Weddingbee

I’ve been having nightmares. They go something like this: Mr. Donut and I are standing blissfully at the altar, smiling and gazing adoringly at each other surrounded by our family and friends who have traveled from far and wide to be with us on our special day. The sun is shining. The wee birdies are singing. It’s perfect…until we reach a moment in the service where I’ve forgotten to choose a reading and/or a person to read said reading. In the dream there is a terrible moment of silence and I turn very red for forgetting a part of the most important part of the day. I’ve had this dream three times. The third time I figured someone was trying to tell me something. So a couple of weeks ago I set to work on our program.

We wanted our ceremony to have a cohesive theme. We chose peace and unity and our search for readings that reflect that began. Once again I went into research mode and Mr. Donut endured weeks of e-mailed suggestions while I endured weeks of waiting for his responses and notes. (For the record, I do not recommend making a long distance move away from your sweetie a mere weeks before your nuptials. It more than kinda sucks.)

Once we’d finally settled on readings and such, we had to make sure that we had people to read them. Rather than obligating someone to make a trip they might not be able to afford, we waited until most of the RSVP’s were in to ask both our attending guests if they would do us the honor of being readers or ushers. Thankfully, they all happily agreed.

The what and the who taken care of, the next project was to tackle was the format. A Catholic ceremony is a pretty interactive service. Because many of our guests are not religious and many more are not Catholic, we felt that we needed to include as much as we could of the service in the program. For us that meant entire readings and prayers. Being relatively new to anything computer other than the internet, I now bow down before those of you (and I am sure that there are many) who have mastered all the little nifty little tricks of Word. I have not and so as punishment for being slow to catch up on the 21st century I spent four hours today doing numerous revisions of something that had already taken me a really long time to do. Ah, such is life.

In the end I figured it out. Mostly. I think. I have to say that I am rather proud. I hope that we’ve managed to infuse our service with our couple-ality. We’ve endeavored to keep it reverent and hopeful, both a prayer for our new life together as well as a prayer for something beyond us.

Do you have a theme in mind for your ceremony?