Mrs. Gingerbread, Vancouver
Age and Occupation: 32, Psychologist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 33, Software Engineer
Engagement Date: Sometime in the fall of 2004
Wedding Date: July, 2008
Blogging Since: March 24, 2008
Venue: Rainforest wedding, beachfront restaurant reception
About Me: I recently moved to Canada from Southern California. Trying to plan a wedding in a new city, not to mention a new country, is tough, but the fact that we can get legally married here more than makes up for it! The wedding will be an opportunity for most of our family and friends to see our new city for the first time so it will be both a wedding and a reunion. Besides my future wife, I am also madly in love with a good bargain, Swedish pastries, Tivo, and my two dogs and calico cat (in no particular order).
The Reverend Is Coming! The Reverend Is Coming!
April 18th, 2008 @ 1:01 pm by Mrs. Gingerbread
I am super stoked and doing jazz hands even! We just finalized the travel plans for one of our most important guests, our officiant, Reverend Helen.
When we started planning back in November we got really fixated on the reception. When it came time to talk about the ceremony planning, we were both pretty overwhelmed. All of the wedding books that I borrowed from the library were not giving me a clue on how to plan a wedding ceremony for two brides and my ever faithful friend, Google, was just overwhelming me.
One day in December, I mentioned to Mama Gingerbread that our big budget splurge item on our wedding wish list would be to bring Reverend Helen from California to officiate our wedding. We met Reverend Helen back in 2004 on the Marriage Equality Express, a cross country caravan that we went on with 40-something others. She was one of two Unitarian Universalist ministers on the trip. As we set out on our 8 day adventure, she spoke privately to our group about how she wanted to be with us in solidarity, but also that she knew that many LGBT people have been hurt by people in the name of religion and wanted to help to bring some healing to that. Seriously, who better to marry us than this woman?
Mama Gingerbread said that we should definitely contact Reverend Helen and that she’d pay for her travel expenses. We got in touch with Reverend Helen and she said she’d be happy to perform our marriage ceremony. Yippee! We are ecstatic. Plus, she helps to bring some ritual, meaning and significance to our wedding ceremony. This is important, because I don’t want the wedding ceremony to be something that we just rush through so that we can get to the reception.
She sent us a “workbook” with an outline of the ceremony and options that we could choose from to personalize the ceremony. It was super helpful and we pretty much planned the whole ceremony in a day. Now the ceremony is my favourite part of the wedding!
The one little hiccup has been that in British Columbia not just anybody can perform a marriage. A marriage commissioner can perform a civil ceremony. Religious representatives must be registered with the Vital Statistics Agency, under the Marriage Act. We have to jump through a couple of hoops to get Reverend Helen to be recognized, but with the help of the local Unitarian church, this is being taken care of.
Have any of you “imported” your officiant?
9 Responses to “The Reverend Is Coming! The Reverend Is Coming!”
Congratulations on getting the officiant of your choice.
actually, we went thru great pains NOT to have to bring in another minister. pinching pennies, i knew there was no way that we could afford to cover the travel and accomodations of a minister that would need to travel for our wedding.
problem was, i didnt know any ministers personally where we were having our wedding.
Thankfully, the minister of one of my bridesmaid agreed to do our wedding. what a relief…….
Aw, great news 
Your title made me laugh out loud.
I’m so glad that she can make it for you.
We are kind of “importing” our officiant…..My Uncle! He lives out in Colorado and we are paying for his flight and accomadations. I haven’t seen him or my aunt in years but when faced with the delimma of who would marry us (we are catholic but my FI has been married before so we can’t get married in the catholic church) it was just a natural choice. I am so happy to have somebody that close to me marry us….it will make it that much more special! Congrats on getting the officiant of your choice!
Congratulations! The ceremony used to be a big mental block for me, as well. Not religious, don’t like churches, synagogues don’t feel like home, problems with authority figures, didn’t know any lesbian ministers. But then I found the Quakers. Our guests help us marry ourselves, then we all sign a piece of paper. Perfect and Done!
@Desaray:
I hear you on all counts! I am glad you found a spiritual home that fits for you. We found the Unitarians to provide that for us I’m glad that Rev. Helen opened my eyes to what I think religion should be about. I forgot to mention in my post, but she often said, “Homophobia is against my religion.” Love her!
We’re importing our officiant to Tennessee from Texas. I worked with him very closely doing campus ministry while I was in college, and I can’t imagine anyone else marrying FI and me.
[…] in the name of their religion. However, we were fortunate to meet a wonderful member of the clergy, Reverend Helen, who showed us that religion doesn’t automatically equal homophobia. In fact, Rev. Helen often […]
