Julie Matt Wedding The Castle Delran

Venue: The Castle, Delran, New Jersey
Julie: We met when Matt’s cousin - a good friend of mine - invited me on a canoe trip. We were so young when we met: I was only 14 and Matt was 15. It wasn’t love at first sight, I was just so young and I didn’t think like that. I thought that Matt was cute and funny and I definitely wanted to get to know him better.
Matt: There was a connection right from the start which resulted in a lot of flirting, talking on the phone and having long online chats. We began dating shortly after we met, and were together all through high school and college. A few years into our relationship we knew this was something special and that we would be getting married.
When I finally proposed to Julie, we had been together for eight years.
Julie: Yeah, I had to wait for a few years before I would get the ring.
Matt: After I graduated college, she was expecting a ring, so the challenge was to actually make it a surprise. The proposal didn’t go quite how I had planed; I brought Julie to Cape May, where I was going to propose to her on the beach. However mother nature had other plans: it rained the entire weekend. So I had to do a little improvising to make it happen. We took the dogs for a walk in the rain, and walked to the promenade by the beach, which is where I proposed. Then I had a horse and carriage pick us up and take us to a restaurant where I surprised Julie with our parents.
Julie: I wasn’t surprised to get the ring; the real surprise was that he had our families there to share it with us.
Our wedding took place at the First Baptist Church of Bordentown, where Matt attended Sunday school growing up. The ceremony was short, sweet, and to the point. The wedding had many personal touches to it because the priest who married us has known Matt since he was young and we had gone to pre wedding counseling with him.
Matt: I’m not a nervous person but as soon as the music started playing, the anticipation of seeing Julie got the best of me. She looked so beautiful walking down the aisle, the closer she got the more excited I got and it was just the best feeling in the world.
Julie: My favorite part of the wedding was walking down the aisle to Matt. I was so nervous to walk down the aisle that I was gripping on to my dad and my bridesmaid was trying to calm me down. As soon as I started down the aisle, the nerves were gone and everything was fine.
Matt: My favorite part of the wedding was having our first dance. It was nice to just slow down, since the entire day had been so busy. It was so nice to be able to just be together and talk.
Julie: The reception was just one big party. Just having everyone that we loved and cared about there to share our special day with us was just perfect.
Matt: Our families were friend’s way before we ever got together, so at the reception it felt just like one giant family. I had all my lacrosse buddies come from college, too. During the bouquet and garter toss apparently we had a lot more single people than we thought and Julie’s friend who was very pretty caught the bouquet. Then for the garter toss all my guy friends went out there and really got into it, diving for the garter! It was a great day and it was awesome just being able to have all our family and friends there to share it with us.