Weddingbee Blog

I haven’t yet introduced you to our officiant, Annemarie Juhlian, but she was one of the best calls that we made when planning our wedding. I facetiously told you about how we found her before the wedding, but I should mention that the gist of that story is totally true. My mom really wanted to have someone slightly more official than a friend officiate our wedding, but Mr. EB was very strongly opposed to any sort of religious officiant. I really had no idea what to do, so I started googling “wedding officiants” and “IslandWood” and her name was the first to pop up.

I really liked the idea of someone who had already officiated a wedding at IslandWood (they don’t do many weddings there, so I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find someone who had or not), but mainly I wanted someone who was familiar with the island.

After meeting with Annemarie and deciding that she would be perfect for the type of ceremony that we wanted, she had us complete several “homework assignments” so that she could get to know us a little bit better and craft our ceremony for us. The homework we did was actually a lot of fun—a lot of the questions Mr. EB and I completed separately, and after we sent off our answers to her we talked about them and why we answered the way we did. It was a lot of fun to talk about how we would describe our relationship to someone else, or what parts of each other we love the best.

One of the only pictures I could find from our rehearsal! Apparently we were all busy, you know, rehearsing. *Guest photo

On Saturday morning (with the generator on, but the main power still needing to be fixed), Annemarie led our rehearsal, and just that act made our decision to have her officiate our wedding completely and utterly worth it. I didn’t have to try and think about how we were going to stand on the stage (as you’ll see later, the way we decorated the stage made getting on and off a little bit precarious!), I didn’t have to worry about how we were going to process in or recess out, and most importantly I didn’t have to yell at anyone to get them to pay attention! Annemarie was the perfect mix of class and sophisticated drill sergeant as she made sure everyone knew where they needed to go and what they would be doing during the ceremony.

So do you want my number one tip for a successful rehearsal? Have someone else run it! Whether your officiant, your day-of-coordinator, your best friend who loves to be in charge, just make sure it’s not you! And also? If you want pictures of it later, make sure to ask someone specifically to take pictures. Don’t just assume it’ll happen, because then you’ll end up like me with precisely one photo of your rehearsal.

Meanwhile, my aunts had started setting up the ceremony decor, which I can’t wait to show you next—we wanted to bring the Northwest feel into our indoor ceremony, and boy did we ever!

*Unless otherwise noted, all photos by the fabulously talented Persimmon Images.

Want to catch up?

• We get our license to wed.
• We bottle and seal our wedding wine.
• We finish our projects one week out.
• The bridesmaids lunch.
• I make gifts for my girls.
• I break down the morning before.
• The family gathered.
• We come together at the Welcome Dinner.
• We eat s’mores and tell stories around the bonfire.
• I’m a little less calm when the power goes out.