One thing I consistently heard as advice from people who have gotten married recently was to make sure we carved out some time on our wedding day to just be together, take a breath, and soak in the fact that we were now married. There is so much pressure to be with your guests who have traveled for your wedding—which is so important!—but it can also be hard to get any meaningful time with your new spouse. While the majority of our wedding day was of course spent with guests, with our families, and with our wedding party, making sure we had some intentional time together was a priority too.
I can think of four separate times on our wedding day when I felt like we got some alone time and could be giddy newlyweds together. Remember, we didn’t see each other before walking down the aisle, so we wanted to be sure to get at least some face time “just us” between the ceremony and the end of the night. They were:
Our Private Dinner. We asked our caterers to set up a small table around the corner from the lawn where our guests’ dinner tables were set up for a quiet dinner just the two of us. We also had two seats at our families’ table, but we quickly ate a separate dinner and were able to really enjoy our wedding food and just talk about the fact that we were now the Baldridges! It was so sweet and I’m so glad we chose to do it that way. Our caterers plated our dinners before the guests ate, so we were able to eat dinner and then rejoin the reception without being away too long. Our guests could also see glimpse of our table, so they weren’t wondering where we were.
Our Sunset Photos. While cocktail hour was going on, our photographers whisked us away for some golden hour magic. We actually got in their car and drove down the hill where they had noticed some beautiful golden grasses growing! Even though we were with our photographers, and not totally alone, this still felt like some time for us to take a deep breath and have fun together. Plus, our photographers are amazing, and it felt like we were sneaking away from the reception to goof off with some old friends :)
Waiting for Our Grand Exit. As I’ll share about in an upcoming post, we had a big sparkly “grand exit” from our reception that I was so excited about. It turned out gorgeous! While the guests were lining up and our wedding party and coordinator were directing everyone, Grace and I waited back inside the ranch house where we’d gotten ready that morning. We probably only had 5 minutes until our exit, but it was so fun to kick up our feet (after dancing all night) and take a minute to reflect on how much fun we’d had at our reception.
Our Getaway Car Ride. After our exit, we hopped into the back of a fun 1983 Rolls Royce convertible I had rented (with a driver so we didn’t have to worry about driving it!). We stayed at the nearby Westlake Village Inn and had about a 10 minute drive from the venue to our suite. Our venue has a very long (2-mile) driveway, and it’s in the middle of a nature preserve, so it’s very quiet. Driving down the driveway with the convertible top down, staring up at the stars and floating on cloud 9, was one of my favorite moments of the night. As much fun as our wedding was, it was even more fun to drive away from it, knowing we were stepping into our new lives!
We left on our honeymoon about 36 hours after tying the knot, so we had plenty of time to revel in our new season of life once we got there. But I still think it was so important that we spent some time on our wedding day itself intentionally focusing on each other and sharing in the joy of the vows we had just made. All told, we spent less than an hour alone on our wedding day, but because those times were so intentional, they meant a lot.
I highly recommend working with your coordinator to carve out these types of moments on your wedding day! We cherished ours!
All photos are by Jesse Marble and Jimmy Marble for Our Labor of Love