7 Lessons From My Wedding

My loves, let me tell you about my new gorgeous offering, the Centered Planner. And the pre-sale is now open. And it's better if it's a bundle. I listen to all the feedback and I love making things even more beautiful every year. We've got a new design for the center planner. Lay flat, no more spiral. The daily edition is coming in navy linen. The weekly edition is in mocha.

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Hello, my loves. I have so much to tell you. I am just back from the glow and the grind.

of wedding honeymoon launching our inner circle business accelerator I'm back in the seat first time back at the mic in a while and I have so much to tell you about the psychological decathlon that is a wedding about the energetic

vortex of exchanging vows about the highs and lows and the compression of your isness, like all the life lessons that just get amplified through planning and having a sacred event.

So I'm going to talk about beauty and fashion and vows and the alchemizing effect of words and relationship dynamics and all those things in this episode. I'm just winging this.

First off, I want to tell you about what's happening in the heart-centered universe. So we're in a new era where I'm only having the doors to the membership opened. for signing up twice a year. And that's going to be happening for the month of June.

And then the doors close and we go all extra sacred container. And I just focus on the community and the workshops, the life track and the business track. So this is what I want you to know.

The Heart Center membership has opened its doors for new members. It's staying open until midnight on June 30th. So all of the details are at danielleport.com slash membership. I am officially kicking off the summer of love. It is the summer of relationship. intensification, intimacy with self and therefore with others. I've been working on this content for many months. I have got film, I have workshops, I have audio books.

I have some solutions. The membership has two arms. One is the life track, and that is body, mind, spirit support. And the other arm to hold you in all of your trials and expansions in life is the business track.

If you want to test drive some of our teachings and my practical approaches, but in a metaphysical way, to business, then you go to daniellelaport.com slash bizwebinar. That's B-I-Z. W-E-B-I-N-A-R, biz webinar. And you're going to get a free download of a webinar that I just recently did called Woo Woo Business That Works.

because it works a lot of people call it woo but it's actually the leading edge of how to create and prosper and then tomorrow if you want to get in there that's thursday june 13th

I'm doing a creative session within the Heart Center membership where I throw down on the trends that I'm seeing and soulful marketing and creating from a higher place. And then the summer of love.

has officially begun. I will see you in danielleabort.com slash membership. All right, my loves, you want to come to my wedding? Come on into my wedding. Here's the thing with any...

big, important event, whether it's a speaking gig or it's a wedding or it's a baby shower or it's a launch of a project, things are going to go wrong. And the people who bugged you before are the people who are going to bug you on your special day. And everybody is going to be who they are most of the time. So because it's so...

grand and expansive and important and special to you doesn't mean that everybody else is going to be in that expanded state. So here's the beauty of it. If you can let go and let God.

if you can let go and turn everything over to your girlfriends, if you can focus on what matters the most, which is in that moment, whether it's a business thing or it's a marriage vow, If you focus on what matters most, which is the love at hand, expressing your true self, creating community, being of service to the world, if you focus on the truth. on the love, then nothing else really matters. You know, the day of our wedding, about a dozen things went wrong that

I really had to work through afterwards. Like some of them were just small things. I'm like, ah, just let it go. Now, what happened in the day is. I was in this altered state. I was riding high on love. I was a conduit. of love, full, overflowing, effulgent with divine love. It was so joyful. We were operating at the frequency of joy. So I actually didn't give a shit.

about the things that didn't work I did have one moment where I was like whoa we need to shift things up the scheduling is wrong I haven't had an opportunity to say thank you to everybody but that just turned out to be a little misunderstanding about scheduling and all of that. And the plan was actually going according to plan. And I got to say thank you and all of that. But other than that, it didn't even occur to me to tweak anything or to complain about.

anything or to ask about anything. And post-wedding, I realized that that heightened state of heart-centeredness and of joy is really the state I want to be living in most of the time. That it was an amplified, exalted experience. And when you're in that... You just don't like give a shit about the details. My eyebrows didn't matter.

The fact that, you know, sometimes you're going to give a DJ all these incredible songs because you have such amazing taste in music and you've worked so hard to pull together about a hundred songs and they might decide to just fucking play the Backstreet Boys and that's okay. You dance to it because you're in love. Everything that's happening happens for a reason. And some people are just so happy that it's all the Backstreet Boys. Focusing on love bends time.

