The Church Search

So I haven't posted about our ceremony location yet. Actually, you also deserve a better reception post (the first wasn't very detailed), but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Part of the reason I haven't said anything about ceremony location is because it's changed a few times and has only recently become finalized.

At first, we considered an outdoor ceremony in a beautiful park near the ocean. I posted about the park on my other blog last June if you want to see photos. However, because it's a public park, we couldn't reserve a space to perform the ceremony. We'd also have to rent chairs & then transfer them from the ceremony site to the reception site. As one of my bridesmaids said, "That seems like too many moving parts."

Besides, as much as I loved the seaside park, I had always seen myself getting married in a church. I was raised in the church and though my attendance has suffered over the last decade of living on my own, I still want to say my vows in the beautiful space of a church sanctuary.

So - once we decided that, the church search was on. I wanted to find a local Baptist church due to my upbringing in an American Baptist church in Massachusetts. And conveniently, there is a Baptist church right around the corner from us! I contacted the minister in September about hosting the wedding. However, he was regrettably out for surgery this fall & things have been hanging fire since then.

We did get to meet with the minister last week, though, and he's put our date on the church calendar so we're pretty much good to go. There are a few more details to sort out (like fees, which hopefully won't be huge because I'm still an American Baptist Church member). We also got to check out the sanctuary with the minister & ask him about how ceremonies usually run. He gave us some good tips & I feel much more prepared now.

The church is really pretty inside & out, but one of the best things is this - we can walk there from our apartment! We're planning to have my side of the bridal party get ready at our apartment, then have Justin's side meet us here, take some photos (we live in a lovely brick 1860's house-converted-to-an-apartment-building), then have everyone walk down to the church. Can you imagine the fun photos?

Without further ado, here's is our church - both inside & out: