Wedding scrapbook pandemic project

I did it! I finished my primary "pandemic project" -- a scrapbook of our wedding and honeymoon! (24 1/2 years after the event!)

I started it last year. At first I mainly made progress when I went to my friend Susan's house to work on it. That was before "shelter at home" for Covid 19 began.

Then a few weeks ago I started on it again here at home and have been flying through it ever since. Now I'm done! At least with the wedding and honeymoon portion. Since there are 17 pages left in the book (that is 8.5 sheets) I plan to keep going and add the first year of marriage. I had quite a few photos from that time in another album and various cards and mementos in some files so it was a good way to downsize and consolidate those.

I'm thrilled to have the main part done! I wish I could invite you to come and see it. But since that isn't possible, I'll do the next best thing and show you pictures.

First I got organized:

The album on the right has the professional pictures. The one on the left is full of snapshots. The purple accordion file was where I was keeping the cards and misc. This picture is after I started combining cards with the snapshots to get them into chronological order before beginning the scrapbook

We had two large photo albums and an accordion file full of cards and letters.

The two albums were because John's parents couldn't come to the wedding due to health problems so they paid for us to go see them in Australia after the wedding. We had friends take snapshots of the day, and events leading up to it, with disposable cameras. Then we put those in an album to show John's parents. Later we added our honeymoon photos to the same album. The other album had the professional photos of the wedding that we got later.

There was a lot of overlap between the two photo albums. So I figured with a lot of editing and adding snippets from the cards and other mementos I could make one nice scrapbook. It seemed a great way to downsize it all. It was also a fun way to relive such happy memories!

In process here at home:

I was using our dining table that we recently moved into the living room. (We bought a smaller table for the kitchen.). We moved the big dining table into the living room so we could more easily do puzzles and projects and entertain guests. We did manage to have people over one time before the pandemic hit. Some day we will again. In the meantime it is a great place to scrapbook. 

The finished result:

The complete scrapbook in front. The empty albums and the leftover scraps behind. It is fun to see how much downsizing I did. I do wish the finished album was a little lighter weight though. It feels like I need a wheelbarrow to carry it!

And now the moment you were waiting for ;-). The inside. After putting all the photos in this blog post I discovered that Blogger doesn't give a high enough resolution for you to see much detail. So if you want to see a clearer version follow this link to my Google album:

Celebrating our engagement!

Wedding preparations and more greetings and congratulations.

Bridal shower

Wedding invitation. Bachelor Party on the right.

The Rehearsal and dinner on the Left. Bride and groom's breakfasts on right.

Getting ready. Lots of help from many dear friends!

Our wedding party - waiting for the big event to begin

A special moment with my Mom and brother on the left - And other special people on the right. The lady in turquoise on the right is my Mom's eldest sister, Carolyn. The man in light blue is her husband.

And so it began. The lady pictured coming in at the top left was my dear friend and supervisor, the late Diana Lewis. When people at work asked her if I was her daughter since we had the same last name, she always said she was my "other mother." She was very motherly and a great supervisor.

Bride's maids and Mom coming in. I wish you could hear the music. We were very blessed to have lots of gorgeous music throughout played and sung be several dear friends.

My brother walked me down the isle. John had his eyes closed in this shot of him watching me come down the isle. He said it was because he was crying so much. I was too nervous to cry, unfortunately.

This was our attempt to include an Aussie tradition, the signing of the marriage license. But we apparently didn't do it right because all our Aussie friends who saw the video thought it was the American way of doing it! 

I was planning to put snippets from cards around some of the pictures but in the end I liked the uncluttered look better.

The top two photos on the left are my friends and family from California. The third photo down is our singles pastor and his family who were also John's housemates and long time friends.
On the right page our friend Mike is reading greetings from Australia. He did a good job coming up with funny "messages" from the airline and bed and breakfast too!

I put most of the cards at the end of the honeymoon. After all we didn't actually read any cards until we got back from the honeymoon! This page of cards was primarily people who helped or were in the wedding. I wanted the honeymoon portion to start on the next two page spread.

I think I will stop here and save the honeymoon for next week.