It regulates your nervous system, and it gets you in the creative flow. Okay, so there are lots of layers to this story. So I thought we would begin from the outside in and talk about my eyebrows. My eyebrows ended up being a portal to a stronger, clearer way of leading my business and my life. Let me tell you the story. There was a theme. and all of the wedding planning that had to do with

do-overs, asking for something but not being really articulate, not fully speaking my mind about what I wanted, and then having to go back and have it redone. And that's not what you want to have happen with. your flower crown and your eyebrows or your bikini wax or your wedding rings, you know? So here I am at this esthetician's place and I'm going to get my eyebrows.

shaped, laminated, and dyed, which I have done before and it was kind of cool. But you know, you really want to push the boat out on beauty for the most important day of your life, one of them. If you don't know how this works, it's essentially perming. your eyebrows, just like you used to get your hair permed into like the ideal shape. Now I ain't no supermodel, but.

I know I got good eyebrows. They stick up in the right places. They have this nice high arch. They're thin where they need to be thin for my eyes, and they're wide and they're thick. How could you... My eyebrows. Well, it can be done. My girlfriend messaged me right after that because she was really curious about how it went down. Context, I'm getting my eyebrows done and a bikini wax from the same person. I messaged my girlfriend and I say, I haven't checked my muff yet.

but I've got clown brows. And I never drove home so quickly in my life whilst at stoplights Googling how to de-perm and undye your eyebrows. They were just like little kind of caterpillars that were really, really dark, and it was four days.

before my wedding and what was I thinking? And luckily, the bikini wax situation turned out just fine. That could have been so sad right before my honeymoon. Did you know that if you mix... lemon juice and baking soda it will help get the dye out of pretty much anything i had neither of those things but i did have some lime essential oils and i just was working it into those bad girls and it didn't really help

It was a lesson in this. So much of what we think matters does not matter at all because everything worked out. Nobody noticed my eyebrows on my wedding day. Who really cares? They didn't fall out, although I would say I will never get my eyebrows laminated slash. permed ever again because I think it has thinned them out. The hair becomes brittle. What I'm going to do to recondition my eyebrows now and forevermore is get back to applying just a little drop of castor oil on.

each brow and rubbing it in, that actually promotes hair growth, and I know it to be true. I was doing that on my eyelashes for a while. But I found that the castor oil was clogging my tear ducts, and I was getting a reaction to that. So no more on the eyelashes. For years, I did Latisse, which you can only get with a kind of a pseudo-prescription from a MediSpa.

And then I saw too many videos where people's color of eyes change. And this is all part of the detoxification of my life, the portal for... most women to detoxifying their life is through their whole entire beauty regime. So no more lash stuff, no more lamination stuff. Okay, so back to my muff. No, where were we? No, muff turned out great.

This is what I learned. In my business, stay with me because I'm going to go way further afield to bring this lesson home. In my business, I am a benevolent queen. I am very clear about what I want. I really stand in the... value of the wisdom of what I want. Like I own my vision. I articulate it. I'm very specific in my requests.

This is the typeface. This is the photo. This is the tone. This is what success will look like when we get there. And everything else is up to everybody else. Like there is a point after I've articulated my vision. with love, benevolence, and specificity, where you just got to let go. You give it up to God and the team, and then you flex. And as a friend of mine, Dan Martell, who wrote,

buy back your business, says something done 80% well by someone else is 100% great. So if I see something that's been done by somebody on my team or a vendor and I'm like, what? I just would have tweaked it here, would have been a little lighter here, would have used this different word. But I'm not the one that had to do it, and it got done, and it's great. That's amazing. Nothing anymore has to be 100% perfect.

But my description, my transmission, my expression of my vision and my desire for growth in the company does need to be articulated impeccably. I want to bring that excellence. Speaking of excellence, do you know that I record my podcast sitting in my living room? So you are going to be hearing the sounds of summer.

all summer long, which is the summer of love, which I'm going to tell you about. So I think there's an airplane going over. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I want to bring that degree of mental clarity. supported by love, inspired by my heart, to every hour of my life. And this is where I've been falling short. And it showed up in directives, requests, from...

A myriad of vendors that are required to pull off a good wedding, right? Hence the eyebrows. I just thought, she's a professional. And this is where my own unhealed stuff comes up, my shadow content. I don't want to be too pushy. I don't want to be too I don't want to be domineering. I want to be liked. I don't want to be disliked. I don't want to be perceived as controlling or haughty or any of those things, right?

So I default to, you just do what you think is best. Or, you know, I totally trust you. Listen, if you want to vibrate at the level of creative with a capital C. of benevolent queen, as I like to see myself in terms of creativity and leadership. If you are a person who is particular with vision, then... It doesn't work for you, likely, to just hand things over to other people and say, because I want you to like me, just have free reign. For me, the experience is...

