aya & britta’s wedding photos // fremont abbey // seattle, wa

I mean….. there are fun weddings, and then there are F U N  weddings!!! Aya & Britta’s wedding was all of that and then some! They had me at hello, then they had me at getting ready together, with friends and loved ones dipping in with such a mood of celebration that I was like, please don’t start crying already, Catherine… and then they had me at doing a city walk to where their ceremony was held (you know i love city walks!!!), where they greeted all of their guests as they arrived at this charming little park overlooking my neighborhood of Ballard. What more could I ask for?!

Until I asked that (!!!) and then what more could I ask for would be a wedding ceremony so full of emotion and personality that even complete strangers were holding onto each other as they witnessed the coming together of two families already so tightly knit, the most epic sealed with a kiss moment I’ve ever witnessed, and then a parade that took us back to the venue decorated completely by their amazing friends… and to top it all off a choreographed dance that ended in an eruption of a celebration, all facilitated by a music-by-request-form and a spotify playlist that Michael to this day still brings up to me and says, “Man, Aya & Britta’s friends really liked to dance!”

I wish I could relive that day over and over again, or actually what I wish was that their wedding had been a movie… because honest to god it would be one of my favorite movies of all time.

A quick side note from some of these photos, is that on our walk to get them married, we happened upon the apartment where they used to live and they popped up onto the balcony so that we could take a photo of them there… like, of course they did! Some dreams I just didn’t even know i had, until this day!

And another quick side note—because I could side note the shit out of this wedding, and I will!—is from when I later asked Britta about her playlist situation, because I had never ever seen such an amazing dance party without a DJ!!! So for anyone wondering how to do something similar, consider these wise and wonderful words from Britta: “So we created a Spotify playlist. If you become a pro member for the month, you don’t need to be online and you can download the whole playlist to your computer and there’s no commercials. But we had wifi at the Abbey so we were able to add tracks live on the go. We very carefully curated the playlist with a good mix of songs we knew people would dance to (One Direction, hits from high school, etc.) and we knew we had enough to last the whole night but we also had Aya’s brother adding new songs off the request sheet intermittently. But yeah, nothing special, just Spotify and a whole lot of thought about what kinds of songs we like to dance to. (A lot of songs that you really like aren’t actually danceable, so we played the whole playlist through in our living room to make sure. And danced a lot. Important to test drive, you know…)”

WISE WORDS! I literally still have songs stuck in my head from their wedding, I swear! For more words about this wedding, and even more fun, you can check it out over at the most bad ass wedding blog Catalyst Wedding Co… thanks for the feature, guys!

Also side note shout out to that wowza little floral arm band by Terra Bella Flowers! What!

I want to thank Aya & Britta for forever and ever. Aya’s mom wore purple vans, and literally I think I have told every single one of my wedding couples about that because it’s probably my most favorite mother of the bride accessory that I’ve ever seen! So, thanks for that. I think about their wedding day all the time and my heart wells up with that feeling of… what is that feeling?! Like does my heart actually grow?!!! So, thanks for that!

So I will say it again… thank you for forever and ever.

Fremont Abbey // Fremont Peak Park // Catherine Abegg Photography // Tomo Nakayama // Terra Bella Flowers // Skillet Food Truck // Catalyst Wed Co.