This Week in Funny Bunny: Civil Wedding Edition

Posted March 21, 2017 at 8:00 am

The photos in the post are NOT MY OWN.

They are by the talented, wonderful, Liza Head at Juniper Spring Photography. Check her out! 🙂 Her art portraits are like daaaaaamn! Also, feel free to creep her blog post on our wedding.

Hello all! Dealing with a fusspot of a baby this past week after my husband got sick attending GDC, thus later infecting myself and baby. Luckily, my immune system kicks butt, and babies with the cold often don’t get as sick as their parents if they’re exclusively breastfeeding, but poor David still doesn’t understand why he can’t breathe and scream-coughs his life away. It’s heartbreaking! We are finally returning to normal today, but I need an easy week, so I’m happy to finally share the details on my civil wedding to my husband James.

We had a proper big shindig in April, but we wanted to get civilly married at the tail end of 2015 for the ever romantic reasons of taxes and health care. As a photographer, I also wasn’t going to miss the chance to get married in San Francisco’s City Hall and I knew just the person to hire. Please admire her lovely work! I’ll pepper the photos with the hilarious story, so read on!

First – I handmade my bouquet and the rings the night before. It just didn’t seem right to not have ANYTHING to exchange!



Okay so, see that group of children? Turns out there was a huuuuge education press conference of some kind going on at City Hall that day. This will come up again later.



The long and short of the story is that me, James, and the judge just about melted down into tears of laughter during our ceremony. For whatever reason, the wording on the civil ceremony is extremely solemn. So solemn, it mentions about fifty times how sacred, solemn and important marriage is, and how nothing about being married is supposed to be taken lightly. So. As our judge is reading these lines, in the background, a middle school band begins playing. And not just any middle school band. A BAD middle school band, full of wobbly notes, and a conductor taking them at half-time because they can’t play very fast. And they’re playing Dreidel Dreidel.

So we’re trying desperately to take the whole thing seriously and focus on the vow, with this dreeeeeeideeeeeeeeeel dreeeeeeeeiiiideeeeeeeeel going on in the background. And then, we make it to the ring exchange, where she reminds us, AGAIN, to take this marriage thing VERY SERIOUSLY and I whip out the paper rings I’d folded. No one could keep a straight face. We really crossed the line into parody at that point, but it was so good. I couldn’t stop laugh crying. Makes for awesome photos!



This photo here is perfect. Just perfect. 👆






I always appreciate a photographer’s attention to detail. To me, it’s what makes the difference between an average and a great photographer. That and, you know, photos that are in focus.



I really treasure this whole set of photos because it reflects a James and Natalie that I see on a daily basis. Humor is a huge part of our lives, and I was thrilled to see so many silly photos in between all the beautiful ones. Thank you so much for being there for us, Liza! You’re the best!!! <3 <3 <3