And the planning and liftoff of the wedding was my final lesson. in going to the University of Benevolent Queendom. And I learned it a number of times in the whole experience. And I will no longer be saying to anybody, oh, just, you know. Just do what you think is good. When I really have a very specific desire and intention, forget it. Forget it. We can dance. I can be loving in my conveyance of my...

desires, and then we are all more likely to be satisfied with what we give and receive. Okay, so lesson number one in wedding via eyebrows. We invited... 70-ish people to the wedding. Well, we actually invited about 100. But it falls out with holidays and things. We had about 75 people. We decided to do the wedding at one very urban venue in Yaletown in Vancouver. We were thinking about nature, but it just didn't work to have everything.

in one place. So I found a great location. It's called The Loft. It's above Earl's Restaurant and it allowed us to have the ceremony and dinner and dancing and all the things. One-stop shopping. The theme for all things wedding and really our lives. was and is simplicity. Simplicity has really become a spiritual practice for me. So we really put it into play with all the planning. It's like one place is simple.

Will, my beloved, now my husband, he had a suit. Just wear that suit. Harper, my son, he had it. Just wear that suit. They don't have to be all matchy. Just by coincidence, Will's son and Harper ended up getting matching suits. That was just like a beautiful thing. I did not want to spend thousands of dollars on a dress. I found a dress online, which... I ordered from Australia, it came, and I realized that it was not actually a bonafide dress, it was a bathing suit cover-up.

And that is the dress I wore for my wedding. I actually was wearing a bathing suit cover-up. And it was so transparent and see-through. I worked with a seamstress I've been working with for years, Helen. God bless Helen. And I was just like, sister, you've got to save me on this one.

Because this is the cut. This is the flow. This works for my boobs and my waist and all the things. And we spent a lot of time constructing just the perfect slip to fit with the fit. So let me talk about body love and image. I wanted to be back to my thin self. A couple years ago, I moved into an apartment building. I'm going to talk way more about this in the future. I know I've been promising to do this.

But it was riddled with mold, and I've been dealing with extreme mold toxicity in my body for a couple years now. It's been an on and off thing with living in Vancouver and having sensitive lungs for years. And also mold toxicity. And it's created a lot of physical difficulties. I've gone through the brain fog and the muscle and joint aches, the fatigue.

And it's also made it really difficult to lose the weight that I gained as a result of all of those toxins being in my body. Once I moved into that apartment, I mean, I was tiny. I was in my skinny jeans. And then my boyfriend jeans started to feel like my skinny jeans. And I was like, what is up? The body does not prioritize burning fat. It prioritizes just keeping you alive. So I put on about 15, 20 pounds in about nine months and was like, what the France is happening?

And it's been really hard to lose it. I went and spent a month in a tropical location, which was really rough on my lungs. And it turns out that I have more mold in my system now. than I did when I left the moldy apartment, escaped from the moldy apartment two years ago. Okay, so let's get back to my wedding and being an awesome bride with like the best booty.

Of course, I wanted to thin down. I want to be my most beautiful and my most dancey and fancy. And I realized, like, this was just not going to happen. Between the toxicity in my body, I'm about to go through another cleanse. And just happy, creative life stress of spending the last year rebuilding my business with much joy, but a lot of arduousness and work. Hard, hard work. So good, but.

Hard. I was not going to be doing a detox, and I was not going to be getting into cardio, which I've discovered is actually not the best thing for myself and a lot of women's bodies. Anyway, hence, calf town. I was just like... Lock it. I am not wearing anything form-fitting. My style, even when I'm at my thinnest, is more of a Grecian goddess. It's all about, for me, it's about cleavage and waist.

and flow and tuck in all the right places. And that is what I found in my wedding dress. And then I wore a... pretty form-fitting silk slip underneath to just keep everything together. This was the beauty, deep lesson of this. I didn't care. It was really, I would say, Not the first time, but I would say the most profound occasion, initiation, I don't know, situation, threshold, where I just like...

I love my body. This is when I want to be my most beautiful and my most thin, and I am the fullest I have ever been, the curviest yet. Don't care because love and celebration and friendship. And I'm just going to rock this bathing suit cover-up. And I did. I wish I would have surrendered to the boob tape.

I experimented with the boob tape. Did you know that's a thing? Just go on any form of social media and just do search for boob tape. And I just like, I don't want anything that I'm going to worry about that day. So I went underwear free. because freedom, rock it. I didn't want any kind of lines, extra, anything. I didn't want a big piece of boob tape falling off on the dance floor. But I wish maybe I just would have lifted everything up just a little bit.

