In doing my wedding recaps, I kinda skipped over the very first detail that we had to take care of before we got married — getting our marriage certificate — and that’s because this task was not all that exciting as the wedding itself.
We had a seven hour drive from Albuquerque to Breckenridge on the Thursday before the wedding. Even though we left Albuquerque at 8 am and arrived in Breckenridge at 3 pm, we still didn’t set foot onto V3 Ranch, which doubled as our housing and wedding venue, until almost 6 pm that first night because of all the errands we had to take care of first.
Once in Breckenridge, our first of many errands was getting our marriage license from the Summit County Courthouse. When we stepped out of our vehicle we noticed it had just began sprinkling from a few dark clouds that lingered above us in a seemingly clear afternoon sky. Although I had already realized that it might rain on our wedding day — since August claimed to be the rainiest month in Breckenridge — seeing it actually rain two days before the wedding made this possibility more real.
I wasn’t too worried about the rain since I love a dark stormy day, but wanting to be aware of what the chances of it raining were in order to prepare for an indoor ceremony, I had checked the forecast several times in the week leading up to the wedding. Coincidentally, there was a 60% chance of rain on every day of the week of the wedding, except for the actual day of the wedding, so this fact definitely made me unconcerned with rain on our wedding day. The weather gods might actually be in our favor! Furthermore, since I was high on the fact that I was about to get married in two days, the possibility of it raining on our wedding day could not get me down!
My older brother was tagging along for all our errands because he had drove behind us all the way to Breckenridge, so it seemed a bit strange when the three of us stepped into the records room wanting to apply for a marriage license. I’m sure they had seen stranger though.
After answering some questions about our parents’ names, birthplaces, and current addresses, we handed over our identifications and swore to the clerk that we were not currently married and not cousins, and that’s it! Thirty-five dollars later and we were the proud owners of a marriage license with our names on it!
As you can see, that’s why this was not too exciting of an event to mention — although the moment itself was indeed exciting, and even emotional, because everything was becoming so real and this meant the wedding was super close!!!
Before leaving the record clerk’s office we signed a huge book that recorded all the couples that had come through there, ready to get married. The book was not mandatory to sign, but we figured it was fun proof that we had been there.
With our marriage certificate in hand, we set off to do the rest of our errands. First, we retrieved our keys to the house and then we dropped off our welcome bags with goodies at the three different hotels guests were staying at.
The welcome bags were one of my favorite wedding projects. I had worked on them almost immediately after sending off our invites because I knew exactly what plan I had in mind for them. The Etsy seller, who had designed our wedding invites, gave us permission to use the adorable mountain design she had created for us, throughout the rest of our wedding.
Our woodland invites, complete with a custom woodsy mountain design
So I got busy right away using that same design for our menus and welcome bags and this helped tie in our whole woodland theme. I spent countless hours cleaning up the digital version of our mountain design and adding the word “Breckenridge” in my own calligraphy to it, that way it could be sent off to press to make our bags special.
Our Breckenridge Welcome Bags… of course, they were filled with goodies for the guests
Even more exciting than dropping off the welcome bags was being greeted by a curious fox once we finally settled in at our house.
We first spotted the fox by our wedding tent in the backyard, which had already been set up by the rental company before we arrived that day. The playful fox kept wandering around the tent area and getting scared by the wind flapping the tent around. He made quite a few appearances by popping up and then disappearing into the woods until finally, he made his way to the front of the house by our vehicles and was never seen again.
Nothing could have made our woodland wedding more woodland than having a little woodland creature show up! What a fun start to our wedding weekend! My heart was happy indeed!
{ E M & P I E } 