From the Bride... Chris and I got married on July 27th 2013 at Sandy Lane Farm in Southampton, Ontario.

We knew we wanted to get married in Southampton as it is where Chris and I got engaged, and a special place for the both of us. Originally we had planned to get married on the beach, and have the reception at a beautiful little farm we had found online... until we went to view the location, and fell in love with it so hard we decided to get married there, too.

I knew that I wanted to make as much as the wedding decor myself, as I love handmade anything and I am a super crafty girl. I googled a few wedding pics for inspiration and then just went to work, with no real plan. I have an unbelievable amount of craft supplies, so I just took it all out and started grabbing things that caught my eye. I decided I was going to cut out a heart template from heavy cardstock and paper mache it. I rolled up tons of tiny balls, glued them to the cardstock heart and waited for it to dry. Then I covered it in paper mache and waited for that to dry. Then I painted it, let it dry and finally varnished it. At the end I thought it looked fabulous and I decided that I were to make a paper mache heart garland. I wanted every heart to be unique... some of them would tell the story of how Chris and I met, some of them would be decorated by my daughter Kaelie (my favourite being our family portrait), some were decorated by my students who were so excited and wanted to help, etc. I also wanted to experiment with different textures... some hearts were decorated with fabric, others with paper, others with wall paper, others mixed media, some were painted, some were coloured with thick Sharpies, etc. What I hadn't realized is that each heart would take over 3 hours to complete... and I needed a whack load of hearts to decorate the barn. In the end, it was great that I gave myself a year to figure out the decor as I needed ALL that time. Even though I had mad calluses on my fingers from ripping and rolling all the newspaper balls, I would totally do it again as it looked as beautiful and as colourful as I imagined.

It was only a few days before the wedding, and the forecast was looking like we were going to have a rainy day. While I was out at a picnic that afternoon with my family, I stepped away for a moment. Life had been so busy lately, and I just needed a moment to myself. I found a rock to sit on, and bathe in the sun as I thought about my grandma who had passed away four years ago. I asked her to please do her best to make sure our wedding day would be a sunny one. Just then, a little brown moth appeared. The moth had been my grandmother's symbol to me for the past four years. Every significant time I have spoken to her since her departure, I have had encounters with brown moths, and I know in my heart it is her way of telling me she hears me.

The night before my wedding, my best friend Robyn, who practices reiki as well the officiant who is a reiki master, gave me a treatment to help me relax. After the treatment, Robyn told me that she felt my grandma's presence. I knew that she was there as there had been a series of magical encounters ever since we arrived to the beautiful farm house, the day leading up to the wedding. We had rented the house out the night before the wedding for the bridal party to sleep in.

The morning of the wedding was finally here and I woke up happy, excited, and very calm. It was raining, but very mildly, and there was something extremely peaceful about it. The rain stopped just in time for Chris and I to have our ceremony under the majestic weeping willow tree, just as we had hoped for. After we exchanged vows, a brown moth was captured on film flying around me. The day was pure magic!