style it VINTAGE: WEDDING INTRO

Photos by Zoe Arniotis (zoe-arniotis.com)

SO. I have been meaning to put together a series of blog posts about our epic DIY wedding, but I have SUCH a hard time getting my ass in gear. So here it is-at least the start of it.

Like every other awesome and original couple out there, Dave and I wanted a small, simple wedding that completely reflected our personalities and would be totally unique to us... and to everyone else on Pinterest. :)

While we do live in the big (ish) and awesome city of Montreal, QC, we are actually country bumpkins at heart (from the far away Laurentians). Therefore we wanted a beautiful, sweet wedding ceremony outdoors and near a lake somewhere up north, followed by a super fun dance party style reception.

Photos by Zoe Arniotis (zoe-arniotis.com)

Of course, being that I am obsessed with all things design/ DIY and with my Interior Design education and a job in construction project management, I was pretty confident that I could handle one teeny wedding. It almost broke my spirit, actually-but we will get back to that.

Before I start this whole series of wedding posts, I will tell you a little something about Dave and I’s story. Basically, we met in high school at the tender age of 15. My Dave is a little unique...meaning he is hilarious, sarcastic, annoying and has an uncanny resemblance to Tom Green (check out Dave’s old blog-you’ll see just what I’m talking about.) So who could blame me when I didn’t immediately fall in love with this guy? But we did become friends. And over the course of the ten years to follow, Dave and I became closer-he was my most trusted (male) confidant, my Go-To-guy and the all around constant in my life as I went through high school, college, new boyfriends, breakups, old boyfriends, breakups, job layoffs and much more. Throughout all of this, Dave was obviously in love with me (Duh-who could resist all this?) and though he was always hanging around me, I far too dense to realize it or to see him for who he really was to me.

So it was a revelation to me when after all this time-and finally single- I started to develop feelings for Dave in more than a platonic way. WAYYY more. It totally freaked me out. And it really freaked out my girlfriends as well. We shared the same group of extremely close friends, so for me to take a leap of faith and see how things went with Dave was monumental. Seriously HUGE.

Photos by Zoe Arniotis (zoe-arniotis.com)

But it actually went well. Really well, seeing as I went into our first date already loving the person I was about to date. There’s a lot that you learn about someone in 10 years that you can’t unlearn when you start dating them. [Sidebar]-I highly suggest marrying someone you have known for 10 years. It’s pretty awesome. Also, NO SURPRISES. [End Sidebar] I had been dating Dave for about 2 weeks before I knew that I wanted to marry him. I was totally, down for the count, in LOVE with this guy who had been among my best friends for 10 years. Who knew?

We adapted to this big change quite quickly, our friends adapted quickly and I moved in with Dave and his roommates almost immediately. After talking about marriage for a long time (about 2 years), we got engaged on Thanksgiving of 2011 (Canadian Thanksgiving, eh?) and got married in July of 2012. Whoohoo! WIN.

So that’s our little story, and that’s about it for this post.

If you would like to check out our love story from both of our perspectives, we each wrote our “side” of it on our wedding website:

www.daveandpaulatietheknot.blogspot.ca

In the next wedding post, I will get more into the details of the actual day. EXCITING!