But it all worked out. And I danced all night. I ordered my shoes. So I spent about $300 on my dress and way more for Helen because she deserved it. And I got my shoes online. I basically shop online. I don't want to leave the house. I got my shoes. I wore these gorgeous gold platform, disco central. shoes that I got off of anthropology. Anthropology is great for bridal stuff, though it wasn't in their bridal section. I wore a flower-ish crown.

So I worked with a local florist and described exactly what I wanted and exactly what I did not want. And they gave me exactly what I did not want the day before the wedding. And so I called, and with all love, this is how I deal with customer service when I'm displeased, is I say, I really wanted to love this. I really wanted to love this meal. I really wanted to love this flower crown. But I just don't, and we're not there yet. Can you help me out? And they were great.

Decided they were going to stay late or come in the next day. We were getting married on a Sunday. I'll explain why. And gave me flower crown number two. Got it about three hours before the wedding. And we were like, ah. I still look like a polka girl. We were just like, I look like I'm going to like a beer fest. It's just not what I wanted. And so while...

Everybody else in my apartment, girlfriends and son and son's friend, are getting ready for the wedding, and it's time for me to finish my eyelashes. I rebuilt my flower crown and did it myself, and we pulled it off. Rings, we just went with two. Both Will and I want impact statements. Like, I want a ring that says, I'm married, and I love being married. I love. dramatic jewelry but just in really simple pieces. And I wanted a thick gold situation.

but a really wide band collects water, becomes uncomfortable, all of that. So we both did stacked bands, two quite wide.

loose bands for each of us and it worked out really well we worked with kingdom fine jeweler in town it ended up being kind of a last minute thing walked in i was like oh we need these bands really soon we've just had this fresh idea and it was some of the best customer service I've ever received, wrapped in all this love and excitement for getting married and the coolness of love.

My loves, let me just pop in with a business perspective in this whole wedding ritual conversation and tell you that if you want to get access, you get the whole thing for free. A class I just taught called Woo Woo Business That Works. which includes a resource guide of sacred dates and principles and perspectives, which you get to keep forever. Go to daniellelaporte.com slash biz, B-I-Z webinar.

The idea is that you can plan your business and therefore your life in a way that is sane and sustainable. Because we do not do business planning in a conventional way, and it works. Quarterly objectives, KPIs, they are super cool, but I have found that those things, those metrics work much better when they are synced with a more metaphysical rhythm.

with a seasonal calendar and i bundle it all into one offering for you so get the metaphysical guide to business planning which has got the business seasons outline the metaphysical week calendar which will totally change your game Mercury retrograde guide for 2024, which you can really use for the rest of your life. And our perspective on the lunar new year overview and how we don't really regard January as the new year.

We really kick everything off in February. You also get my Manifesto for Conscious Business, which has really been something I've been tinkering with for about five years. It's about how to... Just get some clarity on what's important to you and how you bake that into a more heart-centered approach to businessing and to careering. So all that, danielleport.com slash business webinar.

And it's all for free. Now let me talk to you about the ceremony. Some of the rituals that we integrated into the wedding ceremony are things that you could be doing for... baby blessings, I think we call them blessing ways now, and opening of businesses and all kinds of things that you could apply to these simple rituals that we did.

First, I want to celebrate that we were married by our dear friend, Reverend Thomas DeShooter, who is a fairly newly ordained—it's quite a long time to do the study for Unity Ministries, but— He's an ordained Unity Church minister. We met him through some financial planning, and now he and Will ride motorcycles together. And we worked together to create a ceremony that was...

Not long. I wanted people in and out in about 30 minutes that involved everybody that was there. It was participatory without being cheesy and without putting pressure on any of our loved ones. and left lots of space for us to give real vows. So let me walk you through it. I hadn't seen my mister in about 24 hours. We live separately and continue to have...

two separate apartments. We spend about three to five nights together a week, see each other almost every day, but we're going to keep this whole apartment situation. I'll talk about it maybe in another podcast, but it's really beautiful and it works. So I hadn't seen him. by design for a couple days, so the anticipation was great. I'm so not into the first look.

thing that happens now with weddings. It's just like, that works for you, do it. But I just like, no way. The anticipation is part of the raising of the frequency of the ceremony that is about to begin. Everybody was in the ceremony room.

