And So We Come to the End

It’s been a long two years of planning, celebrating and packing away but at last our wedding journey is complete! We’ve received our photos, watched our wedding DVD and sent out all of our thank you cards. My final task is to finish off this blog which has become such a wonderful part of our wedding journey. I’ve loved sharing all the exciting, frustrating and unforgettable moments with everyone that has been faithful reading and I hope that you have enjoyed reading about them.


These are the memories that we will cherish forever and this chapter of our lives has been more than we could ever have anticipated. But like any good book, it’s time to close the final page of this journey and set forth on new adventures as husband and wife. And might I add, I cannot wait!

I’d like to thank each and every person who has read, commented and enjoyed ‘Our Wedding Journal’ over the past 2 years. It has been a wonderful way to share this special time in our lives with the ones we love from near and far but also a way to reflect and record on this time in our lives. I hope in many years to come that we will look back on this blog and remember our marriage journey and the great joy that it brought to both of us.

I mentioned a while back that I had some exciting news to share about my blog. My wonderful husband suggested that since I’ve put so much hard work into this blog and of course would like to keep it forever, that I should have it published in a book form. So we are going to have ‘Our Wedding Journal’ made into a book using Photobook Australia, just like our wedding album. I believe it will be something we treasure and look back on with much joy.

Thank you for reading, praying and thinking of us over the past two years!

God Bless

With Love

Mrs Carmen Gadenne

Wedding Traditions

Since before our wedding I wanted to write this post and seeing as our wedding blog is about to be finished I decided that it was important to me to finish writing this post. Whilst planning our wedding we had so many different things to think about, in particular the traditions which we wanted to keep and were important to us. Our wedding was a fairly traditional Christian wedding where we did things that you would normally find within the church. We both knew that having God as the center of our ceremony was very important to us and a lot of people comment on how nice that was. I agree!


When some friends of ours, Luke and Talia Carbis, got married they decided to learn all about the traditions that a lot of people have in their weddings and why. I thought this was really interesting and really embraced that ‘deep level thinking’ (look out, there’s a uni word!)

These are just some of the traditions we kept and why!

A White Wedding

I wore a white wedding dress as I had never been married before and the white symbolizes being ‘pure’, as in no sex before marriage!

Unveiling

I’ve noticed that a lot of brides wear their veil as a fashion accessory these days and leave it pulled back. I wore my veil over my face so that Jeffrey could pull it back at the end of the ceremony to kiss me, which symbolized the ‘unveiling’ of the bride. The veil was very special to me as my Mum and my Aunty both wore it for their weddings and I hope to share it with my cousins if they get married someday!

Walking with my Dad

My dad walked me down the aisle to show that he was willingly giving me over to Jeffrey into his care forever.

The Bible

We had scripture readings during our ceremony and also a short sermon my Ps Bakss to show that God is the head of our union and will be our guide through our lives together. We also had Jeffrey’s dad pray for us at the beginning of our ceremony and Ps Bakss pray at the end!

Congregation Song

We asked everyone to join us in singing praises to our God. We sang How Great Thou Art which seems to be a favourite song among Christian and non-Christians too. It was one of my favourite parts of the ceremony!

The Vows

We wrote a mixture of Christian and traditional vows which we read and promised to one another during our ceremony. When we wrote them we made sure they were not unrealistic promises, but ones that we can keep forever! I think we should hang them on our wall somewhere!

Rings

I think pretty well everyone gives wedding rings so this wasn’t unusual. These are simply to remind us of our promises and show others our marriage status! They also represent our never ending love for one another!

The Bridal Party

We had bridesmaids and groomsmen because we have some special people in our lives that we wanted by our sides as we got married and to celebrate with us. As the names suggest, we also had them there to help us with planning and organizing during the wedding process!

The Reception

Most people have receptions these days but basically to us it was our first meal as husband and wife which we shared with all of our close friends and family. A huge evening of fellowship!

Bridal Waltz

I guess back in the day, the first dance as husband and wife was very important which is why we decided to keep this tradition. It was also really nice to be able to dance with my husband and not fall over!!!!!! We invited our parents up to dance along with the bridal party with their partners! It was nice to see family and friends all up on the dance floor at once. Great photo opportunity too! I even got to dance with my dad which has only happened once at my formal! Jeff danced with his Mum, Chris danced with Mum and Jeff’s dad danced with Laree! Lots of nice memories there!

Throwing the bouquet

This was our final wedding day tradition but I didn’t throw my big bouquet, just a smaller one that the flower place made me. It is said that the girl who catches the bouquet is next in line to get married… I don’t exactly believe that but it’s kind of sweet!

