Weddingbee Blog

Part 1: Tryin’ to Get the Pretty
Part 1.5: Old, New, Borrowed, Robotic
Part 2: Please Help Me; I Can’t Dress Myself
Part 3: Poise!
Part 4: The Philosophy of the Ham
Part 5: Setting the Scene
Part 6: Moments Before
Part 7: The Gettin’ Hitched Part

Mr. Lollipop and I discussed our ceremony at our first anniversary dinner. We both agreed that it was one of the most intense experiences either of us has had. This was probably due to the fact that we had prepared for the ceremony for months during premarital counseling, and the fact that it was *our* ceremony. I like to think that maybe our guests felt the same way. We didn’t hear a peep from anyone in the pews the whole time, and nothing from the dozens of young children who attended. Maybe it really was a *holy* experience.


We were allowed to have chairs placed for us at the front of the church for use during the reading portion of the ceremony. I highly recommend doing this if your ceremony is going to last longer than 20 minutes. My dress was heavy and I appreciated the break.

This is a shot of my bridesmaids during the ceremony holding their bouquets. All of them were assembled by my awesome cousin Aileen (she’s the one in the extreme foreground) and each has a baby artichoke in the center. We saved crazy $$$ by doing our own flowers. I’ll give more details about this in a later post.

This is my bouquet. It is made of almost 100% flowers from Whole Foods and more baby artichokes. (Again, thanks Aileen!) I was a little nervous about making my own bouquet, but I think it turned out well and it was fun to carry it around for a day.

This is the picture of me that is currently sitting on Mr. Lollipop’s desk.

This is my cousin Maureen doing a reading written by my cousin Mark. Mark is in the Air Force. We chose our wedding date based on his leave date, but the military canceled his days off months before our wedding. So, instead he wrote something original to read at the ceremony.

I’d skimmed the reading just to give Mark the ’OK’ as to its quality, but the meaning and care really hit me once I heard Maureen reading it out loud. I started tearing up. Luckily, Mr. Lollipop always carries a handkerchief. I blew my nose and then crammed it back into his pocket, in full view of all of our guests. They had a good chuckle.

A year ago, our friend Keith was finishing up seminary and couldn’t perform the whole ceremony himself, so we had him do the homily. He was great.

Okay, so we made it through the first part of the ceremony. We used traditional vows from the Book of Common Prayer. Now, it was time for the vows. Mr. Lollipop did his first, and then as I started to say “In the Name of God, I, [Ms. Lollipop], take you, [Mr. Lollipop], to be my *husband*…”, I totally choked up on ‘husband’. I’d honestly never used that word for Mr. Lollipop before, but I was able to choke out the rest of my vow. Luckily, Aileen was on point and ran up to give me a tissue. Really, I’d never imagined that I would cry at my own wedding ceremony, but, wow, thank God for waterproof mascara.

So, I managed to get it together after that and we moved on to the exchange of rings.

Okay, so we made it through the important stuff and now it was time for the blessing. The Book of Common prayer has a choice of two blessings. Mr. Lollipop let me pick, so I went with the one with the line ‘Defend them from every enemy…’ mostly because that sounds awesome. I don’t think we have any enemies, but just in case…you know…

Also, I would like to point out that my Maid of Honor fluffed out my train every time I moved so that it didn’t get bunched up and trip me. This was one of the best pieces of advice we got from our photographer all day.

Yay! We’re husband and wife!

…And we kiss as my grandparents’ plastic Virgin Mary looks on! It’s okay, Mary, we’re married now!

I gave a big hug to the Maid of Honor.

Mr. Lollipop shook the Best Man’s hand.

Mission accomplished! Woo!

All photos above are courtesy of Purvis Photography.