Latest / Planning Out Loud: A Wedding Planning Podcast / 3. "At Some Point, You Gotta Let Go": Making the Most of Your Wedding w/ Anne & Nathan

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3. "At Some Point, You Gotta Let Go": Making the Most of Your Wedding w/ Anne & Nathan · Planning Out Loud: A Wedding Planning Podcast

• 0:04
  Kristy Silva: Hello everyone and welcome to the Planning Out Loud Podcast.
• 0:07
  Kristy Silva: I'm your host, Kristy Silva, wedding planner and owner of Kinfete Weddings and Events.
• 0:12
  Kristy Silva: On today's episode, I have such a thoughtful, honest conversation with Nathan, he,/ him, and Anne, she / hers, about their winter wedding at the National Museum of Women and the Arts, which is one of my favorite Washington, D.C.
• 0:26
  Kristy Silva: venues.
• 0:26
  Kristy Silva: Anne and Nathan open up about their wedding planning mindset.
• 0:30
  Kristy Silva: We talk about their decision to officiate their own wedding, about choosing to not have any real flowers at all.
• 0:37
  Kristy Silva: We talk about managing friends and family throughout the process.
• 0:40
  Kristy Silva: And we talk about how a once-in-a-decade snowstorm threatened to shut it all down.
• 0:45
  Kristy Silva: So without further ado, let's jump right in.
• 0:48
  Kristy Silva: Nathan and Ann, thanks for being here.
• 0:53
  Kristy Silva: I'm excited to continue into the conversation that we were just having before we started, which is about having a wedding that feels a lot like you and that's fun.
• 1:02
  Kristy Silva: And I know you said you wanted to have a wedding that you would want to attend.
• 1:06
  Kristy Silva: Do you want to throw a party that you'd want to go to?
• 1:08
  Kristy Silva: So tell me a bit more about that.
• 1:10
  Kristy Silva: How did you two come to that conclusion that that was important to both of you?
• 1:14
  Anne: I think we started off with the same priority, which is we wanted to have a party.
• 1:22
  Anne: Uh, because the wedding industrial complex is such that we would have been happy to go down to the courthouse.
• 1:29
  Anne: Like it it for us, it wasn't meaningful to have the actual process of getting married is less important than having people there.
• 1:38
  Anne: Yeah.
• 1:39
  Anne: And we wanted to take the opportunity to like bring our friends and family together and to sort of like thank them for being our community.
• 1:47
  Anne: And especially because we knew we would have people traveling, that priority then became like we, you know, we really we have to feed people like a real meal.
• 1:56
  Anne: We want to have a nice party, like we want to make it something that was uh worth their while to travel for.
• 2:04
  Anne: And it's not like our friends are transactional, but to have it be something that we put effort into to make them feel loved and the love that we feel from them.
• 2:16
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, I mean, you know, people are spending time and money um to come to the wedding, and I think that's something that can be easy to forget when you're like in it because really focused on like the decisions you need to make and how it's all gonna come together.
• 2:30
  Kristy Silva: But yeah, I think you're right that not to make it transactional, but you want it to feel like it was worth it, that like, oh, I spent all this time and money because because I care about you and because I want to be there to celebrate you, and then I don't feel like I really got to celebrate you, right?
• 2:42
  Kristy Silva: Like, you wouldn't want that to be the giveaway.
• 2:45
  Nathan: Yeah.
• 2:45
  Nathan: I think early on when we started looking at things about like what we wanted to include and what we didn't want to include.
• 2:52
  Nathan: Um, and you gave us that lovely, like independent, like you sign, you fill this out without talking to your partner and see what you agree upon.
• 3:00
  Nathan: I think there were some questions in there where it was almost a surprise to like even consider not doing that.
• 3:07
  Nathan: Like Ann mentioned, like feed them, and it was like, yeah, like I think there were some like statements that I both of us were like, we cannot do this, we have to do this.
• 3:17
  Nathan: That was more of a look back into like horrors of wedding past, where it was like, of course we would do this, and then have the other person go, Well, not all weddings do that, and this that was, I think, a little interesting to know like what we were expecting in terms of viewing in terms of like I think we talked less about weddings we'd been to that did cool things and more about weddings we had been to that did poor things.
• 3:46
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, and without naming names, can you tell me a bit more about things that you've seen at weddings other than you've been to or that you've just you know witnessed through the internet or what have you that were things we're like we're not doing that?
• 3:59
  Anne: Two things came to mind that I think we were we were on the same page about initially.
• 4:03
  Anne: One was no cash bar, and people, you know, weddings are expensive, like yeah, and alcohol is expensive and expensive for the wedding.
• 4:12
  Anne: But that was part of the like we want this to be a thank you.
• 4:17
  Anne: A party for people, yeah, and a party, like to recognize that yes, we are spending time and money doing all of this, but our friends, friends and family are spending time and money to come there.
• 4:27
  Anne: So no cash bar was one priority, and then no kids, which was uh little bit shocking, I think, because we love our all of the little niblings that are running around, and like our both of our siblings have kids that we really love, and it's complicated for parents to you know, babysitters are expensive too, and especially if you're coming from out of town, trying to find that.
• 4:53
  Nathan: But I had a lot of friends who were like excited about that, they're like good, like without this being like we don't have to consider this as an option, and then Anne put together a incredible babysitter list for the people who did bring.
• 5:09
  Nathan: Like, we had a couple people from out of town who brought their kid and we never actually saw them.
• 5:13
  Nathan: Like, that's not like a positive or negative, but I'm saying, like, the they just you know, they made do.
• 5:18
  Nathan: They understood what the game was and we gave them resources.
• 5:22
  Nathan: Although I also think one of the big things that we wanted to do was one location.
• 5:27
  Anne: Yeah.
• 5:28
  Nathan: Like we've been to weddings where it's okay, you're you know, you have the ceremony here, and they, you know, buses and transport.
• 5:34
  Nathan: By the end of it, we also realized that the true thing we really couldn't buy more of was time.
• 5:38
  Nathan: So not having like an hour of a transport or something like that.
• 5:44
  Nathan: And we'd also talked about like if you're doing a party or something, you're gonna lose people.
• 5:48
  Nathan: Someone will get tired and just like not want to go.
• 5:51
  Nathan: So just having it all in one location that was also a very public, transport-friendly, metro accessible downtown DC was really important, just in terms of making it as easy as possible for not only us, but also the guests.
• 6:07
  unknown: Yeah.
• 6:07
  Kristy Silva: Yeah.
• 6:08
  Kristy Silva: And I remember that when we were touring venues at the beginning of planning, was that it was really important to both of you that it was metro accessible, which I think is great.
• 6:16
  Kristy Silva: And that did immediately narrow your venue options, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
• 6:21
  Nathan: If anything, you know, makes the decision a little bit so we loved like the venue, spoiler the voice the venue we eventually went to, like limited it to caterers.
• 6:30
  Nathan: And I'm sure some people are like, oh, well, that's actually a problem.
• 6:33
  Nathan: I think we were like great, less decisions to make, like they they've used them before, so they're they're probably okay.
• 6:43
  Anne: Yeah, and I don't think we ever really talked about it, but an assumption that we had was like, we don't need to do research to the end of the internet.
