Erica and Alex were married on September 7th, 2018 at the Castleton Banquet and Conference Center in Windham, New Hampshire. I asked Erica to share details about her and Alex’s relationship and more about their wedding below:

How did you two meet? Tell us about your first date.

We met on Match.com! We had both been about to give up on online dating… Alex decided to give online dating just one more try, and I decided to extend my search region to 100 miles to see if anyone interesting popped up before I deleted my account. Alex and I were 99 miles away from one another.

After emailing back and forth and then exchanging phone numbers, we decided to meet up for lunch one day when I was in New Hampshire traveling to my brothers basketball game (Go MMA Mariners!). We met at Cheers in Concord, NH and hardly ate our meals because we were so busy talking and also so nervous! We now go back every year and actually eat our meals!

When and where did you get engaged? Tell us about the proposal.

The plan for July 9th, 2017 was to go to our friend’s (the Sherman’s) house to do photos with their new baby, Teddy, and to then spend the afternoon celebrating another friend's (Ross’s) birthday. Once at the Sherman's, the group of us chatted for a bit and then went outside to scope out photo backdrops. Carina and I picked a spot in front of a beautiful flowering tree in the yard. I brought out my camera and did many of the shots, then set the camera up on a tripod to do the group shot.

Afterwards, Andy offered to take photos of just Alex and myself, since we were all dressed up after all. Andy took one shot and showed us. We both liked it, but Andy asked for one more. That’s when I noticed Alex's arm shaking and thought, "No way." Then Alex was dropping down to one knee. After that, Alex and I both totally blacked out due to excitement… Luckily, Carina had caught the whole thing on video so we were able to watch it later.

A short time after, our group was inside the Sherman's house chatting, when suddenly I heard my Mom say, "WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?!" And then one by one, a group of our closest friends and family walked in with balloons, gifts, food, and champagne! The rest of the afternoon was spent having an absolutely perfect engagement party.

What song did you do your first dance to?

Our first dance was to Only One in Color by Trapt, the acoustic version. We had been having a really hard time picking a song. Alex wanted a cute song, but I had my heart set on a rock ballad. The regular version of Only One in Color was on my list that we kept playing over and over again, trying to narrow it down. One day when we stumbled across the acoustic version, Alex announced that this was it; this was our song. I have loved Trapt ever since I got my hands on their first album in 2002, so I was very excited that he wanted to use this one!

Tell us about your flowers, your gown, your favors, and any other details you'd like to share?

The flowers were definitely one of my favorite elements of the wedding! My friend Amber helped make all of the paper roses out of pages from a Harry Potter book and The Lost World by Michael Crichton. I am so very grateful for all of her help! Martins Flower Shop also did a wonderful job putting all of our flowers together and I’m so thankful that they were willing to work with us with the paper flower additions.

My dress wasn’t what I would have ever imagined myself wearing! I was imagining myself in something with more tulle to give it more poof. But when my bridesmaids, my mom, my now mother-in-law, and I were all dress shopping, I put this one on and knew it was the perfect one immediately. Helen at Helen’s Tailoring in Manchester did an absolutely amazing job helping me get the dress just right!

As for other details, a lot of the items that we incorporated were handmade; such as the table numbers, our Mr. & Mrs. sign, my earrings, and the seating chart. Others were handmade by Etsy shop owners; the ring box, the bracelets for the bridesmaids, my bracelets, the gift for my brother of honor, gifts for the parents, our champagne flutes, and the card box. Our goal was to keep everything rather simple with a splash of our true nerdy selves shining through, hence the marvel and Nintendo themed groomsmen socks, the book roses, the Zelda ring box, and the katana cake cutter.

Any advice you’d like to give other couples for their wedding day?

I would definitely say to just try to relax and take things slow. Don’t stress yourself out too much about time. If you can, put someone else in charge of watching the clock the day of the wedding. I think I only looked at the time once or twice between when we all met up for makeup and when we arrived at the venue to get dressed and ready, and that really helped to keep me calm and less anxious.

The wedding is going to just fly by so make sure to take time for yourselves! We tried so hard to make it to every table to talk to everyone, but that just wasn’t going to happen in the short time we had… But we are both so thankful that we took the time for a first look (this seriously helped calm nerves), to actually eat our dinner, and to just take a breather by ourselves.

Since the wedding, quite a few people have asked me if there was anything that went wrong. Of course there was! My mom, dad, and I totally missed our cue for the music (this just made us laugh and at least I didn’t trip and fall on my way down the aisle!), the microphone cut out a few times during the ceremony (this just made Alex and I chuckle, especially when it picked up again as Kevin was reminding us that the rings go on the left hand), I hugged someone and cut my arm on the pin of the boutonnière (at least I didn’t get blood on my white dress!), the bakery forgot the little Deadpool that we requested to have peeking out from under the cake (at least we still had the katana cake cutter!), and my dress had a mark from an ink pen right on the front of it (my bouquet covered it up!)... But in the grand scheme of things, none of these things were really a problem. So when little things go wrong, just try to laugh it off and continue enjoying your time as a newlywed!