When it comes to weddings, vision and planning are key, but Mary and Katrina Thompson’s nuptials also took luck and the kindness of colleagues to come off as planned.
Mary and Katrina had a burgundy vision of a very spiritual ceremony full of their friends and family, but two things just weren’t coming together – a diamond that was out of Mary’s budget and a tuxedo.
Keeping with tradition, Mary was adamant that Katrina not see the flowing, burgundy dress with a lace overlay and jacket, which she found after a fairly brief search through the web.
“One day, I’m scrolling through Facebook and saw my wedding dress,” Mary said.
After that she contacted dress designer Taejah Thomas of Needles and Thread Inc. and her work was essentially done. Katrina however, had a much longer road to walk.
“I knew I wanted a tux, but I knew I didn’t want a boxy suit that looked like a man, and I had problems finding the right color,” Katrina said. “I didn’t want to go into a store because I felt it would be cut for a man, so I went online and there’s actually a lot of companies that make tuxedos for women … but, given the color scheme, it was very difficult to find what I was looking for.”
Katrina searched pretty much everywhere and ended up cutting it close.
“Up to two weeks before the wedding, I didn’t have anything,” Katrina said. “Fortunately, Taejah, the same designer who had designed Mary’s dress was like, ‘I can make you a tux.’”
Finding the right stone is difficult for most people, but when you work in the diamond industry, the self-imposed pressure might cripple someone.
“I am a certified rough diamond evaluator,” Mary said. “I work extensively with Sierra Leone and Lesotho, and I knew that I could not afford the sort of stone I wanted to give her. So, I just sort of put it out there [in her circle of professional contacts] and it took a while, but one of my colleagues said, ‘Yep, we have them so come pick them up.’ So, I flew to Germany to get them, and then got them cut.”
The diamond she saw in her mind’s eye was a clear two-karat stone with a radiant cut.
“Diamonds are very much part of who I am, and I believe they are very much part of the of the person. I don’t mean that in a hokey way, but every diamond is different, each one is individual,” Mary said. “Those stones that I got for her were mined for her, and created millions of years ago, so those are her stones.”
With those details in place, the rest of the ceremony went off without a hitch. Although they are both active in New Covenant Church of Atlanta (New Covenant Bishop Randy Morgan and his husband, Apostle Johnny Blaton, performed the ceremony), they wanted to have a more magical venue and picked Le Bam Studios to host their 125 guests.
“When everyone arrived, just by the way everything was done and everything was presented, they just knew they were going to have a good time,” Mary said.
Well, not everything went exactly to plan. They meant to have a fairy tale exit, but accidentally bought something that’s illegal in Georgia.
“Towards the end of the ceremony, we wanted to have a grand exit, so we bought a bunch of sparklers so we could sort of walk through an aisle of sparklers,” Katrina said. “So, we’re getting ready to walk down this aisle and security came to us and said these aren’t sparklers, these are fireworks, and you can’t use these because it’s dangerous. Fortunately, they had some sparklers left over from another wedding, I think, and they swapped them out and we got the exit we wanted.”