• 6:53
  Anne: Like you you were saying, like you know, without naming names, like we have been to weddings over the years, we've sort of seen things that we liked and seen things that we didn't like, and we're also not in the flesh of our youth anymore.
• 7:07
  Nathan: So the idea of staying out till 3 a.m.
• 7:10
  Anne: Yeah, like the you know, the kinds of choices that we were making were like this is a good choice and it we can get it done.
• 7:20
  Anne: And like the fact that you had a lot of recommendations, especially of vendors that you work with, helped us to sort of narrow down, like as if you open a tab and you're like wedding venues, Washington, DC.
• 7:30
  Anne: And then just like, yeah.
• 7:32
  Kristy Silva: And that's the case with like every vendor, not just venues.
• 7:35
  Kristy Silva: It's like here's a thousand photographers, here's a million DJs.
• 7:38
  Anne: Like, for example, hair and makeup.
• 7:40
  Anne: I priced out two of the suggestions that you had in your in your Google Doc and went to their Instagram pages and saw, like, oh, a friend of mine follows Updos for I Dos which is what I ended up using.
• 7:55
  Anne: And so I texted her and I said, Did they do your hair for your wedding?
• 7:57
  Anne: And she said yes.
• 7:58
  Anne: And I said, Did you like them?
• 7:59
  Anne: And she said yes.
• 8:00
  Anne: And I said, Cool, great.
• 8:02
  Anne: I don't need to like I I don't have an opinion about like this makeup artist versus this makeup artist.
• 8:09
  Anne: Maybe some people do, and that's nice for you.
• 8:11
  Nathan: And if you have the time and the money, and if that's a thing, like, you know, go for it.
• 8:16
  Nathan: But it's just kind of we made we made the decision.
• 8:19
  Nathan: I think the big decision, besides like how it was gonna run and stuff like that, which I once again I thought we agreed upon pretty quickly, the biggest decision was location.
• 8:28
  Nathan: Yeah, and because of that, everything else tended to flow from it, and that was great.
• 8:33
  Nathan: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:34
  Nathan: And you're gonna be making so many decisions that having less decisions like you said, like it's not for us, it wasn't a detriment to say if we go here, we can only use this caterer.
• 8:47
  Nathan: It was, and if we choose them, then we're done choosing.
• 8:51
  Kristy Silva: Yeah.
• 8:52
  Nathan: Although, of course, we're not, because then you have to choose the food and all of that stuff.
• 8:55
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, the decision fatigue is real in in wedding planning, and I especially see it toward the end as we get like closer to the wedding, and there's those final small decisions, like you mentioned about, you know, someone has to care about the napkin.
• 9:09
  Kristy Silva: That wasn't something you've planned on making a decision about.
• 9:13
  Kristy Silva: But that's one of those ones that tends to come towards the end.
• 9:15
  Kristy Silva: It's okay, napkin fold, you know, and napkin color.
• 9:18
  Kristy Silva: How do you want it set on the plate?
• 9:20
  Kristy Silva: And at that point, usually folks are like, whatever.
• 9:23
  Kristy Silva: Yep.
• 9:25
  Nathan: It's also one of those things where it's once again thinking about past weddings, stuff that we could never remember.
• 9:31
  Nathan: Like we spent a lot of time and not a lot of time, we spent a decent amount of time deciding between what plates do we want, what cups do we want, do we want a charger, what napkins, et cetera, et cetera.
• 9:42
  Nathan: And you know, we were caring about things and trying to weigh them with budget and all of those things.
• 9:46
  Nathan: But at the end of the day, if I think back to any wedding I've been to, I could not tell you any of those things.
• 9:54
  Nathan: I can tell you like what the music was, I could tell you where, like I could tell you a lot of things that I remember about weddings.
• 10:00
  Nathan: I could not tell you anything about what plates or knives or forks they were.
• 10:06
  Nathan: So that kind of decision was like, you know, we make the decision, you know, you can do you can do it, but you cannot agonize over it because it does not matter enough to agonize.
• 10:17
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:18
  Kristy Silva: And I found from my perspective of working with y'all, I think you did a really good job of honing in on what was important to you and putting more of your time and energy into those things and like recognizing the things that were less important to you and making a decision and moving on without getting stuck on it.
• 10:37
  Kristy Silva: And I loved for you to talk about how you came to the decision to not have an officiant and how you self-officiated your ceremony.
• 10:45
  Kristy Silva: How did you know that you wanted to do that?
• 10:47
  Kristy Silva: And then once you decided that that's what you were gonna do, what was the process of how how are we gonna make this happen?
• 10:53
  Anne: So, first of all, we learned the other day that apparently in California a horse could officiate your wedding.
• 10:58
  Nathan: Oh truly, if we had known that, I don't think in California.
• 11:03
  Anne: Uh sounds dope.
• 11:05
  Nathan: Um Metro accessible, no, no, no, horse.
• 11:08
  Nathan: Horse.
• 11:09
  Anne: Can we have a horse?
• 11:10
  Anne: Okay, also the person who told us this is a big bullshitter, so don't like I'll I'll fact you.
• 11:16
  Anne: Feel free to back just me, but yeah.
• 11:18
  Anne: So I don't know what jurisdictions allow self-afficiation besides DC, but it is something that is available.
• 11:25
  Anne: And I think when we were talking about is is there someone in our life that is someone we would have wanted.
• 11:31
  Anne: Yeah.
• 11:32
  Anne: And we, you know, we didn't we don't have a religion besides empathy, so there wasn't a religious figure.
• 11:39
  Nathan: There is a quick conversation.
• 11:40
  Nathan: I like we ruled out some quick possibilities about like, oh, this is someone.
• 11:47
  Nathan: Do we care enough?
• 11:48
  Nathan: And I was like, probably not.
• 11:50
  Anne: And it was partially that we were like, there's no one that we feel would really play this role in a way that we're like, oh yes, like it didn't that not no one clicked.
• 12:01
  Anne: And then we at least for me, like it kept coming back to like we are marrying each other.
• 12:06
  Anne: Right.
• 12:07
  Anne: Yeah, like we walked ourselves down the aisle, which I learned subsequently to having made that decision, is apparently a tradition in Sweden, which is where my family's from.
• 12:15
  Anne: But definitely there's no, you know, like I said, we're we're we stumbled into reinventing the wheel and doubled up.
• 12:21
  Anne: Um like where you know, we we wanted it like there's some element, and I think we said in our vows we're two theater kids, and so the idea of sharing the spotlight, like it was it some element of control, probably for me.
• 12:35
  Anne: But yeah, I I just keep coming back to like we were marrying each other, and that became very meaningful to us in terms of symbolically.
• 12:43
  Nathan: I think that's it's I don't remember it being.
• 12:46
  Nathan: I mean, what Anne says is true, but I don't remember it being like this is something we have to do.
• 12:50
  Nathan: No, I think we kind of went down and I have a lot of great friends.
• 12:54
  Nathan: Ann has some amazing friends who would be a wonderful officiant for them, for for Anne, for me.
• 13:00
  Nathan: I don't think we really had anyone that we felt was like common ground that really would know both of us.
• 13:07
  Nathan: So it became quickly a thing of just oh, we could just self-officiate.
• 13:12
  Nathan: So I don't know that it was a goal, but it certainly became a very cool thing to do and seemed really easy.
