Joy at the Ceremony (& just before & just after)

Continuing with my series o' joy, here are some of the big smiley moments from the ceremony, plus a little before & a little after.
  

My mom's friend Linda, upon sighting me & my entourage walking towards the church.

Our groomsman Adam's awesome girlfriend Molly, who I had only met a few times before the wedding, but ended up being a do-anything, help-everywhere superhero.

My sister & bridesmaids and our minister, sporting big grins as my littlest nephew speeds down the aisle towards them.  :)

These two go together.  :)  I forgot exactly what our minister said to prompt the wave from Justin's nephew (below), but I remember how smiley & happy it made us.  See, just look at us (above)!

This is around the time that our minister extemporized a bit about the particular challenges that an introvert (Justin) & an extrovert (Stacey) have in their relationship.  Because we both so very stereotypically embody those definitions, the whole congregation cracked up.  As did we.

I like to make big smiley faces at Justin to get him to lighten up sometimes.  That is not what is happening here.  We're both simply giggle-grinning with joy, just after being pronounced husband & wife and smooching.

I love our smiles in this pic, but even more, I love looking at all the loving faces around us, also smiling joyfully.

A lovely hug with my sister in the church mansion hallway.

The whole dang wedding party, arrayed along the awesome oval staircase.  Check out those grins!  :)

PMC #1

What, what? What the heck is PMC #1? Well, first, I would like you to take a moment to appreciate the lack of wedding-related acronyms in your life. The ladies in the crowd who were recently married know what I'm talking about (I'm looking at you, K).

In the wedding planning world, especially on the internet, there are a multitude of wedding acronyms. From FMIL to DOC to STD*, it's an endless waterfall of shortened names for things. Let me add one more to the list - PMC. Short for Pre-Marital Counseling, of course.

Anywho, we had our first session of said counseling with our minister yesterday. Rev. M. pastors a congregation near my parents' house up at the lake, so we went to see them on Saturday night, then met with him on Sunday afternoon. The session went well, I think. We discussed logistical things like dates and times and length of ceremony (no longer than 45 minutes, for those of you who share my ADD).

After some of that was done, we segued into the "counseling" part of the session. Rev. M's goal is to get us thinking about and talking about various issues in the lead-up to the wedding in order to strengthen our relationship. Justin and I are pretty good at honestly tackling all manner of topics, but it helps to have a knowledgeable someone there to ask us blunt questions like, "So, Justin, why are you marrying Stacey?"

I think the future sessions will help us process our thoughts regarding the wedding and the marriage we're building together. And this is a good thing! So huzzah for the PMC.

*Future Mother in Law, Day Of Coordinator, and Save The Date, for the blissfully ignorant.

Non-traditional Ceremony Songs

In some ways, ours will be a traditional wedding. We are getting married in a religious ceremony in a church, I am wearing a white (well, ivory) dress, etc. etc.

In some ways, though, we are most assuredly not. The groom and his male attendants will be sporting Chucks, Justin's female friend is serving as "groomswoman," etc. etc. When it comes to ceremony music, I'm leaning more towards the non-traditional side of the scale. "The Wedding March" and "Pachelbel's Canon" are all well & good, but they're far from original. And in the end, what should our wedding be if not original and our own?

So, here are my thoughts at present. These may easily change before June, but I'm happy with them for now.

Processional for ring bearers, flower girl, and bridesmaids: "All You Need is Love." I dearly love the trumpets in the beginning and it's a good length (I think) for everyone to get down the aisle before we change over to my song. And come on - it's the Beatles! Telling us all we need is love! It's perfect.

Our recessional song will be "Sunny Side of the Street" by The Pogues. Justin introduced me to The Pogues when we started dating. A lot of their stuff is . . . well, perhaps inappropriate for a church is the right way to say it. However, this song sounds lovely, happy, and upbeat (though the lyrics are a bit otherwise). I see it as a wonderful celebration of being announced husband & wife!

Now, the bridal processional has been a bit trickier. I want a song that's dramatic without being pretentious, classic without being boring, and appropriate without being dry as toast. All in the first 30-60 seconds. ;)

Here are the current contenders:

"On the Sunny Side of the Street," by Louis Armstrong:

"Suffragette City" or "Rebel, Rebel," both by David Bowie

And the current top contender - "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire. It's been used a lot lately (in the trailer for "Where the Wild Things Are, on recent NFL commercials), but I really like it and especially like the first 30 or 40 seconds, which is all we'll probably end up using.

Anyone have any thoughts/suggestions/questions?

(cross-posted at Hodeporicon, just for funsies)

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:

Vows

Popping in quickly to say . . . we're not writing our own vows, but if we did, I love this.