Wedding Date on Aug 18, 2018

Joe, a small town guy working in Law Enforcement, and Tara, an adventurer and pediatric occupational therapist, met on blind date in 2012 (with the the help of Joe's sister). At the time, Tara was on summer break from graduate school, living with her mom in Grays Harbor, Washington. Joe, was also living in the area and working night shift. Tara received a sweet text message from Joe asking her out on a date later that week. The date consisted of Mexican food, beers, bowling, and playing cards. He sure knew the way to her heart!! ;) These two hit it off that Friday night and sparks went flying! The love birds saw each other 30 days in a row that summer... little did they know, that blind date would begin a lifetime of happiness and love.Roll that calendar back to where it actually all began... prior to this blind date - When Tara got into graduate school at University of Puget Sound, she connected with Jenna (Joe’s sister) about housing in the Tacoma area and talked to Cam (Jenna’s husband) about all things grad-school related. Jenna and Cam soon welcomed Tara to her new city. After a few weeks of getting settled in Tacoma, they both mentioned wanting to introduce Tara to Jenna’s brother, Joe... yet Tara (who remained busy studying at school) would constantly shy away from the idea. In the meantime, Jenna and Cam were whispering the same ideas into Joe’s head. Joe fluffed off the idea as well (being busy himself establishing his new career in Law Enforcement). When the timing was right roughly 9 months later... Joe finally sent that sweet little text message to Tara.In December 2014, Joe and Tara purchased their first home in the beautiful PNW. Together, they quickly learned the ropes of home-ownership. After dating for 5 years, Joe proposed to Tara on Memorial Day 2017 out on the tennis courts. It was a sweet surprise after a few intense tennis matches on a 80+ degree day. Tara initially thought it was another one of Joe's classic jokes, but when she realized it was the BIG moment, Tara couldn't have be more surprised and over-the-moon excited!!When planning our dream wedding, we focused on what was meaningful to us... we wanted the wedding to have a relaxed, yet intimate feel, and reflect our personalities. Tara wanted to do all aspects of design, planning, and DIY’ing with the help of Erin Day Events coordinating the logistics and some meetings with vendors. During the planning process, we continued to ask ourselves “is this meaningful to either of us? YES or NO.” Once we established what was meaningful, things really started to fall into place. YES, to hire a kickass photographer, Asia Dore. YES, to a First Look without our bridal party or family present. YES, to chugging tall cans of Rainier beer during our First Look. YES, to having the groom walk his mother and grandmother down the aisle. YES, to the groom’s uncle marrying us. YES, to writing our own vows. YES, to our mothers lighting the ceremony candles for our unity candle. YES, to a receiving line as people entered into cocktail hour. YES, to a Woodfire pizza food truck. YES, to a keg of Stella cider. YES, to a sparkler exit as we left in a 1959 Rolls-Royce. On the other hand, there were a lot of things that were not meaningful to us. Here are just a few: NO to exchanging bride and groom gifts. NO to a huge, expensive cake. NO to father-bride or mother-groom dance. NO to bouquet toss or garter toss. Not one person noticed what we didn’t include and we don’t regret omitting certain things even for a moment. At the end of the day, everyone had joy in their hearts for us and we had officially tied the knot. Some advice for future brides and grooms: Pinterest is great at the beginning stages of wedding planning to gather some amazing ideas. However, once you establish a theme and have a vision, stop continuing to “pin” more pictures. It becomes very overwhelming quick and is difficult to make decisions the more options you have. Then once you get opinions of friends, family, and vendors on top of it all, forget it!! Try to only have 10-15 “pinned” pictures total, not 100+, not even 30. Trust me, you’ll be lost in your own vision. Stick to your guns and you’ll love the final result.