• 13:21
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, and I thought it went really well.
• 13:22
  Kristy Silva: Yeah.
• 13:23
  Kristy Silva: It sounds like y'all are still happy with your decision afterward, having you know, having done it.
• 13:29
  Nathan: We're still married.
• 13:29
  Nathan: Oh, yeah.
• 13:30
  Nathan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:33
  Kristy Silva: And but yeah, but as as a witness to it, I think.
• 13:35
  Nathan: We'll do this podcast again in 10 years and see what's yeah, we'll do but we'll do a recap.
• 13:40
  Kristy Silva: Uh be prepared for your vow renewal.
• 13:42
  Anne: Uh so one of the like maybe maybe people do this anyway, but especially because we were self-officiating, we did ask a friend who, as her profession is an editor, to read through both our like mutual vows and our individual vows, just to like have another set of eyes on it, because that would be a role that that your officiant might play under other circumstances.
• 14:07
  Anne: And similarly with with readings or speeches that happened during the ceremony, we had a friend who sort of had eyes on because that is a like you know, from other weddings we've seen where there has been no content control on speeches, and it was bad slash funny for us.
• 14:24
  Nathan: But oh my god, yeah, it was a highlight of our night and just absolutely could not be probably worse for others.
• 14:32
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, and thankfully, uh a majority of the weddings that I've planned and or just been at.
• 14:38
  Kristy Silva: The toasts have been lovely and an appropriate length, and they said funny but appropriate things in their in their toast.
• 14:46
  Kristy Silva: But there have been one or two where you know, dad just won't stop talking and just you know rambles for a good 10 minutes.
• 14:54
  Kristy Silva: And so I'm like, but the only one who can stop them is you, as the couple.
• 14:57
  Kristy Silva: You are the ones who have the right to be like, Anne, thank you.
• 14:59
  Kristy Silva: Take the mic away.
• 15:01
  Kristy Silva: Thank you so much, Dad.
• 15:02
  Kristy Silva: Everyone give them a round of applause.
• 15:04
  Kristy Silva: Um start playing the Oscar music or yeah, it's like yeah, it's like a play them off.
• 15:08
  Nathan: Once again, uh, it definitely happened at a wedding I have been to, so you can learn about that.
• 15:14
  Nathan: Although Ann mentions that we had an editor for us, we had an editor for our people taking place in our ceremony.
• 15:21
  Nathan: We also theoretically asked our siblings to look in on our parents.
• 15:27
  Nathan: And I think one of the four of them did that in the correct time.
• 15:35
  Anne: Or at all.
• 15:36
  Nathan: Or at all.
• 15:37
  Nathan: And quickly, like my mother landed, like they landed a couple days early, they were there to help, they were very, like, very excited to do things.
• 15:45
  Nathan: And she just like three days before the wedding, she kind of said, Well, I have to go write my speech.
• 15:50
  Nathan: And I kind of looked at her because we had asked her to like have this deadline like three weeks ago, and she just looked at me aggressively.
• 15:56
  Nathan: She's like, Yes, I haven't done it.
• 15:59
  Nathan: And it's just like, Okay, at least you know that this was something that we had asked you to do.
• 16:05
  Kristy Silva: Like, yeah, we may or may not have had to print someone's speech at the wedding.
• 16:12
  Nathan: Well, yeah, because we asked no phones, because you know, you get photos of people looking at phones of people standard, etc.
• 16:17
  Nathan: We still had one or two who had two, um, who had, so you know, it is I once again, I think that's one of those big takeaways is you can put all of this work into it, and you can have all of these things that are like relatively seemingly easy to do, but you know, other people have lives, other people have other stuff going on.
• 16:38
  Nathan: You're spending a lot of a time and attention on this, they are spending less time and attention on this.
• 16:43
  Nathan: So you're not gonna get a hundred percent compliance from every single person, and that just has to be okay.
• 16:49
  Anne: Yeah, at some point you gotta let go, right?
• 16:51
  Nathan: Which was very is it is it's yeah, he's either said than done, but very shots of some absolutely amazing speeches that we will remember for the rest of our lives.
• 17:00
  Nathan: That they were on a phone, absolutely not.
• 17:03
  Nathan: Like we will not remember.
• 17:04
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, or if you do, you it won't bother you, right?
• 17:07
  Kristy Silva: It's like at the end of the day, that's not the part that was important.
• 17:11
  Nathan: I'm happy we asked that, and I think it is better that like most happened without it.
• 17:16
  Nathan: But like I said, at the end of the day, what I really care about is the speeches content.
• 17:21
  Anne: Yeah.
• 17:22
  Nathan: For me, I really just say it because having people have to print it out earlier actually forces them to edit.
• 17:29
  Nathan: Whereas if they're doing it on their phone, they could be like trying to keep during like, oh god.
• 17:35
  Nathan: So I think the idea of just saying, hey, we want you to have it printed ahead of time is just a way of enforcing an earlier deadline.
• 17:42
  Kristy Silva: Yeah.
• 17:42
  Kristy Silva: And I think that's a great transition into giving people deadlines and rules and restrictions and just general like guest and family management.
• 17:52
  Kristy Silva: You know, what was your experience with that?
• 17:55
  Kristy Silva: You didn't, you had you had a wedding party in some in some sense, but a less traditional sense.
• 18:00
  Kristy Silva: You involved friends in your seven blessings.
• 18:02
  Kristy Silva: So that was a management piece.
• 18:04
  Kristy Silva: And then, of course, family is is family.
• 18:07
  Kristy Silva: But tell me a bit about your experience with that.
• 18:10
  Nathan: I wanna, before we do this, I want to share a small anecdote because I think that will ex exemplify what our experience became.
• 18:18
  Nathan: Throughout this course, as well as just in our life, we have like a couple shared Google documents.
• 18:23
  Nathan: So if there's ideas for travel or shopping lists or things like that, they go on there.
• 18:28
  Nathan: So whenever I have a question, or Anne sometimes has a question, the answer is always, well, it's in the Google Doc.
• 18:35
  Nathan: Did you check?
• 18:36
  Nathan: And sometimes the answer is no.
• 18:38
  Nathan: Um, sometimes the answer is yes, and I just missed it, and that's slightly better that I did it.
• 18:43
  Nathan: So we set up an incredible website, an absolutely fantastic website.
• 18:50
  Nathan: And once again, I know this because people told me, and no one has ever complimented anyone else on a wedding website, like you know, it wasn't custom made, it was, you know, one of the plug-and-play websites, but we put a lot of effort into thought, we put a lot of effort into recommendations.
• 19:10
  Nathan: Um, and by we, I mean 25 me, 75 Anne um.
• 19:15
  Nathan: But as we got closer and closer, people would ask questions, and the answer was just it's on the website.
• 19:22
  Nathan: And it was just one of those things.
• 19:23
  Nathan: So we didn't get a lot of questions because it was on the website, you know, QR codes, booking, locations, all of those, even like you know, hey, you're here a day earlier.
• 19:34
  Nathan: Here's some recommendations of what to do in town.
• 19:36
  Nathan: Once again, the aforementioned babysitter list that had like 30 different things.
• 19:42
  Nathan: Um, I know we're gonna talk later about the uh twist that happened at our wedding.
