and we’re gonna get maaarried.
In deciding where to hold the ceremony, we knew we wanted to get married in a church. We are both people of the Christian faith, and attend church where we live in Michigan. Our current church, which we love, was not an option, as the wedding is in Cleveland. Since both of us grew up attending church, it was more a matter of whose church than scouting out beautiful churches in the area.
My mom is finishing up her last year in seminary, and will be ordained in June 2008. In planning our wedding, we talked with my mom about what she would want in regards to officiating. She said that she would prefer to just be the mother of the bride, and would like to be involved in the service, but not the one presiding over it. She is, however, excited about helping out with the design of the service, since we are looking for a real worship service, and worship planning is one of her greatest strengths.
Mr. Dahlia’s family switched churches when he was in college for a variety of reasons, so the church he grew up in was not really an option. That basically left us with two choices- the church I grew up in (and of which I am still a member), or the church his family now attends, which we have attended occasionally.
Conveniently, both churches are beautiful.
Church of the Saviour United Methodist
We ended up going with Church of the Saviour. Growing up, if I wasn’t at school or home, I was at church. All the time. The organist will be the same person that accompanied the choir in which I sang in high school, and I remember thinking at various times how long that walk down the aisle would be when I get married. The minister is absolutely awesome, and is also one of my mom’s mentors in her ordination process.
(Besides, I used to play hide and go seek in the dark in the church. Best activity EVER.)
Additionally, the family friends with whom I grew up (and consider to be my cousins, as they are more family than any extended family of mine) attend the church, and it is where I reconnect with people when I am in town.
How did you decide where to hold your ceremony?
my fiance and i are also Christians, as are both our families and most of our extended family, so we knew we’d be getting married in a church. we could have gotten married in my family’s church in my hometown, his family’s church in his hometown, or our church in our college hometown, which is about 30 minutes from his home and 6 hours from my home. in the end, we went with our church in our college hometown, even though we haven’t been going there that long, because it signifies us, as a couple, starting a new life together. we joined it together and have been attending for half of our dating life, so it made sense to be married there.
reception, now, that is a different (and much more complicated) story! 
We wanted an all-in-one venue where once the guests arrived for the ceremony, they stayed through the end of the reception. So we chose a venue that used to be a church and has since been turned into a wedding chapel. To make it more meaningful, the officiant at the church we now attend will be coming out to the chapel to marry us (he also was the one who baptized us back in January when we moved here after college graduation and joined our church.) I wish we would have given our church a little more thought when we started planning, but I was so set on an all-in-one place that it got overlooked. Now every Sunday I get a little more sad that we aren’t getting married there. But since my family varies greatly in degrees of being religious, and since our wedding is in THREE DAYS, it doesn’t make sense to change the plans now!
hahaha…I love the image with the hiding places.
Well, my family church was too small, it might only hold 100 people, and my husband’s church was too big, it holds 7,000. So we went with the Baptist church in my home town that was the right size with the best carpet color. They also turned out to have the best staff pianist in town, lucky me.
Well we are having our wedding in a town that neither one of us grew up in because our families werent going to be happy if we chose the area I grew up in or via versa and we couldn’t really afford Chicago where we now live. So we decided to do a mini getaway wedding and have everybody head out to one of the little historic towns in IL called Galena. It’s beautiful, is full of the outdoors and has lots to do so it just fit. When it came to the chuch we basically did a tour of the area churches one weekend and I spoke to several of the ministers prior. I’m Methodist and he’s Lutheran so we decided to start there in hopes of finding something.
Unfortunatly the Methodist church was without a minister and couldnt tell us until sometime in late July when the got a new one if they would be able to marry us, which my sanity would not take so they were out. We went to visit the Lutheran church and I had previously spoken to the church secretary about what we would need to do so I was a bit taken a back when we went to the 8am service (which was basically empty) and waited afterwards to speak with the minister only to basically get a brush off that we would need to talk to the secretary. I tried to explain to the minister that I had already done that I just wanted to ask him a few questions but he acted like he was far to busy to deal with little old me so I was like nope not getting married here either.
At that point I was like hey let’s go look at the Episcopal church since it was really pretty and I liked what I had seen on their website about their views on marriage. And hey we had tried both of our faiths and struck out so maybe we would get lucky. Turns out we did. After waiting 45 minutes for their church service to end we went in and spoke to the priest Father North who was incredibly friendly and not only answered our questions, actually had a real conversation about us and why we were getting married. He then went around and turned back on all the lights that he had just shut off, and gave us a detailed tour of the church.