Everybody was seated. Instead of doing it audience style where we stood in front of everybody, we set the chairs up in a circular fashion. We had a round cocktail table in the center with this beautiful piece of linen that's actually a shawl that I use and is on my chair. I bought a $100 carpet round circular rug from Home Depot. One thing I found from wedding planning is that if you tell anybody this is for a wedding, the price is quadrupled. And I'm just like, I'm not falling for it.

any of that. I ended up buying a lot of my own stuff from vases to candles and saving half of the money. All right, so where are we? Everybody's essentially sitting in a circle in this beautiful space. And we cue the music. By the way, I've created a Danielle and Will love story playlist for you. I will link to it in the show notes. Cue the music. The boys walk in. Will, Reverend Thomas, my son.

and Wilson. They take their place at the center of the room where the altar is set up. I wait a beat. They haven't seen me. And then I enter the room. I stand at the back of the room and Will comes to get me. Because... I'm a grown lady now, and this is not my first wedding. And it just doesn't feel appropriate for my father to give me away. It's certainly not appropriate for my son to give me away. Will and I are...

We felt very married in spirit. And it just made sense that he just came to the back of the room, saw me for the first time. We broke all the rules and started making out right away. And then he took me to the altar. we did a ritual around flowers. So when everybody was seated, my son and Will's son, Each went to one side of the room with a basket full of flowers, and they passed the basket down the rows, and everybody was cued to take one flower out of the basket.

And then Reverend Thomas asked everybody to close their eyes and to pour all of their love and good wishes and blessings for we the couple into their flower. So we gave them about a minute to do that. We played this gorgeous track from some of my favorite friends and people, Beautiful Chorus. meditation, streaming of love into the flowers. And then the boys went and picked those flowers up. And then baskets came back to the altar. We took some of the flowers out, placed them on the altar.

And we lit our candles. There was a candle for myself, Will, the two boys, and a candle in the center, which we lit at the very beginning of the ceremony. And then those flowers kept appearing. Throughout the whole wedding event, a flower was placed on each person's plate for the dining situation and on it went. It was really lovely. Let me just press pause here for a minute and say we really built a weekend.

around the ceremony itself. We got married on Sunday, May 26. Why Sunday instead of a Saturday? Because Sunday is ruled by that solar consciousness. It's about Buddha nature. Christ's nature. It's the actual first day of the week. It's better astrologically and energetically than Saturday. There was already so much love flowing when we walked into the wedding space because we created a lot of opportunities for people to connect before the actual wedding day. On the Friday before the wedding,

We did a super chill, come as you are, don't feel weird about it yoga night. It was like we build it as yoga for non-yoga people. And we were really amazed at how many of our... non-yogi friends showed up. We held it at this gorgeous space in Vancouver in Gastown called the Conscious Lab, which you can rent, by the way, for... business meetings, speaking gigs, small weddings. I'll put the link in the show notes for you. It's one of the oldest buildings in Vancouver.

We had chai and we had cacao and about 40 of our 70-ish guests came in. And I feel like if people are flying in, you want to give them like a full city experience because you really don't have time at the wedding to like go deep and have your huddles and get caught. up. So my dear friend Ashley Turner, who is a depth yoga psychologist and kind of yoga liberty from LA, came in and ran a really light flow.

It was a little more arduous for some people, but there was lots of laughing and it was all really sweet. And my dad came like my old man coming to yoga. He didn't actually do yoga, but the fact that he just showed up in that space. He sat in the corner on this lounger, just kind of like this knight, and presided, and it was all really sweet. And then after we did the yoga flow, Ashley brought Will and I to the front of the room. We just sat.

crisscross applesauce, and she gave the most beautiful blessing, sort of really saw us and celebrated us. And it was so simple. She asked every friend to go around and just say their name and give us a one-word wish for us. So lovely. Saturday happened to be my birthday. We did a girl thing. I went to this nail salon that I've been going to for like 100 years. It's all dusty and neon 1988.

lights and i was like hey could you bring in a bunch of estheticians and we could just close down the place and that's what we did and it was so fun like the buzz of the chick chatter was high and some of my girlfriends came to not get a mani-pedi, but just to be there. We brought in some sushi, some chocolate chip cookies. I didn't know this, but whilst I was getting my toes done, all the ladies were filling out little birthday wishes for me that got...

rolled up into little individual tiny pieces of paper and put in this beautiful ceramic planter. And it was just love. And we walked home, kind of that spring, summer, night feeling. And I dropped everybody off at their hotel. Got to bed early and ready for the wedding the next day. Ah, and before I get to vows and the deep sweetness and alchemy of that, let me give you a few more details.