• 19:48
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, we'll probably get to that very soon.
• 19:50
  Nathan: Uh yeah.
• 19:50
  Nathan: So there's in terms of organization, we preloaded tons of it in terms of just instructions, and then we're just able to put people who could navigate a website, which we learned was not everyone.
• 20:04
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, I hear a lot of people say, I I spend so much time on the website and I put all this info on there, and then no one read it.
• 20:10
  Kristy Silva: No one read the website.
• 20:11
  Kristy Silva: Right.
• 20:11
  Kristy Silva: Do you feel like that was your experience, or was it kind of a 50-50 as far as like guests or family asking you questions that could have been answered on the website?
• 20:20
  Anne: It was very age-dependent.
• 20:22
  Anne: Okay.
• 20:23
  Anne: Um our friends, people our age, read the website, like to the extent where we went to dinner at some friend's house the other day, and we had like, you know, we played around with a lot of like fun things about us that we put on the website, and they were like, Oh, we got dessert and it's mint chocolate chip ice cream, and we bought specifically a green one because you said on your wedding website that mint chocolate chip ice cream should be green, and we're like, Yeah, like people really went into it, so it was mostly parents and their friends who seem incapable of using a website or Googling things, which we understand it's not their sort of natural instinct.
• 21:02
  Anne: Like, we didn't do paper invitations, and so a lot of people probably thought it was spam, you know.
• 21:07
  Nathan: Oh god, I forgot about that.
• 21:09
  Nathan: We sent the QR code on the we sent a postcard for a save the date, and it had the QR code to the website, and 30 people said, I don't, how do I get to the website?
• 21:21
  Nathan: We also had written out the website with the password on it, and we get so they didn't have to use the password.
• 21:26
  Nathan: What was the password?
• 21:27
  Nathan: No, no, no, no, no.
• 21:29
  Nathan: No, they didn't have to.
• 21:30
  Nathan: And you know, I got a couple texts from reasonable human beings saying, Hey, we lost the postcard.
• 21:36
  Nathan: Hey, my dog ate it.
• 21:37
  Nathan: Like, can you send me like you know, reasonable things?
• 21:40
  Nathan: But then there was also people where we're just like, Can you just send me the link to the website?
• 21:45
  Nathan: And it's like, I did, I already did.
• 21:47
  Anne: I I I sent it to you.
• 21:48
  Anne: Yeah.
• 21:49
  Anne: Um, but I think like, you know, uh at least in my experience, like as I've gotten older, realizing that especially your parents are like just humans trying their best.
• 21:59
  Anne: And And like they're they don't have special powers.
• 22:01
  Anne: They didn't they didn't get like a special book that was a book out of how to do this.
• 22:06
  Anne: Like all of you know, all of us are looking over our shoulder, being like, I need an adultery adult, including your parents.
• 22:12
  Anne: And now that they, you know, theoretically don't have responsibility for young children anymore, they've sort of at least my my parents seem to have like let go a little bit of logic.
• 22:22
  Anne: So I love you guys if you listen to this, but if there's one of them will.
• 22:28
  Anne: There's a level of we did not expect to have to explain things so much to people, to our families in particular.
• 22:36
  Nathan: Or repeat when we had a meeting to say, hey, this is how things are gonna go.
• 22:41
  Nathan: And then five minutes later, someone going, Oh, how were we supposed to have known that?
• 22:44
  Nathan: And it's like, oh, they told you.
• 22:46
  Anne: And we also, I mean, we we had, as we said, a kid-free wedding, except for we wanted our siblings' kids in the ceremony because we love them and they're very cute.
• 22:57
  Anne: But, you know, dealing with I think we had we had five kids under the age of six, and that's that's a lot, and like we're not parents, so we don't know how hard it is on a personal level to wrangle kids, to put kids to bed, and we also took away the grandparent babysitters, so you know, they're an unfamiliar place, that's not their own bed.
• 23:20
  Anne: Like kids, kids are are you know creatures of habit like the rest of us, but it went well, it went well, yeah.
• 23:28
  Nathan: I think, you know, because there was plans for okay, so we did an early dinner for them, and then their parents were gonna go put them to bed, but some of the parents were like, Well, we're gonna try our best, but it's an unfamiliar babysitter.
• 23:40
  Nathan: So we had contingencies and fears, but I think in terms of that, we planned correctly and everything went.
• 23:47
  Nathan: Like I mean, we could have planned an equal amount and it could have hit the fan as well.
• 23:51
  Anne: Yeah, and I mean like it went well.
• 23:53
  Anne: It's yeah, and it's but it's also like, okay, one, you can't control it.
• 23:56
  Anne: Two, it was it was sort of like a family wrangling that I think we hadn't anticipated.
• 24:02
  Anne: And in in the same way that like you're used to relying on your parents to be some level of adult, at least from my perspective, like I'm used to relying on my sister to be there in a certain way that she just can't be with two little ones.
• 24:15
  Nathan: Yeah, even with even with partners like who are also working and helping, but you also didn't want to put too much work on people because also they're supposed to be having fun.
• 24:25
  Nathan: Having fun.
• 24:26
  Nathan: Like we have we before the wedding even planned, we knew.
• 24:30
  Nathan: I think we even told you this early on.
• 24:32
  Nathan: Like, we are the people at a wedding where we will ask, like, what can we do to help?
• 24:37
  Nathan: Um, so we know that we have a lot of friends who are very similar, but we didn't want to overload them.
• 24:44
  Nathan: So we gave them like individual tasks.
• 24:46
  Nathan: And then it even became a thing where if someone asked, it was almost like, no, we're good.
• 24:51
  Nathan: Like, actually, what you can do is go be a part of the party.
• 24:55
  Nathan: Yeah, like what you can do is celebrate, be on the dance floor.
• 25:00
  Anne: That's that's your job.
• 25:02
  Anne: I think we were lucky in that our families were not like in our business about any of the planning.
• 25:08
  Anne: Like, they they didn't have opinions about napkins, for example.
• 25:11
  Nathan: And in fact, anything when, like, I think sometimes there was a thing, and then we explained and they said, Okay.
• 25:17
  Kristy Silva: Was there anything that you got pushback on?
• 25:20
  Kristy Silva: Not necessarily like they wanted you to change your minds, but that you're like, Oh, we're not doing this, and then they questioned it, or were they just like, oh, it sounds like you.
• 25:27
  Kristy Silva: I don't think so.
• 25:28
  Nathan: Like, there's no context about like, why aren't you doing this religion thing or why aren't you doing this?
• 25:33
  Nathan: And I mean, we changed it up a lot.
• 25:35
  Nathan: Like, we didn't do dances with our parents, like individual, like we just did it.
• 25:40
  Nathan: I think honestly, I think they were very cool with that regard.
• 25:43
  Nathan: They kind of I mean, if they even knew because I think a lot of times they would be like, hey, what's going on?
• 25:47
  Nathan: It's like we're doing it, we weren't trying to hide, but we weren't trying to go into all of the details of everything we had to go over.
• 25:56
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, and speaking of things that you didn't do, you all didn't have flowers at your wedding at all, which I I loved.
• 26:04
  Kristy Silva: I think might be the only time I've seen that, which is weird.
