Our Dutch-American wedding
Beavercreek, Oregon, USA
Part 1 – Preparations
The making of our wedding
I had never planned a wedding before, nor had I been to many, so I had very little experience and no idea where to start. But two things were for sure: I was going to plan my own wedding, and it was going to be a Dutch-American wedding ceremony.
We implemented various Dutch decorations and details in our wedding, with our wedding cake being te perfect mix between the two!
wedding to-do list
- Venue, date, guest list
- Invitations & RSVP’s
- Vendors, catering
- Officiant, marriage license
- Flowers
- Drink & dinner menu
- Photography
- Music
- The wedding cake
- Ring bearer
- Decorations
- Design & set-up
Making it personal
Sam and I knew we wanted a small and intimate ceremony, so keeping our guest list small wasn’t that hard. We set the wedding date on Febr. 26th, which was our one-year engagement anniversary. We wanted a venue that was meaningful to us, and during one of our many visit to his grandma, she actually brought up the idea to have the ceremony in her garden.
We decided on a personal wedding invitation that would symbolize our relationship and how we feel about each other. The invitation had three golden hearts on it, located at Portland in the US, The Netherlands, and Kyoto in Japan.
The officiant plays a very important role in the ceremony, so we wanted someone that knew us and was comfortable leading the ceremony. A friend of ours told us she was ordained and could therefore legally marry us. For our last names, we decided to hyphenate and take each others names. We are now Mr & Mrs Woldhuis-Elicker. This is a reference to our Dutch-American heritage and very meaningful to the both of us!
-
The wedding invitation
-
Outdoor ceremony
-
Ceremony
-
The wedding altar
Making dreams come true
It sounds pretty cliché, but I was able to realize a lot of things that I dreamed about as a kid/young adult. My favorite color is purple and I love the smell of lavender, but these flowers were out of season in February. However, English lavender was available and had pretty much the same effect.
I also wanted a husky to be the ring bearer, and we just happen to be foster parents to this beautiful Husky named Mishka. We put an adorable ring pillow around her neck, and she carried them during the ceremony. Including some howling mid-ceremony of course.
My preference was to have an outdoor ceremony, but that was definitely tricky considering the weather in February. At the location in Beavercreek, it could literally be anything from snow and -5 degrees celsius, or sunny and 15 degrees. We were blessed with the latter! We still went along with a winter theme, providing blankets and hot chocolate, and turning the heaters on at night.
-
-
Ring pillow
-
Mishka joins!
-
Blankets
Design & set-up
We worked with Bridgewood Rentals in Portland to set up an outdoor tent that was big enough for our 30 guests, as well as our 12×12 dance floor, dinner & cocktail tables, buffet etc. They delivered everything the day before the wedding, and Sam, my mom and I have worked our butts off to transform a basic venue into a personalized, romantic, fun and DIY-wedding venue. Even though it turned out great, in hindsight we should have had more help, since it took as about 7 hours to get it done. It was a great bonding experience, but we were so tired afterwards! Therefore, I didn’t have time for a fun last night as a bachelorette, which might have been a blessing in disguise, considering how nervous I was the night before. In the end, we can be proud of the work we’ve done, and we have the pictures to prove it!
Subscribe below to be the first one to know about a new blog!