Santi and Melissa's Wedding in Baltimore, Maryland

Our guests from far and wide starting filtering into Baltimore a week before the wedding to the hotel we all stayed in, Delta Hotels by Marriott Baltimore Inner Harbor. We had a Baltimore themed rehearsal dinner at a local sports bar called Sliders to give our out of town guests the true Baltimore experience. This wasn't your average rehearsal dinner. Because we had so many friends and family that travelled from so far, we wanted to include them in all wedding festivities, so our rehearsal dinner had a guest list of around 60 people. We had Natty Boh & the UTZ Chip Girl Tshirts made with our wedding date, a well-known local DJ, crab cakes, orange crushes, Berger cookies and more. The dinner turned into an all out party and all of our most beloved people from all over the world met and mingled and danced and became friends all before the wedding even began.

We thought "how could we ever top the rehearsal dinner night?", but our wedding the next day, did just that. We got ready in the Delta hotel with the groomsmen and dads in one room and the bridesmaids and moms in another. We had our first look at the hotel and then traveled over to Rawlings Conservatory for our wedding party photos. Let me tell you, it was FREEZING outside! Our wedding party were such good sports, we drank coconut cognac champagne and smiled through frozen gusts of wind to get the perfect group shots.

Seeing as Santi is Spanish, we thought it was only fitting to have a ceremony that was a mix of both of our languages. We had a cousin read the poem "Marriage is Madness" and for our second reading, my sister-in-law wrote and read to us the most beautiful piece in Spanish. My vows were in English and Santi's in Spanish and we had a program with the translations of everything in there so all of our guests could follow along.

For our first dance song, we had a friend make a slow cover for the song "Rather Be" by Clean Bandit as it's a song that has always resonated with us. We can relate to the lyrics so well seeing as we dropped everything to move across the world together. "We're a thousand miles from comfort, we have travelled land and sea, but as long as you are with me there's no place I'd rather be."

My stepfather walked me down the aisle and I had the father-daughter dance with my biological father. We danced to a song my dad wrote and recorded. My dad then walked me over the my grandfather, who I danced with right in the middle of the tables so he didn't have to walk far. That moment was so special to me because later on in the year, he passed away from COVID. Santi and his mother danced to a Spanish song they used to sing when he was young.

Our tables were named after all of the cities we've travelled to together and loved. We had signature cocktails named after our dogs. All of the wine we've shared together through the years, I have saved the corks. We used those corks as our "guest book" and had our guests sign them and pop them into a glass container we plan to keep forever.

During our best man's speech, we discovered there was something wrong with the microphone and it would only work if he was facing in the direction of a wall (where no one was sitting). He just took full advantage and gave his whole speech facing the wall. This made for a good laugh! My sister, the maid of honor, had to do the same!

Once the dances and speeches were done, the real party began! Our friends were throwing us in the air, doing conga lines, our American friends and family were teaching our international friends the Wobble and the Cupid Shuffle, tears of pure joy were streaming down our faces during "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" by Whitney Houston and we ended the night in a huge connected circle singing "Piano Man".

Seeing our worlds collide was something both surreal and comforting at the same time. All of the lives we've lived, in Spain, in the UK and in the States all meshed in the same place on that weekend of February 29, 2020... all just before the travel bans and the world shut down. It was even better than we could have ever imagined.