My Handfasting & Wedding

Well, the best laid plans of mice and men went horribly astray with one thing or other, so a day or two has slipped past since I said I was going to share some hand fasting photos with you.. We didn't have a photographer, we used little disposable cameras for the guests and a few digital cameras. Some of the photos off the disposables were hilarious, those funny little moments only your nearest and dearest type folk would snap a shot of... you truly can go off some people...*smiles* there was also an interesting assortment, of headless people, thumbs and other various extremities. Not to mention a few photos to prove what is really worn under kilts!
I had to sort through them all and then re size them, and then there was the drama of where to put them..straight into this post or over to flickr with a widget.. dilemmas.
Our day was perfect, there was the moment akin to terror when stepping through the door to see everyone steering at me, add the whirr of auto wind on some cameras belonging to the back yard papparazzi, it had a couple of people comment that I looked like I would either faint or bolt. Not warm fuzzies for a person who dislikes cameras as much as she dislikes being the centre of attention. Then 15 minutes into the rite, a genuine panicked whisper "Do you have the rings?" my reply " no, dont you?" and no he didn't, sooooooo there was a rush for the son's to go in search of said gold bands... Thank the Goddess we were not but a two second run from the house *laughing* that didn't happen in the rehearsal!
Neither Derek nor I are not fond of huge crowds or lots of fuss, so we invited a few folks who are close to us and opted to have the ceremony in the sacred space of our back yard here at home.
The yard was pretty as all the flowers I had planted all came into bloom the week leading up to the wedding. Each of the yards corners where marked with incense for air, burning torches for fire, a bird bath for water and a beautiful fock for earth.. a circle was cast of pine cones, gum nuts, rose and lavender.
We had the most beautiful pagan, witchy woman celebrant who is just amazing... she calmed my nerves before the day and on the day.. and her oneness with nature just made the ceremony that little bit more special... I was also very blessed to have my bouquet made by another lovely pagan woman, her knowledge and insight into all things green not to mention her eye for detail had me carrying the most perfect bouquet..with jasmine, orchids, green roses, gum nuts and ivy.. I really love ivy and gum nuts and the latter comes from a very deep connection with Gum trees.. With a lot of help from Tamara our celebrant we used our own vows for the wedding part of our ceremony.. I was going to post them here, but felt that they were a little personal and precious to us to share on the world wide web..
I'm at risk of rambling here, so will I park my cursor here and let you look at a few piccies.. there is no order to them, as much as I tried we shall thank Flickr for that. If you click the little photostream box, it will take you to the larger version of the photo.
Blessings