• 26:08
  Kristy Silva: I think flowers is such like a very much like a tradition or kind of this like assumption or expectation, but I don't know why.
• 26:18
  Kristy Silva: Because on a regular kind of day-to-day basis, or when we have a party, like if I'm having friends over, I'm not like, oh, I better go get floral arrangements before people get here.
• 26:28
  Kristy Silva: But some reason for weddings, people are like, we need flowers on every table.
• 26:32
  Kristy Silva: We need people to hold flowers when they walk down the aisle, but you also we don't need any of that.
• 26:37
  Kristy Silva: So can you just tell me a bit more about how you came to that conclusion?
• 26:41
  Anne: Yeah, this was something that I felt very strongly about from jump.
• 26:45
  Anne: I think cut flowers are wasteful, especially in DC in January.
• 26:50
  Anne: Like it's carbon emissions, it's sustainability.
• 26:53
  Anne: Like it, I I don't I don't like to receive bouquets of flowers, and that's like for a long time.
• 27:00
  Nathan: Makes birthdays real easy.
• 27:01
  Anne: Yeah, I I I I knew I didn't want it.
• 27:05
  Anne: And it so it wasn't a like, oh my gosh, flowers are so expensive.
• 27:08
  Anne: Oh my gosh, like I don't you don't care enough.
• 27:10
  Anne: Like, what are we gonna, what are we gonna pick, how are we gonna pick?
• 27:13
  Anne: It was just like, I don't want this, and so then we from there had to figure out what are the alternatives.
• 27:18
  Anne: And this also sort of gets into, I think, uh, you know, I don't know that we're unique about this, but so much, especially on the internet, is like how to DIY every single little detail of your wedding.
• 27:31
  Anne: And like, congratulations to the people who have the time and energy and money and skills to that to pull that off.
• 27:40
  Anne: Yeah, we don't so, but it was nice to have some things that we really cared about and that we put effort into like putting together.
• 27:50
  Anne: And so the because we didn't have flowers, that became almost an opportunity.
• 27:55
  Anne: And I like this what we didn't like think about like, oh, we need this creates the opportunity for us to do something DIY, but it was like, okay, we have to fill the table, and like you you wanted to hold something.
• 28:06
  Anne: I yeah, I was like, I'm gonna hold something, my sister's gonna hold something, so then what do we do?
• 28:11
  Anne: So I like to knit, and I it was like, okay, well, I this is a project that something that I like to do, this is something I can do.
• 28:19
  Nathan: And sorry, I'm laughing at like who has the time, and that's like, well, I spent the last eight months knitting flowers, knitting uh bouquet, and I you know, I found a a pattern book online that I bought, and once I started, I realized I could not make them all myself.
• 28:35
  Anne: So I emailed a couple friends.
• 28:38
  Nathan: Who once again were thrilled to have something that they could do to help.
• 28:42
  Anne: And so like I think I made three of the types of flowers in the bouquet, and then one friend made two different types, and then two other friends made made one each.
• 28:51
  Anne: Once we mentioned this to Nathan's mom, who is also a knitter, she mentioned it to her knitting group back home, who then were like, How can we help?
• 28:59
  Anne: That's such a great idea.
• 29:00
  Anne: So they made all the greenery, um, all the leaves and stuff, which I just hadn't thought about.
• 29:05
  Anne: Oh, it was great.
• 29:06
  Anne: Like, I I don't know that I would have gotten it done if they hadn't helped out.
• 29:10
  Anne: And you know, it was again to people did not buy new yarn.
• 29:14
  Kristy Silva: It was like using scraps that you have, uh like a hobby they were probably doing anyway, like one of the new knitting projects.
• 29:21
  Nathan: We don't have to preserve the petals, like right.
• 29:24
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, and you can keep it forever.
• 29:26
  Nathan: We ended up, I mean, they ended up making two full bouquets and all of the bouton ears.
• 29:32
  Nathan: Anne was doing a craft for the wedding while we would like eat dinner and watch TV.
• 29:37
  Nathan: So I was like, well, I should do something.
• 29:39
  Nathan: Um I I got I I feel so bad already.
• 29:43
  Nathan: So I did a little googling.
• 29:45
  Nathan: I my craft is not knitting.
• 29:48
  Nathan: Uh I I've made chain mail before.
• 29:51
  Nathan: So Ann suggested I look into that.
• 29:54
  Nathan: So I found a pattern for chain mail bow ties.
• 29:57
  Nathan: So I also made those for people in the wedding party.
• 30:01
  Kristy Silva: And that was very cool, and also a like haven't seen that before, and they looked so good.
• 30:05
  Kristy Silva: I yeah, and same with like the all the knitted projects, I thought.
• 30:09
  Kristy Silva: And it's just really lovely, especially Ann, you talk about how it was like it was a community effort, right?
• 30:16
  Kristy Silva: So it wasn't even just just you, but you were able to bring people in, but not in a way where you were giving them work, right?
• 30:24
  Kristy Silva: Like you were saying, like it's it was volunteer.
• 30:25
  Kristy Silva: They could they could have said one person said no, yeah, and that's I'm and they were banned, no.
• 30:33
  Anne: Um but yeah, and then with respect to like tablescapes, yeah, like I said, we so we instead of floral centerpieces, we had stacks of books.
• 30:41
  Nathan: Both big readers when we moved in together, we had to tearfully get rid of a lot of books, although we also excitedly bought more bookshelves.
• 30:51
  Kristy Silva: Yep.
• 30:52
  Nathan: So it was it was a it was a mixture of both.
• 30:55
  Kristy Silva: What was the process for because you you didn't like you didn't buy new books?
• 31:00
  Nathan: Very, very few.
• 31:01
  Nathan: Some were new, but very few books.
• 31:04
  Kristy Silva: Mostly, right.
• 31:04
  Kristy Silva: Okay.
• 31:04
  Kristy Silva: So like what how did you it was a lot of books.
• 31:07
  Kristy Silva: I mean, do you remember how many?
• 31:08
  Kristy Silva: I feel like it was 400 something.
• 31:10
  Nathan: There's this spreadsheet somewhere of me counting, but it was above 450.
• 31:14
  Kristy Silva: So like what was the process for that?
• 31:16
  Kristy Silva: Where did you uh go?
• 31:18
  Kristy Silva: How did you decide which ones to get?
• 31:21
  Anne: We can shout out a couple places, goodwill industries, mostly the one in that we went to in St.
• 31:27
  Anne: Louis.
• 31:28
  Nathan: They sell books by the inch.
• 31:29
  Nathan: Oh so they just stack them.
• 31:31
  Nathan: And they have a meter stick.
• 31:32
  Nathan: That's 28, that's 28 inches.
• 31:36
  Nathan: Like it was truly, we bought a rollerbag because it was we also bought the roller bag and filled it with 50 pounds of books for like $30.
• 31:46
  Anne: Yeah.
• 31:47
  Anne: So Goodwill, um, both in in the DC area and in St.
• 31:50
  Anne: Louis, where Nathan's from.
• 31:52
  Anne: Dunaway Books, which is also in St.
• 31:54
  Anne: Louis, McKay used books out in Virginia, the Book Barn in Denville, New Jersey, which is the best place.
• 32:02
  Nathan: Shout out Book Barnaby.
