Wedding Wednesday: Officiant and Vows

It took us a long time. It was one of those to-do’s on my Knot site that just wouldn’t check itself off. You see, neither Brian or I (or our families) are regular church-goers. We don’t have some long beloved religious figure, or even denominational affiliation, that made this choice a no-brainer.

I guess it was almost six months ago that my mom sent me a link in an email. It was a blog post about the minister who married my parents. He had relocated to Richmond (which is conveniently only an hour from Charlottesville). My parents always talked of how much they liked the minister who married them. He was funny and they loved their ceremony. I had seen it myself on tape many times and liked it.

I thought it was a cool idea, but I didn’t know this guy, and I am terrible about making phone calls. I’m not bad once I make them, but I procrastinate like none other. The idea of cold calling a stranger and asking him to marry us was not appealing.

Fast forward three months and we still had no one to marry us. This option was looking better and better. I finally picked up the phone some time in February, I think.

After playing some phone tag, I finally got a hold of him. I told him my name and that he had married my parents almost 30 years ago, and that we thought it would be really meaningful if he married us, too.

His response? “Well, that would be different.” We both laughed.

We met with him last Sunday. He works in the cutest old historic church. It’s brick with bright red front doors adorned with little white wreaths. As soon as we met him, I knew we had made the right decision. He expressed that he wanted our ceremony to be what we wanted it to be, and that he has done many kinds of ceremonies. It made me so excited to start planning our ceremony.

We talked about the formats of typical wedding ceremonies, reading, vows, etc. He gave me some programs to take home. The thing that I’ve most been thinking about it the vows. I sort of always thought I would want to write my own vows, but when he read the traditional ones to us… I don’t know. I think I might be sold. There’s just something about saying the same thing that so many others before you have said that makes you feel like you are entering into something bigger than yourself. I liked that.

I’m so excited to start planning this part of the wedding that up until now I have kind of been neglecting. Since I’ve been into ending posts with a question lately, have you ever been to a wedding where they did something unusual in the ceremony? Are you a fan of original vows or traditional?