Vow Exchange Ceremony and Wedding Reception
‘I got House in the carriage, I got Black Love and Marriage, They gon’ say you can’t have it, I’m Like, “Don’t Kill the Messenger” ‘ Teyana Taylor, We Got Love
On the 14th of November, 2021, we stood on a stunning rooftop in downtown Washington D.C., with an unobstructed view of the United States Capitol, and exchanged vows.
Our big day was split into two parts: a cozy ceremony where we said our vows before 40 of our closest friends and family, followed by a larger reception with 70 guests. You might be curious about how we managed to organize all this. Well, we sent out 2 sets of wedding invitations!
The first invitation set included details of the exchange of vows and reception (time/address). The second set included details of the reception only and was sent to the people invited to that event.
This is a lot easier said than done, and we receive an immense amount of pushback from people not only asking to be invited to both but also from people who were not invited to either to, receive an invitation.
I must say this, planning a wedding, is an incredibly revealing and expensive process. And if you are not careful, you will end up spending and compromising much more, than you and your partner intended, to please loved ones.
We invited 30 fewer people to an intimate vow exchange for two reasons.
The first is because the rooftop vendor has a guest list cap of 40 guests. DC Elopements(link below) set up our entire vow exchange ceremony. This is a local company that provides affordable arrangements for intimate weddings, including venue booking, planning, officiant arrangements, licensing, and professional photography. All of their packages are under $4,500 and all of the sites to choose from on their featured site list are south after DC ceremonial locations including DC War Memorial (our first proposal site), Rooftop at Kennedy Center, Spanish Steps, Union Station, West Lawn, etc.
The second reason the Vow exchange guest list was low, was because we only wanted people at the Vow exchange ceremony who we BOTH have spent 1 on 1 time with and were BOTH in the process of building relationships with over time. This is where we received the most resistance, upon explanation. That was tough for some to understand, but we stood firm. It’s about celebrating two people, and we both wanted to feel that connection and recognition from everyone there.
The vow exchange ceremony was no more than 1 hour long, and as previously stated it was on a private rooftop overlooking the United States Capitol. The backdrop was breathtaking and it was sentimental because less than 6 years prior, in June of 2015, same-sex marriage became legal federally, and at that same location thousands of LGBTIA+ gathered at the steps to celebrate the Supreme Court ruling. We had a live violinist, similar to the one we had at the first engagement, and professional photos were taken during the ceremony and immediately after we signed the wedding certificate.
There was a one-hour gap between the Vow exchange and reception to allow guests time to travel in between since they were not at the same location.
The reception was less than 20 minutes driving from the rooftop we exchanged vows at, and to preserve cost, we only offered light refreshments and beer/wine.
At the time, neither of us was sober, and we discovered during the wedding planning process the best way to conserve cost on your wedding day is by limiting food and drink options. The traditional sit-down dinner and open bar, that many American weddings offer, is often where a large percentage of the total Wedding cost comes from.
As we are now at the 2-and-a-half-year mark, looking back on this day feels like a lifetime ago because we have both grown so much as individual women and wives to one another, since then. We also look very different now than we did in those photos, and both of us have completely different hairstyles lol
One of the most special moments of the day was the 15 minutes we took for ourselves, which was strongly recommended by our therapist. Our marriage therapist told us to take a moment during the big day to be alone, take it all in, and just be there with each other.
We were able to squeeze this 15 minutes in, immediately after we were transported back to the hotel in the Limousine after the Vow exchange and before the photographer showed up to our hotel suite to take pics before heading downstairs to the reception. During this moment, we drank very expensive champagne (Ace of Spades), laughed, cried, hugged, kissed, listened to our favorite song (Jodeci and basically stared at each other with the ‘OMG, we really just did that shittttttttt’ face. It was our time to soak in the start of our new life together.
The moral of the story, make sure every detail of your wedding is authentic to you and your partner and you keep the cost as conservative as possible. Because after this day, you start building an entire life of adventures together that often includes asset allocation and family planning, and that is where expenses are most difficult to manage and mitigate. Especially in this economy, lol
DC Elopements
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