• 32:03
  Nathan: Shout out Book Barn.
• 32:05
  Anne: The DC and DMV libraries that have book sales.
• 32:09
  Nathan: The little free libraries and little free libraries around the town.
• 32:11
  Nathan: We ended up donating far more back to than we got eventually.
• 32:17
  Anne: We donated most of them to books to prisons, the ones that were left over.
• 32:20
  Anne: But yeah, so it was like uh we like to read, and we actually had different philosophies about how we picked the books.
• 32:27
  Anne: I picked authors that I had read, so it I hadn't necessarily read all the books that I chose to be on the tables.
• 32:34
  Nathan: And you some that had fun covers.
• 32:36
  Anne: Some that had fun covers.
• 32:37
  Anne: And Nathan, you picked only ones that you had read and liked.
• 32:41
  Anne: And unfortunately, because he reads sci-fi written by men, a lot of those people have turned out to be pieces of shit.
• 32:47
  Nathan: That that that started becoming far more apparent, literally.
• 32:50
  Nathan: Like I already had, because we bought that process over several months.
• 32:55
  Nathan: Yeah.
• 32:55
  Nathan: So I actually had some of those in the pile, and then they were just like, Well, let's shoot these.
• 33:01
  Anne: But yeah, it was like books that we like, books that we have read, books that like are in the genre that we like that we might want to read.
• 33:08
  Anne: And we also felt happy that some of the things that we did that were like our kind of maybe quirks, and perhaps it's not a surprise either, that like our friends and family like got into it.
• 33:22
  Anne: Yeah, that we had the books on the table, and we were like, we have no idea if people are gonna be like, this is just weird.
• 33:28
  Anne: Because we all we asked people to take them as favors as well.
• 33:31
  Anne: And at one point in the night, I saw some of my college friends like wandering the room, like after they'd eaten dinner and like looking at each table's book.
• 33:40
  Anne: Scoping it out, and I was like, Oh, it's working, like this is amazing.
• 33:44
  Nathan: Someone found signed copy, like copies of books that we didn't know were signed, and they were like, We can you have to like, and we were just like, no, no, no, people were like, no one was fighting, but some people were like there wasn't fight over the anamorph books, those were the most precious of the night.
• 34:01
  Nathan: Shout out, KA Applegate, trans rights, yeah.
• 34:05
  Anne: You know, like everybody took at least one book, and people got like uh weirdly possessive of the books on their table.
• 34:12
  Anne: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:13
  Anne: They were like, our books, these are our books, and like I don't know, people got into it in a way that I think I had been like, I hope people think this is fun.
• 34:22
  Anne: I hope people take a book, and people got like a little more into it than I think we even hoped.
• 34:28
  Nathan: In a similar regard to that, the other thing we did that I think was big for us was we're big bar trivia people.
• 34:34
  Nathan: So early on we wanted to do trivia, which is not unique.
• 34:38
  Nathan: I know a lot of people have done that at weddings.
• 34:40
  Anne: There's a New York Times article about it recently, but it was after our wedding, so it was friends centered.
• 34:46
  Nathan: But Anne is, I love her, but she is very competitive.
• 34:50
  Nathan: So the usual standard is like you do like trivia about the couple, but Anne wanted to play.
• 34:57
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, and I love that.
• 34:58
  Kristy Silva: When I tell people like, oh yeah, they're gonna have you know trivia at dinner, I'm really excited for this.
• 35:03
  Kristy Silva: I'm also you know, I I love trivia, I I host trivia.
• 35:05
  Kristy Silva: Yep and so um, and they're like, oh, is it gonna be like about them?
• 35:08
  Kristy Silva: And I was like, no, they want to play, they want to be able to participate.
• 35:11
  Kristy Silva: So they are going in not knowing the questions or the answers.
• 35:14
  Kristy Silva: And I thought that was such a fun way to do it.
• 35:16
  Nathan: But I thought that I thought people were like, oh, that was fun.
• 35:20
  Nathan: So many people were like, this was really good.
• 35:23
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, and and the P and P every table got into it and like took it seriously.
• 35:27
  Anne: But like like in a similar in the in the vein of like, we thought people were, we hoped people would pick up what we put down.
• 35:35
  Anne: Like with all these things, people even like picked it up even more.
• 35:39
  Anne: Yeah.
• 35:39
  Anne: So like trivial, we're like, okay, well, we like doing it.
• 35:41
  Anne: So we hope at least a couple other people like doing it.
• 35:44
  Anne: But so many people told us that it was a great way to meet the table.
• 35:49
  unknown: Yes.
• 35:50
  Anne: Because I mean, and some take was like everybody knew each other, but they weren't just it wasn't just like, let's talk about the food, let's talk about the weather, let's talk about the you know, dancing.
• 36:00
  Anne: Like people there was there was something to do.
• 36:03
  Anne: Yeah.
• 36:04
  Nathan: You had to talk to each other, you and you also like learned a little bit about those people.
• 36:08
  Kristy Silva: Yeah.
• 36:08
  Kristy Silva: It was great.
• 36:09
  Kristy Silva: Were they like, oh, I know this answer because I actually lived in this country or the table that won actually beat a five-time Jeopardy champion.
• 36:17
  Kristy Silva: And now they get to they get to have that.
• 36:21
  Kristy Silva: You know, they can hold on to that for the rest of their life.
• 36:23
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, yeah, it was so fun.
• 36:24
  Kristy Silva: And shout out to DJ Brian, our trivia host that you think he came up with all the questions and and then me and Alexandra made the the slides that we could put it up on the projector so people could could see it.
• 36:36
  Kristy Silva: But I thought Brian did a great job um hosting, and then we just my team took on the the scoring process that you all didn't have to do that.
• 36:44
  Kristy Silva: Well, the thing, one of the things that of course we haven't gotten into, but we do need to get into before we finish up is the things that are out of our control, such as the weather.
• 36:53
  Kristy Silva: So your wedding was in January and DC had a I wouldn't say unprecedented, but it's happened before.
• 37:00
  Kristy Silva: Just we were a decade.
• 37:01
  Kristy Silva: Once a decade snowstorm.
• 37:03
  Kristy Silva: Yes, a very large snowstorm that halted travel across the East Coast.
• 37:10
  Kristy Silva: And so that obviously came with a lot of cancellations of people who couldn't get in or they were worried they wouldn't be able to get home.
• 37:17
  Kristy Silva: So, how is that from your perspective, both uh emotionally, how you felt in the moment, but also the logistical impacts of that?
• 37:27
  Nathan: So, timeline-wise, we were getting married on the weekend, we had a Friday event, a Saturday, the wedding, and then a Sunday brunch, and the news of this weather started creeping out around Tuesday.
• 37:39
  Kristy Silva: Yeah, yeah, I would say that's when we like under it was like, oh, we're we might get snow.
• 37:43
  Kristy Silva: Like we knew that for a bit, and then the closer it got, it was like, no, we're gonna get ice.
• 37:47
  Kristy Silva: Snow.
• 37:48
  Kristy Silva: Yeah.
• 37:49
  Anne: And I think, you know, because we're like, oh, it's January, we we were inside, right?
• 37:55
  Anne: Like, there's no universe in which we're so in my mind, we're like, weather doesn't matter.
• 38:00
  Anne: If it rains, it rains.
