreate. Anyone know where I might find them in Portland?

I keep struggling between wanting to refine my vows and not wanting it to become something too "worked" or polished. It's also really hard for me to read it for improvements objectively since I really poured my heart into writing this. For context, we're privately exchanging vows by a cliff-side castle ruin and it'll be just the two of us. Any thought or feedback you have would be very welcome. Thank you in advance!

"Hi [partner's name], 

I've been thinking all this time about what to put in my vows to you on this day. What remains unsaid after almost a decade of being together, of building a life and making a home together? I could vow to love you every day I'm alive, but it seems silly to vow for something as natural and inevitable as breathing is for me. I could vow to always be by your side, but that would be meaningless because the alternative—the possibility of a life without you—is absolutely, utterly inconceivable to me. 

When I looked up examples and inspirations for wedding vows, I saw a lot of talk about "forever," about some kind of preternatural, fated kismet that connects two halves of a whole; of some cosmic determination that two people who are meant to be will always find each other. As beautiful as those sentiments are, I cannot write about them, simply because I don't believe in them. I so want to have faith that, even after you and I have dissolved into stardust, our atoms will find one another again and again, and we will love each other anew many times over as the eternal wheel of time grinds on. But I know it isn't true. I know that, as happy as we are now, our path will eventually come to an end and beyond is all abyss.

I'm not saying all this out of some angsty, nihilistic fatalism but out of pure reverence for the decision we have both made to be in each other's life, to go out to brunch together, to laugh together, to go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning next to each other during our finite time. My life is but a speck in the unfathomable vastness of the universe; only because it is anchored to yours that it has weight. In choosing you and being chosen, day in and day out, my life becomes real and meaningful.

So this is what I can vow: I vow to live every day remembering that we have both chosen to give ourselves to each other. I vow to be present in every moment we are together, to make sacred the most mundane rituals of our shared life. Making dinner, doing laundry, feeding cats—these will be the cathedral in which this dedication is pledged. And this moment—here, today—is a memory that we will one day hold up to the sun and remember our promises to each other as they were witnessed by this boundless ocean and these eternal stones.

You are the life I have chosen, and I will keep choosing you."

I keep struggling between wanting to refine my vows and not wanting it to become something too "worked" and polished. It's also really hard for me to read it for improvements objectively since I really poured my heart into writing this. For context, we're privately exchanging vows by a cliff-side castle ruin and it'll be just the two of us. Any thought or feedback you have would be very welcome. Thank you in advance!

"Hi [partner's name], 

I've been thinking all this time about what to put in my vows to you on this day. What remains unsaid after almost a decade of being together, of building a life and making a home together? I could vow to love you every day I'm alive, but it seems silly to vow for something as natural and inevitable as breathing is for me. I could vow to always be by your side, but that would be meaningless because the alternative—the possibility of a life without you—is absolutely, utterly inconceivable to me. 

When I looked up examples and inspirations for wedding vows, I saw a lot of talk about "forever," about some kind of preternatural, fated kismet that connects two halves of a whole; of some cosmic determination that two people who are meant to be will always find each other. As beautiful as those sentiments are, I cannot write about them, simply because I don't believe in them. I so want to have faith that, even after you and I have dissolved into stardust, our atoms will find one another again and again, and we will love each other anew many times over as the eternal wheel of time grinds on. But I just know it isn't true. I know that, as happy as we are now, our path will eventually come to an end and beyond is all abyss.

I'm not saying all this out of some angsty, nihilistic fatalism but out of pure reverence for the decision we have both made to be in each other's life, to go out to brunch together, to laugh together, to go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning next to each other during our finite time. My life is but a speck in the unfathomable vastness of the universe; only because it is anchored to yours that it has weight. In choosing you and being chosen, day in and day out, my life becomes real and meaningful.

So this is what I can vow: I vow to live every day remembering that we have both chosen to give ourselves to each other. I vow to be present in every moment we are together, to make sacred the most mundane rituals of our shared life. Making dinner, doing laundry, feeding cats—these will be the cathedral in which this dedication is pledged. And this moment—here, today—is a memory that we will one day hold up to the sun and remember our promises to each other as they were witnessed by this boundless ocean and these eternal stones.

You are the life I have chosen, and I will keep choosing you."