We worked with an event planner called Sweetheart Events, obviously here in Vancouver, and I didn't need the guidance on planning the event. I had the vision, the intention was simplicity, but they had... a service that they offered where they are present for the day of the event to just direct. So you have like zero stress. You don't have to think about anything. And then they give you a bunch of input.

on the ramp up of like, hey, here's a photo booth person and here's a possible florist and just lots of recommendations and it was one of the best moves ever. The other best move ever is we rented a digital photo booth and it was a huge hit. Some of the best money we spent on the whole location. So many laughs. People get... the actual printout, the strip of their photos, and they could have those photos texted to them on the spot.

Dude just presses in their phone number from this big camera device and boop, it's up on their phone. It was so beautiful. So we've got so many memories. My dear friend, Anastasia Chomlak. is a friend who happens to be a photographer who I've worked with many, many times. Like if you've seen anything of my mug. on socials or anywhere, it's highly likely that it's from a photo shoot from Anastasia. Side note, she does these beautiful...

photo experiences where you can work with her for a day. You end up getting hundreds and hundreds of photos. She'll bring in the makeup artists. You can figure out clothes and settings, studio. And it is an up-leveler to your brand and how you show up online. And I cannot recommend working with her enough. You can get yourself to the province of BC or Vancouver. She gets on airplanes she's worked with.

a full range of lesser known and well-known and humans and all kinds of industries. And she's amazing. I'll leave her contact in the show notes for you. All right, let's get to the vows. One of my dear friends, and now someone who's become part of team.

Danielle, he's been working with us for a number of years. He was a DesireMap facilitator, made the transition with us to becoming a Heart Center facilitator. And now he's on the team in a coaching and support capacity for our business accelerator and our membership. David Depardo, and we were talking, we were DMing each other. He was getting married the same weekend to his beloved. And he's saying, you know, what's your approach to vows? Like, I feel like my vows are kind of...

Self-centered. How much are you talking about yourself and your vows? And I thought, gosh, that brings up such a beautiful point. David was saying, you know, in marrying his man. He didn't want his vows to be coming from his unhealed self. And that is such a brilliant distinction for figuring out. what you're going to work into any vow or declaration. Where are you coming from? All communication begins with intention.

Who is doing the speaking in your promising? And this is what our back and forth uncovered. I had already done a draft of my vows to Will, and the first half of my vows... were like this celebration of how I had transformed and changed and what I had learned in our relationship. Like, these are the things you taught me. And this is what I...

The key line of my vows, I'm not going to read them to you because I'm just going to keep them tucked in. Maybe I'll do an episode someday. But the diamond of my offering was, and I just want to be with you. This lead up, the things I learned, how I look at the world, and I just want to be with you. And after that, I moved into my declaration. I vow to.

And I vowed for faith, and I made a promise to our sons who were standing to the left and the right of us. And I made a promise about how I was going to show up in terms of my tone. And then I made a very specific promise. This is sort of the finale of my vows with respect to thought, speech, body, and action. I wanted to cover all the bases. My devotion was going to be radiant in every area of our life. So that was sort of the art and the science of the vow.

celebration of will and our togetherness, and then just full-on, very specific declarations and commitments. He did not hear my vows before I read them in a microphone so everybody could hear them in the ceremony. About a month before, I heard he read to me, the very, very first version of his vows. So we had talked about maybe we would chart something out where we read identical vows to each other. They would be reflective and mirroring.

And it just didn't go in that direction. We're very different people. We have different communication styles. But we meet on all the places we want to meet, obviously. We're together. And I'm just like, OK, babe, you run with your thing. And just. Surprise me. And I'm going to run with my thing. Will did share his vows with our friend, Reverend Thomas. And I just kept mine totally tucked in. I kept them literally tucked in. I had them printed on small typeface.

folded them up and tucked them in my bra, pulled them up during the ceremony. And so it was a really good thing. I wasn't wearing the boob tape. We reread our vows to each other on our honeymoon. And then... sort of did the analysis of them. Like, this is why I said this. And this is what I really meant by this. And maybe we'll turn it into an anniversary ritual where we go over our vows. So that's how we worked that. We did not get a hotel.

The night of the wedding, I had booked a schmancy place in Yaletown, and I just thought, oh, wouldn't that be great, and I can have all the girls there, and we can take some photos. And I was like, no, this is not in keeping with the theme of simplicity. I want my lotions in my pot. I want to just be in my own bathroom and sleep in my own bed. And it doesn't even matter if the place is kind of disheveled from all the hoopla. It was so great to just...