• 38:01
  Anne: Like, yeah, the walk from the hotel might be awkward, but like once again, whatever accessible.
• 38:06
  Anne: Yeah, we you know, I I honestly feel like we had planned better, at least for me mentally, for regime change in America than weather.
• 38:17
  Anne: That I was like, look, if there, if if it happens, we're just gonna go down to the White House, everybody on their outfit, and we're gonna party.
• 38:24
  Anne: But so like it was it was a bit of a shock, also because it was like once in a decade thing.
• 38:29
  Anne: And DC freaks out about snow when it's like a little like a couple flakes, right?
• 38:34
  Kristy Silva: So it's hard to know like how seriously to take it.
• 38:37
  Anne: Like I said, and then as it got closer and closer, it became like you have to take it seriously because if you don't and you and it happens, then like you're screwed.
• 38:45
  Nathan: So and was really upset.
• 38:47
  Nathan: I mean, I was also I was also upset, let me be clear, about people are gonna cancel, we're we're being really irresponsible.
• 38:55
  Nathan: You know, insurance doesn't cover act of God, so it was kind of a conversation of like we were already like, how much money are we spending versus okay, now we're just gonna have to cancel it.
• 39:04
  Nathan: But like, so are we forcing people to be on safe?
• 39:07
  Nathan: Are we gonna get people killed for this?
• 39:09
  Anne: Yeah, and it's like because especially vendors who have to stay later, yeah.
• 39:14
  Anne: We're like, we can't trap people.
• 39:17
  Nathan: Yeah, our friends are making this decision.
• 39:18
  Nathan: We don't want people who are just trying to work a job to like do that.
• 39:22
  Nathan: It's very kind of you to think but so Wednesday, I think it was Wednesday, I was getting cancellations from all of my cousins.
• 39:30
  Nathan: Like all of my cousins were canceling, and I was just I couldn't even share this.
• 39:34
  Nathan: I was at work, and took, I think, that day off.
• 39:36
  Nathan: I was off that whole week, yeah.
• 39:37
  Nathan: Off that whole week doing the planning, and I was just like, Well, if I'm getting lit up like this, Anne's gonna, and no one on Anne's party canceled or one, like four, four, but I had like 20 of my cousins cancel.
• 39:50
  Nathan: So I thought it was gonna be, I thought I was gonna come home and it was just gonna be madness.
• 39:55
  Nathan: But that happened because the issue with the weather was never going to affect the actual Friday and Saturday.
• 40:02
  Nathan: It was really just going to affect travel of people getting out on Sunday.
• 40:07
  Kristy Silva: Yeah.
• 40:08
  Nathan: Um, so people said, hey, we don't want to get stuck, and we completely understood.
• 40:13
  Nathan: But we put out the idea and we made, once again, another Excel sheet about people who were willing to house people for a day or two.
• 40:21
  Anne: Because we didn't want anybody to have to make the choice of I can't afford another night in a hotel or like I'm gonna sit at the airport, like sleep at the airport if my flight gets canceled.
• 40:28
  Anne: We didn't want that to be what prevented people from coming.
• 40:31
  Nathan: So So we offered up our our we have a guest room and we offered that out, and then there's fun stories, but we'll run out of time.
• 40:37
  Nathan: So we put out all of those things and just the amount of people who some of whom weren't even invited to the wedding, yeah, who volunteered, like, oh, I have a couch, oh, I have a guest room, like if if you're willing to put up with my dog who's very friendly, you can stay.
• 40:53
  Nathan: And just people were being so incredibly generous that Anne then went herself again, not to sleep, but you know, the other side.
• 41:01
  Nathan: So yeah, the one thing that I always say, like you talked about every wedding's gonna have unanticipated things.
• 41:08
  Nathan: The worst thing that could have happened to us happened five five days before, which meant that we actually got to deal with it.
• 41:17
  Nathan: So the people who were canceling were telling us they were canceling.
• 41:21
  Nathan: So we knew they weren't gonna come, and we could still invite a lot of local people who weren't gonna have the problem about getting stuck.
• 41:27
  Nathan: So we said like 20, 24 people canceled.
• 41:30
  Nathan: At the end of the day, we only had like 10 empty seats because we were able to fill that with a lot of people who were local and who we would have loved to have if we had had the budget to invite a thousand people.
• 41:42
  Nathan: So it's it allowed it forced us to pivot, it changed the plans from what it would have been.
• 41:47
  Nathan: I would have liked to have more people there, but it turned out okay.
• 41:53
  Anne: And I think some of the worst thing that was going to happen happened on Tuesday.
• 41:56
  Anne: So at the point where we're at like someone's reading off of a phone.
• 42:01
  Anne: Yeah, the point someone's reading off a phone, I'm like, I don't give a shit.
• 42:04
  Nathan: They're here, yeah.
• 42:06
  Anne: People are here, people are warm, people are fed, people are safe.
• 42:10
  Anne: Yeah, like everything else is just extra.
• 42:13
  Anne: And so, like, I don't know at what point I would have stopped stressing if it hadn't been for the weather.
• 42:18
  Anne: I'm sure like I would have found something to be stressed about in general, but like the I completely lost it seeing everybody in the room because I was like, people are here, people people, it despite all of this, people showed up.
• 42:32
  Nathan: Yeah, we had international people who came and that was very great.
• 42:35
  Nathan: And it was like obviously that was gonna be a big impact, but it was almost easier for them because they're like, we can just stay, like it's easier for us to do.
• 42:42
  Nathan: So the people who are traveling across country or whatever, it also became amazing that they were willing to do it.
• 42:48
  Nathan: It just became we felt more love because it's very easy to do it when it's easy, it's harder to do it when it's hard.
• 42:56
  Nathan: So the fact that a lot of people were like, whatever, made it feel much better.
• 43:00
  Nathan: Yeah, and the Friday event was obviously fine, the Saturday event went fine when we were leaving.
• 43:05
  Nathan: There was a little bit of dust to snow, which again, you you told us everyone got out fine.
• 43:11
  Kristy Silva: So you to believe the timing ended up perfect, it just started to snow as the last of us were loading out, and then everyone got home before it like came down.
• 43:20
  Kristy Silva: Then that night, like we woke up to, you know, leave.
• 43:24
  Nathan: Yeah, and that was the biggest thing for us.
• 43:26
  Nathan: Sunday, our Sunday brunch that was hosted by Anne's parents was the most impacted because a lot of people from who were going to be leaving were actually staying.
• 43:37
  Nathan: So we of course said come on down.
• 43:39
  Nathan: But then there was a lot of local people who normally would have come, but they're like, you know, I'm on my couch, there's a snowstorm, like we don't need to drive.
• 43:46
  Nathan: So it actually worked out incredible because the people who were from out of town, the people that we got less that we can spend less time with normally, we got to spend more time.
• 43:57
  Anne: Yes, yeah.
• 43:57
  Anne: They were like, We could we could just sit stare at each other in this.
• 44:00
  Kristy Silva: hotel room or we could put our snow boots on and make the trek so we got like more quality time with out of towners because all their canceled but I wouldn't recommend no planning your wedding except definitely not but I think you you made the best of the situation.
• 44:17
  Nathan: And the snow crete that lasted in DC for several months were obviously an issue.