Father North’s personality sealed the deal for me and my fiance but on top of it the church is beautiful. Its old and gothic and feels cozy. The down side is it only holds 150 and our guest list is 215 so we are only having family and college friends at the ceremony and everyone else at the reception. It is definatly not where I would have thought we would end up when we started looking but hey so far so good :).
We actually just decided to get married in an Episcopal church, though both of us grew up Catholic (fully - like, he went to Catholic school K-12!).
We’re getting married where I grew up, though we’re planning the wedding from away. For various reasons, my family no longer belongs to a church there. We called five Catholic churches, and NONE of them would marry us because we’re not members of the parish. I was really stunned by this. Anyway, this whole thing led us to reexamine our faith and where we fit in with a church that seems willfully exclusionary. It seems like the Episcopal faith is actually more in line with what we believe anyway - particularly about the roles of women and gay folk in the world - so, while we’re not up and converting yet, this experience has actually caused us to move away from Catholicism! Good job, Catholic church! I actually feel like this is a blessing, and am psyched about the place we’ve found to get married - and about the good conversations my dude and I have had as a result of this experience.
Ooh, when you played hide-and-seek at the church did you call it Underground Church? Where you have to find the Christians and save them from the Romans? Haha, we did that. Maybe we were dorks.
Neither my husband nor I live in the towns in which we grew up, and we attend a semi-new contemporary Methodist church that holds its services in a bowling alley. Needless to say, we didn’t want to get married in a bowling alley, so we got married in a lovely Methodist chapel, which happens to be the oldest on the island we live on. It also happens to be on the same grounds as where he works and where I worked one summer as a camp counselor, so it has sentimental value as well as being charming and beautiful. It was perfect!
I knew I wanted to get married in an Episcopal church, though I thought it would be my church in Houston, but when my parents moved to a small town outside of Nashville, the first time I came to visit them and went to church, I knew that’s where I would be getting married.
I was actually born and raised Episcopalian and will (God-willing) be going to seminary next year!
The only thing preventing me from being really excited about getting married away from home was that I really wanted the campus minister who I had worked with closely to do the service. When I asked if he would be willing to come up to do the service, he was honored and said he would love to!
The church we’re getting married in is beautiful and the perfect size. It’s the mother church of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee and was built just after the Civil War with original Tiffany stained glass windows. I LOVE it!
I had always assumed I’d get married in the church I grew up in, since I went to the attached school for 10 years, my parents and grandparents were baptized there, the whole bit. Sadly, about six months before we got engaged, the church kicked me out for not attending enough. I should point out that the church is in Illinois, and I am active duty military currently assigned to a post in Maryland.
So basically that put me off the whole idea of organized religion. Thanks, guys!
We got married in a tent in the groom’s parents’ back yard. If the friend of ours who officiated hadn’t been a retired Episcopal priest, there wouldn’t have been a single Christian reference in the whole event. Why? Because any church that kicks people out for serving their country is not something I want to be a part of.
St. Peters! I went to nursery school there, once upon a time. Your church looks lovely, though.
I’m Catholic, FI is not, but we’re planning a Catholic wedding in Cleveland. My family is still part of a parish, but I don’t particularly feel any ties to the parish, or to the church building itself.
Choosing an alternative church wasn’t difficult. I chose the beautiful church where my grandparents were married and my mother was baptized. The church where my grandfather is friends with the priest through the Catholic War Veterans group. It’s gorgeous, it’s historic, it’s got a long history with my family … and it has a pipe organ.
[...] know what we want the church to look like- simple, with minimal decorations. It’s a gorgeous building, and we really want the [...]
Ms. Dahlia, Detroit/Cleveland
Age and Occupation: 24, PhD Student
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, IT System Administrator
Engagement Date: December 31, 2006
Wedding Date: May 2008
Blogging Since: September 19, 2007
Venue: United Methodist Cathedral & historic downtown hotel in Cleveland
About Me: I enjoy cooking, dancing and swimming. I am a geek and apply game theory to my everyday life. Winter is my favorite time of year, especially when spent curled up with good coffee and a book by Madeleine L'Engle.
Those are both BEAUTIFUL! haha i love how you labelled your hiding places
Because the church I attended did not have its own facility and Mr. D’s church had a location that was rather inconvenient, we just looked around for a church that we thought was beautiful, had a great location, had lighter colors (some of the churches we visited were very dark inside), had a lot of sunlight! we really want our ceremony to be very worshipful and joyful!