Married in SL
Photo taken by our wedding photographer Lia Oakleaf
Your girl is a married woman ya'll! It's crazy to think that was 3 months ago! It is so beautiful to find a compatible bond with someone who you care about. Bleu literally came out the Blue (no pun intended) and stole my liddle SL heart!
So i won't make you puke by me going mushy about him but i will share the steps i took to organise our beautiful wedding. Marriage seems to be a huge thing in SL and i have family and friends who have either had their wedding or they are planning to get married. Personally, i feel its so beautiful to see that you can find love in SL. Whether you decide to keep it in SL only or it evolves to RL, either way its a beautiful thing to see. I truly wish everyone happiness in their marriages!
After Bleu proposed, i shared it with my close SL family and friends and the first thing that was pointed out to me was that i needed to find a wedding coordinator asap! We wanted to initially get married 3 months after the proposal (i mean you only live once right!?) but due to RL work commitments and re-aligning dates, we felt December would be a good time to get married and this meant we had 4 months of planning. For me, i am so used to organising events, managing a group and doing project management in RL that i felt this all would be a walk in the park and i could organise it all by myself. After speaking with Bleu he made it VERY clear that he did not want me stressing over the wedding or stressing him too haha! So we both decided that a wedding planner would be best.
I started to form a timeline of things i wanted to put into place. Here are a few things that may help you. Now, to make it clear.. from UK we may do things a lil different, so this is just a guide. You can add or remove things you need to remember.
SL WEDDING CHECKLIST
1. Start to think who you want in your wedding party (Bridesmaids, maid of honour, groomsmen, best man, flower girl/boy, ring bearer)
2. Agree on guest size - Will the land you plan to have be enough to hold everyone? You need to make sure the wedding party and coordination team have priority access to the location and then take into account the amount of guests.
3. Look for a wedding coordinator - Look on facebook, ask friends.. there are a few around, that are good value for money and super organised! Make this a priority. We had two wedding coordinators who made our day stress free.
4. Schedule engagement party - You can make this intimate at your home or rent a plot of land just for your event. We had our engagement at home in our garden with a live singer, my sissy Asahra Lannock and DJ B Smooth.
5. Schedule bachelor/ bachelorette party (If your maid of honour/best-man can lead this would be great) Find any moment to celebrate with your girls/ guys before you say your "i do's" you deserve it! You can create your own spa day, book a SL weekend break, do a fun maze together.
6. Say yes to the dress - Whether you make this a intimate session with your nearest and dearest or do this alone, will be fun to have a look around what's out there. A good tip is to take bits and pieces from different dresses to create your unique bridal look. I had a beautiful wedding dress that was customised for me by one of my sisters, Zada.cloud. She spent weeks working on my glamorous style wedding dress. I had two wedding dresses that didn't cost more than 2000L$
7. Send out "Save The Date" posts to your guests - As you approach the date to your wedding, its good to send a lil reminder so your guests have something to look forward to.
8. Send out wedding invitations - I would say its good to send invitations at least 5 days before your wedding. There is so much going on in SL that people may forget.
Once the above was done, it was then my priority to make sure the following was completed:
Wedding dress and bridesmaids dresses finalised
Sim available for landspcaper/ wedding planner
Landscaper set to start on the agreed date with the vision agreed
Photographer/ videographer date booked
Groom suit finalised
Rings brought
Honeymoon booked
Singers/ DJ's booked
One of the things that i felt worked very well was that we booked a full sim and had it landscaped, which meant we had the power to control sim roll outs, landing points, stream, flexibility of space, flexibility of guest size and could start and end any time we wanted. I also created a group for the wedding party so that guests didn't drop into the sim before the ceremony while we had things getting set up. Then 30 mins before the wedding, we sent out the sim location in the group notices and everyone arrived in. That way, we were not bombarded with messages from guests saying they had not received the location. I wanted our day to be stresssssss free! The gods of SL of course didn't allow that and convieniently did a full grid roll out at the time of our wedding! So we was delayed a full hour.
Nevertheless, my husband thought it would be best that we were on a private voice call sharing this moment together as we walked down the aisle. That helped to calm my nerves and it was a special moment between us privately that i would never forget.
Landscaper Panda Ichibara (Maison de Fleur owner)
It was a beautiful moment and we had a train that picked our guests from landing point and brought them to the ceremony area where they were greeted and ushered to the aisle. We then moved onto reception for our first dance, cake cutting, bouquet tossing and party. I had two amazing live singers Samm Qendra and my RL/SL sis Asahra Lannock. It was magical.
My wedding coordinating team were Maia Lyre and Lily (from Aisles be with you) who did a fantastic job and it was so well organised.
Remember after the wedding is when it all gets real, communication, understanding, trust and effort is what needs to go into the marriage. I have always wanted to experience this journey and im thankful i have found an amazing partner to share that with.
If you have any tips on what you did for your wedding, please share in the comments below!