Come home that night, Uber driver. We dropped some friends off at their hotels and their homes. and came back to a messy apartment, and our sons coming and going and friends, and it just couldn't have been better. It was great. Another sweet thing about the ceremony was that instead of a wedding cake, big, expensive, nerve-wracking to transport cake, we decided to do a bunch of birthday cakes. There were seven of us who had birthdays either that week.

or that weekend. So when we sent out the invites, which by the way, were just a cheap and cheerful postcard that we printed through Vistaprint. No QR codes. I had seen a wedding invitation earlier this year with a QR code and I wanted to barf. It's just like too robotic and digital. Also, I really have a strong suspicion that whenever we engage with a QR code.

Our information is vulnerable, so I'm not into QR codes at all whatsoever. But we mostly communicated with people through text. I did have a wedding website. And it was a bunch of photos with us. And it was, here's all the hotels you can stay at. And here's an ideal day in Vancouver. You should go to Granville Island. You should eat at these restaurants.

And I think that was a waste of time. It was actually difficult and a bit janky to put together with everything I had on my plate, even though I had support to do it. I don't think it was necessary. We communicated with most people through text. I had a Google Doc where we kept everybody's names and numbers. It was just super easy to do. And in all that communication, we asked people when their birth, we said, don't ask us why we're asking you.

Wednesday birthday. And that's how I had the inventory of all the May babies. So we had seven birthday cakes brought out after dinner. Dinner wrapped up. We had five songs selected with our DJ. We were like, we just really need to open with like five bangers that are going to get everybody on the floor because this is really a dance party wrapped around a wedding.

And then the sixth song was, it's your birthday, it's your birthday. And then I grabbed the mic and I did this kind of rap. And I was like, can I get Tim? I need a Tim to the dance floor. Can I get Sam, Sam to the dance floor? And then we had seven of the staff. was a sweet surprise. I didn't know they were going to do this. Seven individuals came out with these cakes on platters with

honey beeswax candles. And then all my friends came up. Each cake had their name on it, blow out the candles. And then those cakes went back to the kitchen. They got cut. That was our dessert for the evening. I didn't order enough cakes. I should have ordered about three more. It was delicious. The cakes were from Lemonade Bakery in Vancouver on Camby. They were gluten-free.

So Lemonade Bakery is exclusively gluten-free. We had a gluten-free wedding. If I don't think it's good for me to eat, why would I feed it to you? And then we had an ice cream cart service from Rain or Shine. So two really sweet kids showed up with these branded... coolers, and then people could choose from a vegan ice cream or all these other beautiful flavors. It was really sweet. Literally sweet. Here's another important thing.

Before I get into the alchemy of vows and how our relationship shifted as a result of getting married, we had a really strong MC who deserves a gold medal. So, Chayla Davison. who you may know was a coach of mine for a long time. She is a master level integral coach. She's a hot babe. And she's just a strong personality. She's got a one-woman show that she's touring right now called

A little bit much. And she is a little bit much. And she was perfect to get people to talk. And I think if I had to do it over, which I won't, I would. ask people to get in line to talk, like, okay, I just need five friends who are going to say something. And instead, we just went organic style, which meant Chayla had to just be like, you, what do you want to say about the couple?

It actually worked out beautifully because we kind of had an impromptu intermission and dinner. And so there were some planned speeches. My son Harper gave a rad, hilarious speech where he's just like, I love these motherfuckers and I'm so happy to do life with them. Like, it was really inappropriate and deep and beautiful. It's kind of a La Porte.

theme and uh a few other people said like for sure we're going to say something but then there was a lot of kind of like come on who else who else and a lot of laughs and a lot of raunchy jokes and a lot of tears but after this impromptu intermission uh what happened was some popcorn

dynamic as chayla put it she's like you know when you do popcorn and there's still a few kernels at the bottom of the pan and they just kind of pop on their own apparently that's what's happening here because a lot of you came up to me in the last few minutes and let me know you have things to say And it was just like the seas parted and people we didn't expect to say anything grabbed the mic. And my dad said the most beautiful, uncharacteristic, but characteristically hilarious things.

For my old man. And then I'll tell you about Jen, who really stole the show. Jen, here's the context. Jen has worked with me for 13 years. Filipino. 4'11", mild-mannered. Not the person you would expect to steal the show. And she got up towards the end of speech-giving. and read some notes off of her phone because she, quote, wanted to get it right, and talked about our journey of working together, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

It was honest and vulnerable and honoring. And, oh, my God, I get choked up just recalling it. Currently, three people in the Philippines have been with us for 7 to 13 years each. We're family. And it was amazing for them to make a four-day journey to get to Canada for the first time, to be here for all of the festivities. You can imagine. There were so many tears and laughter and new things. And it was amazing.

