The wedding was very beautiful, though I couldn’t remember much of it after the fact. We had to watch the video recording to really help us remember.

It all started with preparations of course, which we started doing about 2-3 months before by talking and figuring out what we wanted, where we wanted to do it, etc. Luckily a local ministry that I’ve known and worked with for the past 14 years offered to let us use their property and to even help us prepare and cook the food. We happily accepted their offer and we started looking around their property to see where we would do the ceremony, where we would eat, etc. Pim immediately had a vision in her head of how certain things should look. For me, it took a while to catch on to that vision and see what it would end up looking like.

About 2 weeks before the wedding we were in church when out of nowhere my brother, Jeremy, showed up. Turns out that he had been in quarantine in Bangkok throughout Christmas and New Years so he could be at my wedding. It was so good to see him again after almost 2 years. He and my dad actually ended up doing quite a lot of work to help prepare for the wedding. Most of the wood pieces used as decorations in the wedding were built by them. We are so thankful for both of them.

A week before the wedding the venue had to be prepared. We had a lot to prepare in not a lot of time but we managed to do it with the help of a lot of friends. We were at the venue almost every day that week preparing different things and setting things up. 2 days before the wedding the flowers arrived and Pim immediately started working with her friends to prepare the flowers into different pieces for various locations around the venue. The backdrop was hung up, the chairs set up, the stage was brought in, the sound and wifi equipment was brought in and set up, and so much more. Everything went quite smoothly and we didn’t run into any big issues. Once we were done setting up everything looked so beautiful we almost couldn’t recognize the venue as it was before.

The day of the wedding was hectic. A lot of things couldn’t be done until then and so it was a big rush to get everything done. But about 2 hours before the wedding everything was ready. Pim had been doing hair and make-up since 11AM and her best friends had taken over the preparations from her. At around 2PM I left with my groomsmen to go get ready. We got back to the venue at around 3PM at which point people were already slowly starting to arrive. The closer we got to 4PM the more stressed out/nervous/excited I became. When the moment of my bride walking down the aisle finally arrived my legs were shaking pretty badly, although when we checked the video it wasn’t visible.

Pim looked so beautiful walking down the aisle preceded by the flower girls and her bridesmaids with my groomsmen. I almost couldn’t believe that we were about to be married. Throughout the ceremony we were holding hands and we were both shaking a bit with the nerves and excitement. The rest of the ceremony is actually a blur in my memory so I will let you watch the recap video or the livestream recording to see what happened.

After the ceremony we had a time, roughly half an hour, to take photos with people. We knew this would be chaos so we had made a list of different groups of people we wanted to take photos with to help streamline the process. Once photos were done we headed over to the dining area where most people were already eating. We first cut the cake. This cake was not just any cake though, it was appelboterkoek, which we have loosely translated as apple bar. This is a dessert we both love and decided we wanted that instead of a traditional cake. My mom and a good friend of hers made it (enough for all our guests) together. Then it was finally time to get some food in our stomachs and go say hi to people.

About an hour or so later we departed to our hotel where we stayed for 3 days. This was only supposed to be the start of our honeymoon but actually ended up being the whole honeymoon due to a resurgence of COVID-19 cases throughout Thailand causing certain provinces to shut down, this included our intended destination.

All in all, it was a great wedding and we loved every second of it no matter how stressful it was at times. It is a day to remember for the rest of our lives and to tell our kids about in the future.

WEDDING VIDEO