A Sceptical Mind

As I said in my last post, I’m currently doing a small series detailing the activities involved in my recent wedding to Sara Lind (now Sara Lind Mortensen). After having covered the bachelor party in my last post, it’s time to cover the actual wedding.

On July 11th 2009 I woke up after having slept at my dads house. As you may know, it’s customary the couple don’t sleep in the same house together the day before the wedding, so I had gone home with my dad to Haderup in Midwestern Jutland. I had slept fine really, however when I woke up I was oddly dizzy and was bleeding from my nose, so I was probably more nervous than I was aware of! After having eaten breakfast and gotten ready, we drove towards Silkeborg at around 11 am, stopping on the way to drop off a few things where my dad was sleeping the next night.

When we finally got to the church, it was around noon and only a handful of people had shown up yet (the wedding was at 1 pm). So we simply waited and said hi to the people who had shown up already, before we went into the church to sit up by the alter at around 12:40. At this point I was quite nervous! Time went by, as people slowly arrived and filled up the church. My best man, Michael Dahl, however hadn’t shown up yet. And even 5 minutes before it all started, he still hadn’t shown up. Apparently there had been some trouble with getting all people in the car from Aarhus fast enough, so they had arrived just a few minutes before the wedding started and Dahl came rushing in, apologizing straight away. At this point everyone was pretty much there and now we were just waiting for the bride to walk in.

And then, the music started and in came Sara! Smiling, happy and beautiful as ever. If there ever was a time where I was truly fucking nervous, this was it! A very odd feeling really. One that I don’t think most would understand unless they’ve tried it. You feel oddly overwhelmed and confused..but in a good way! So well, it’s fairly hard to describe – however what I can say is that for once I actually felt like crying because of something else than sadness.

So there we were – sitting across from each other, listening to the priest’s speech (which was surprisingly good.. she even dissed religion at one point: “We all know nothing in the bible is science and nothing should be taken literally” – I like her!). Things happened fairly like you would expect, with everything going smoothly. We even had two professional singers sing “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge as a duet – something that actually did prompt a tear from me – again.. overwhelming. All in all, a brilliant ceremony where everything worked as planned and everything was great!

After the ceremony, we had a small photo session with a friend photographer, a few pictures and greetings from guests outside and then onwards to our reception next door with champagne (imported from Italy), cake and other food and beverages. The wedding cake was even made by Sara’s little sister Anna, who has used the last several months figuring out how to make the perfect wedding cake (sshh: Don’t tell anyone, but I think she nailed it!). Anna is the girl to the right of here, the one in the red dress. After having eaten and greeted people, we got picked up by a white limousine, so that we could be transported to our photo session with a professional photographer by the name of Lars Lærkesen (www.laerkefoto.dk) – a thoroughly brilliant photographer, that did everything exactly like we wanted it, who was extremely professional, funny and creative.. basically the greatest pick we could have made! We highly recommend him! Also the limousine firm DanLimo (www.danlimo.dk) was very professional and the driver was very cool.. he even came up with great picture ideas!

After a great photography session at Gl. Skovridergaard and Lunden in Silkeborg, we drove to Funder Kirkeby, where the rest of the wedding would take place. Here we started out with a few more pictures (your face feels quite numb after smiling that much) and then proceeded with a welcome drink and food.

Our Toastmaster was my brother Lars Bruun-Mortensen, whom handled the assignment perfectly, timing every speech, song etc. efficiently, so that it never seemed stressed and always seemed like everything was going smoothly. The first speech was mine, which I had initially written a lot for, because I was so nervous about it and wanted it to be perfect. But shortly before the wedding I threw out speech after speech, starting from scratch over and over again, simply because I didn’t know how to express everything exactly like I wanted it and exactly the way in which Sara would understand what I meant. In the end I ended up with not really having a speech.. I basically only had a baseline of what I wanted to say and then let it come out naturally on the spot. I even sang a song for her, because that’s something she loves – even though I’m no Sinatra! So I sang “You Belong To Me” by Jason Wade from Lifehouse (accompanied by Mads Noe on guitar).

Sara also gave a speech and a song – specifically “Everything” by Michael Buble. Something I enjoyed very much! On top of this my brother Lars, my dad Steen, Sara’s mom Karin, Sara’s sister Anna, my grandparents, Sara’s half-sister Birgitte + her family and a few others I sadly don’t remember right now, all had either a speech, a song or a complete musical piece.

All in all it was a brilliant wedding with everything you could expect! We even had a great band called Rockfathers (www.musiknu.dk) whom everyone loved – even the oldest of the guests praised the band for being very comfortable, varied and talented – so if you’re planning an event and need music in Denmark, consider Rockfathers!

After having danced the first and last dance, having eaten and drunk a lot, and having had a fantastic time – Sara and I jumped into a car and was driven to Gl. Skovridergaard where we stayed in a suite for the night!

In all regards – it was a great day!