The Honeymoon

Most newly married couples go on a honeymoon to have some time alone to get to know one another better as a married couple. Our honeymoon was just over a week away and was bliss! We loved every minute of it!

I think it’s important to understand why you are doing certain things as part of your wedding day because they usual have a tradition behind them and in some cases you may or may not want them to be part of your special day! We choose carefully and I enjoyed each and every one of them!

Our Wedding DVD

Today, the final part of our wedding and planning showed up… Our Wedding DVD! When we were doing up our budget, having a videographer film our wedding wasn’t really in the budget but we REALLY wanted to have it filmed professionally so we saved really hard to include this in our wedding day. I can officially say that it was worth every penny we spent! The video is AMAZING, so many special memories that we will cherish forever!


I’d also highly recommend our videographer Ben Connolly from Velocity Images! He is very professional and is great at what he does. We’ve been given a few discount voucher from Velocity Images, so if you are interested let me know so I can post one to you!

I cannot wait to show all of our family and friends our DVD and I’m sure it will be watched over and over again for the rest of our lives together. I think we should watch it every year on our wedding anniversary!!!!!!!!!!

A Beautiful Wedding Album

A month or so ago now, just after we received our wedding photos, I sat down and designed our wedding album using the ‘Photobook Australia’ website and software. I’ve made two different books on this site now and they always come back looking beautiful so that’s way I decided to use it for our wedding album.


Once I put the order in, our book arrived a week later… it was super quick! As usual, it came back looking even better than I thought it would. We’ve been showing friends and family the album and everyone says the same. That it looks amazing. I can’t share it all but check out a few photos I took! We are both very happy with the album and photos

Wedding Vows

Jeffrey and I spent a lot of time thinking about and writing our wedding vows. They mean a lot to us and are promises we want to keep to one another til death do us part. I couldn’t share them here before the wedding but I’d love to share them now!


Jeffrey's Vows
My beloved Carmen, I love you and believe that you are God’s gift to me. Today as we stand before our family and friends and as God unites us together, I take you to be my wedded wife and accept my new role as your husband. I promise to set you as seal upon my heart, and to stand by you from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish even until death. It is my prayer and desire that you find in me the husband that God has purposed especially for you. For as God loved the church and gave Himself for it, so shall I love you.

Carmen's Vows
My beloved Jeffrey, I love you and believe that you are God’s gift to me. Today as we stand before our family and friends and as God unites us together, I take you to be my wedded husband and accept my new role as your wife. I promise to set you as seal upon my heart, and to stand by you from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish even until death. It is my prayer and desire that you find in me the wife that God has purposed especially for you. For as God loved the church and gave Himself for it, so shall I love you.

Professional Wedding Photos

I’m very determined to finish off our wedding blog however I still have a couple more posts I’d like to write before it’s time to say farewell! Our amazingly beautiful wedding photos arrived last week and I’ve spent the past week working on our wedding album. I had coffee with Talia during the week and she agreed that getting it done straight away is important or it will just be another project for the ‘too hard basket’!


It’s taken me well over a week actually but our official wedding album is completely finished and looking beautiful if I may say so! It’s a photobook which I designed using the Photobook Australia website and software. I’m now in the process of uploading and ordering the books! Can’t wait to see them all printed!

I don’t want to give too much away with our photos, as not all of our family has seen them yet but I’ve added just a few of my favourites for your viewing pleasure. I hope you like them as much as I do!

Please do keep half an eye on this blog as I do intend to finish with a couple more posts and do have a little bit of exciting news about the blog itself!

These photos are by far absolutely beautiful however they are only the beginning and in a few days I’ll add all of my favourites to facebook, once we’ve had a chance to share them with our families!

Name Change

I must say that changing my name is a very big job. I’m really fortunate that a few of my friends have been through the name changing process and gave me a few tips.

1. Order our wedding certificate from Births, deaths and marriages asap

2. Get a few of the official wedding certificates JP signed to post off.

Knowing this information has definitely made the name changing a lot easier and before getting married I also made a list of everywhere I’d need to change my name so really I’ve just been working through the list.

Most things are now officially changed, I just have a couple of places that I need to fill in forms or send in the marriage certificate before they can change my name.

It’s been an interesting process but I think I’m beginning to get used to the name change – Mrs Carmen Gadenne. (Yeah, still sounds weird!) I’ve had so many changes to deal with so far but I think with time I’ll settle into them really well.