• 44:22
  Nathan: But once it like if our wedding had been then we would have been worrying about will this be clear, will this be dealt with?
• 44:29
  Nathan: But the fact that it happened ahead of time but not ahead of time enough that we could actually do anything meant that we didn't once again we didn't have to make decisions.
• 44:39
  Nathan: We just said what's the best way we can mitigate this but knowing that it's not going to be perfect.
• 44:46
  Nathan: So we were able to get enough time to roll with the punches but not kind of question should we change things up.
• 44:55
  Kristy Silva: Yeah and that's that's great and all and like I said it was you got to have everyone together and people arrived safely and all everyone made it home.
• 45:03
  Kristy Silva: It puts things in perspective yeah I think one sure I think your uncle was yeah Wednesday was the last day that that people traveled home.
• 45:11
  Kristy Silva: I mean everything was completely shut down.
• 45:12
  Kristy Silva: Yeah yeah but it's like Sunday Monday Tuesday you weren't you weren't going anywhere.
• 45:16
  Nathan: No I had a colleague who was like I just had a friend in DC and we like had a sleepover for the couple days like yeah good it's right make make the best out of it.
• 45:26
  Kristy Silva: Uh well as we wrap up I'd love to just finish with my final question for you which is if you could give those listening one piece of advice or challenge them to do something or encourage them to think about something as they're wedding planning what would you say?
• 45:43
  Nathan: So I'm going to do two because one is hire Kristy.
• 45:46
  Nathan: I did not ask them to say that we've received no compensation I I mean you've heard things I have said throughout I have was always the the money person.
• 45:56
  Nathan: I was always the person saying hey is this worth it hey can we make this cheaper quite frankly I don't understand how we paid you so little.
• 46:03
  Nathan: Like the amount of the your your guys' fee was easily the best money we've ever spent the amount of questions that you guys could deal with the amount of like a place would tell us something.
• 46:15
  Nathan: Oh you have to do this and we would just not know if that was true or not and sometimes you would say no that is the case or sometimes you could be like I don't know what they're talking about.
• 46:24
  Nathan: So having someone who's experienced and knows it and you know has recommendations and you also like literally saved us money on like oh you know Kristy there's a 10% like referral thing.
• 46:35
  Nathan: Listen having someone who's been there before and knows it there's that and we've talked to people who also had planners who were less thrilled with their planners than we were so that's why we're not just saying hire a planner we're specifically saying hire Kristy.
• 46:49
  Anne: Yeah and I like the in the same vein of like trust experts to do the job like yeah we've never done this before we don't anticipate ever doing it again.
• 46:59
  Anne: You guys have and like that just makes sense to to have somebody who knows what they're doing involved.
• 47:06
  Anne: I
• 47:07
  Anne: I think especially in in DC if you want to stay in this city is to write your guest list before you think about venues because some of the places like a lot of historic houses and stuff like that are like capped at 120 which is a a big enough wedding like for most people but it wasn't for us um for me.
• 47:28
  Anne: And you don't want to have to fall in love with the place and then have to cut people from your guest list.
• 47:33
  Anne: Or may maybe you want maybe that's okay with you to do but it also just made it easier when we said up too small.
• 47:40
  Anne: Yeah so there were there yeah it was also something that I hadn't thought about but like a lot of the places where like I've been to weddings or I where I was seeing online that they were they were capped at specific numbers and I think that would have made it very difficult if we had had gone the other way around.
• 47:56
  Nathan: Yeah I would say the other thing that I would do is do something when you plan do something just for you like we had some entrance music that was specific we played our grand entrance to Star Trek theme song and I thought this is just for me.
• 48:12
  Nathan: Like just no of no interest to any human being but me and not even to Anne she went along with that what she got the exit music uh which was once again only for Anne but several people came up to me and was like was that was that the next generation or was that deep space nine like so once again it's one of those things that the more you show yourself the easier it is for people of similar kind to know you and meet you.
• 48:38
  Nathan: So that was really really fun.
• 48:41
  Nathan: I mean we didn't even talk about the fact that our seven blessings were themed to dungeons and dragons so the fact that we can just like let that one go after we spent 30 minutes talking about how like to us our wedding what like tailored to us was we just did a lot of stuff that it was like oh yeah that'll be fun.
• 48:59
  Nathan: Let's just do that.
• 49:00
  Nathan: Who cares?
• 49:01
  Kristy Silva: Yeah I mean we could talk for another hour just about the personal touches that you all in included I think you were so in intentional about it and they came out so so well just like the the late night hot dogs and the the ice cream from like specifically a local ice cream place who were so kind to like customize their ice cream for you.
• 49:21
  Kristy Silva: I think mint chocolate chip green wild yes and made their mint chocolate chip green when it is not usually green.
• 49:26
  Kristy Silva: And I remember when you all told me you're gonna ask I was like you know what you can ask but in my head I was like there's no way they're gonna say like I'm gonna be honest I was very doubtful and then they were like yeah and I was like that's amazing I'm and I'm glad you asked the worst they can say is no right so it's good to ask those they were and the ice cream was delicious and it was great.
• 49:43
  Anne: And some neighborhood kids in in like upper northwest had the leftover ice cream for their snow day the next day.
• 49:48
  Anne: We have some love photos of kids just eating ice both in like anoratic chairs like on a throne of ice just eating ice cream I was wondering what you did what with a lot of we have some of it in our freezer we have some but one of the tasks of assigning hey you need to take the like if you can take this when you go home etc etc so someone was charged with ice cream and she was just like I gave away some ice cream to local kids here's some really cute photos we could not be upset .
• 50:16
  Kristy Silva: Well Nathan and thank you so much for your time for sharing your your story and your experience I mean my goal here is to have more real wedding stories out there.
• 50:33
  Kristy Silva: And you know the stuff that's published usually is very like polished and painted to yeah but like that everything was is flawless and perfect but is aligning with what you're quote unquote supposed to to do and like here's how we did this trend that everyone else is doing but how we did it better.
• 50:51
  Kristy Silva: And so I love that you all took your own path.
• 50:55
  Nathan: No, we still feel like that way when we see other people do trivia.
• 50:59
  Kristy Silva: Thank you so much Anne & Nathan for your time and for being the very first couple that I interviewed for the podcast.
• 51:05
  Kristy Silva: If you want to read more about their wedding and see their beautiful photos, which of course you do, their wedding blog post is linked in the show notes or you can search for it on our blog at kinfete.com/podcast that's K-I-N-F-E-T- E dot com slash podcast.
• 51:22
  Kristy Silva: Be sure to hit follow wherever you listen so you never miss an episode.
• 51:25
  Kristy Silva: New episodes drop every week and we'll alternate between an interview with a couple like the one you heard today and an advice episode either with just me or sometimes a guest.
• 51:35
  Kristy Silva: Thank you for listening to the Planning Out Loud podcast.
• 51:37
  Kristy Silva: I'll catch you next time.
• 51:38
  Kristy Silva: Bye! I will go into my official intro and then just like any good podcast know that I'll be editing.
• 51:45
  Anne: How do you feel about swearing?
• 51:47
  Kristy Silva: Oh that's fine. This is not a podcast for children.
• 51:51
  Nathan: No children allowed at the wedding, no children allowed on the podcast.