And Jen wrapped up by saying, we have a tradition in the Philippines, and this is the only thing that captures what I want to say to you. And what we do is we bow. And oh my gosh, that's when everybody just really fell apart. And there were a lot of people at the wedding from the film industry because Will has worked in film for 30 plus years. So I had these like really kind of.

brazen hot shot film industry guys who are just like wow that Jen girl she really stole the show and it was like that and it was Just a beautiful embodiment of what happens when you realize, and these are Jen's words, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to express love. vulnerable about it and you're deep about it yeah steals the show every time all right let's cross the finish line with the deepest of the deep you know in this wellness personal development space

I know that there's a lot of us who wanted to find our king, want to find our queen. We want to be the queen. We want to be the king. We want to find our person forever. I get that. I was that person for a long time, most of my life, actually. And I've always regarded Will, my now husband, as a king. Some days, a king who didn't know he was a king. some days a king who was the most humble servant leader. And of course, you know, I'm a benevolent queen. But I really realized something about...

the shadow quality of searching for someone to complete you. And I realized that through actually making vows. So I've long subscribed to the Course in Miracles theory around special relationships. Special is not a good word in this context. The idea that... Most of us, most of the time, search for people who have all these characteristics that we don't have.

They are richer, sweeter, hotter, deeper, more established. They're just awesome people. And by virtue of that awesome person committing to us, we therefore must be awesome. That is some wounded stuff. Of course, you want to be your awesome self, as healed as possible.

Commit to someone from that place, knowing that you are coming together to work on your shadow stuff, that neither of you is going to be perfect. And isn't it crazy how we enter into so many relationships, romantic and otherwise, and we think, The other person owes it to us to just do things that work for us and to have it together enough to not hurt us and wound us and honor their word all the time. And we're just searching for this external perfection.

An authority, really, to let our own lack of inner guidance and our own imperfections off the hook. Anyway, our experience. was that declaring those vows aligned with our soul, ever so thoughtfully, in front of the people, who have seen us at our best and our worst, who have seen us searching and struggling, who saw our doubts and our faith, our questioning, our coming together, who love us no matter what. All of those ingredients, they're like metals mixing into this alchemizing.

This transmutation where you're taking the vow and you're letting your words ride on the frequency of your voice, heart to heart, witnessed. and you cross through a portal. You are actually creating a new reality. You are turning lead into gold and gold into light. And both Will and I have felt that that portal that we created in community, that we crossed through, actually changed us on a cellular level. We feel more inclined to be woven. We are way more excited.

and we were excited before, to build a future together. We see all of the material things that need to be shared. No prenup, by the way. All of our finances are merged. We are all in, all in. That's the vibration we want to carry. I mean, nobody gets married to get divorced. All kinds of tragedies happen all the time. We get married when we're blind, all the things. But we are setting the intention. We want a crystal clear vision of our commitment being impeccable.

of us going all the way. This was the quote written in my handwriting on the invitation. Let's go the rest of the way. And that was actually a one-liner. from the sweetest poem that Will wrote to me. We have journeyed far as individuals, and now we're going to merge our lives, and let's go the rest of the way. Vows. our alchemy. Your word creates your reality. Speak from love. Align it with the divine and say it in front of people and watch what happens.

Thank you for coming to my wedding in this way. If you want to see my wedding album it's got photos of our Friday night yoga ritual and the wedding itself. I've got my music playlist for you on Spotify. It's really great. It's the three key songs we played in the ceremony, and then it's a handful of songs that Will and I have used in our courtship because mixtapes have always been my seduction language.

Like, you know I want you if I send you a mixtape. So I bundled all of that in an issue of Sacred Weekends. So Sacred Weekends is my newsletter that comes out for free. two Fridays a month. Just head to daniellalaporte.com slash subscribe and you can go peek on that. And here's one thing to keep in mind. The show notes for this podcast episode are voluminous. I've got links for photography and great spots to eat in Vancouver and places to rent space for business meetings.

and just all the good things. Here's a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh that was on the back of our postcard slash wedding invitation. True love does not choose just one person. When true love is there, you shine like a lamp. That light you emit is for everyone in the room. Everyone around you will profit. Not only humans, but animals, plants, and minerals. Love. True love. is that. So glad you were here. I will see you next Wednesday. With love, Danielle and Will.

Thank you so much for listening, for feeling, for spreading the word with love. Hey loves, just a reminder, danielleport.com slash planner because you ask for it and then I go make it.