Weddingbee Blog

My grandmother decided she would be the one to marry Mr E and I way back before our official engagement. To be fair, she did “ask” us first (in the kind of way that you can’t say “no” without hurting her feelings). At the time we said something along the lines of: “Thanks Grandma for offering to do it, we will have a think about it and see what will work out best.” Which she took as a “yes” answer. And then the problems began.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my grandmother, admire her for all she has done in her life, adore her lamb roast and her hugs, BUT I also have learned very quickly that she is not right for marrying us. Grandma has been marrying couples for years, often in the very same garden that Mr E and I have chosen for our venue. She is no stranger to wedding ceremonies: she has seen the good, the bad, the ugly, and she has opinions about them all—which brings us to the problems. Because of all those ceremonies she has taken, and all the things she has perceived “wrong” about what was included and what was not, when she assumed that she would be marrying Mr E and I, she immediately saw it as an opportunity to finally run “the perfect ceremony” according to her views.

Which means: a ten minute only ceremony, a reading picked from the Anglican prayer book (we wouldn’t be allowed to have more than one reading), and no personal vows (because people apparently don’t want to listen to anything too “sentimental”). Some people would have no problems with this type of ceremony at all, and I am not saying it is “wrong” in itself but I am saying it is not the ceremony Mr E and I have imagined for our wedding day. Mr E’s biggest desire for our wedding is that we write our own vows, and I definitely want the chance to be creative as well. Our ideas for readings include such things from Dr Seuss and other favourite authors (I have never grown out of Dr Seuss!), and after all the work Mr E and I have put into the wedding we would like a slightly longer ceremony than 10 minutes. Say, 20 minutes? After all the ceremony contains the whole point of the day. Grandma’s rigid guidelines would not allow for us to have the ceremony we wanted in a way that expressed our personalities adequately.

The last straw came when my cousin got engaged and Grandma was asked to be the officiant for that wedding (three weeks before ours). Grandma took me aside and said: “I think you need to consider very seriously having a joint wedding with your cousin… it would be the most sensible and cost-saving for all those involved and I would get to marry two of my grandchildren to their fiances on the same day.” ….

Uh-uh. Maybe a joint wedding is alright for some. Definitely. Not. For. Mr E. And. I. My cousin and I do not know each other that well, have very different personalities and on our wedding day of all days, the last thing we need is TWO nervous brides running around causing havoc. Our grooms will take off for the hills in fright. Oh and in case you were wondering, my cousin definitely was not in favor of this idea of Grandma’s either.

So all we needed to do was tell Grandma that politely, and she would give up the job and we could find someone else to marry us, right? Wrong. Unfortunately in our family we are born with donkey-sized stubborn dispositions. Every time Mr E and I tried to tell her that maybe we didn’t like what she was planning for us, she would brush it off. Then my dad told me that she was emailing him, saying “I’m worried about your daughter’s wedding, she doesn’t know what she is doing.” Also, she told him that Mr E and I were planning things for the wedding like “they want an hour ceremony!” and random things like “there will be no chairs at all!” which were just simply untrue. My dad wasn’t worried about Mr E’s and my plans, as we have been telling my parents everything right from the beginning, but he was worried about his mother’s interpretations and how stressed both she and I were becoming.

Thank goodness for my dad. He decided that he would handle Grandma, instead of me doing it, and after multiple emails where she brushed him off as well, and a few phone calls (my parents were overseas at the time), Grandma gave in and decided she was satisfied with taking just my cousin’s wedding and not mine. Cue sighs of relief. For me, it is special to have her just in the role of my grandma on the day, and, for both of us, much less stressful!

However, right after she gave up being our officiant, Grandma became increasingly anxious that we would have no one to marry us on the day (this was when we were still 8 months away from the date). This is where yet another family member steps in: my uncle, an Anglican Reverend (the jolly sort) married to my father’s elder sister. We recently asked him if he would marry us, and he agreed, with the only stipulation being that we do a pre-marital counseling course before the wedding (something we planned to do anyway). For now, it seems our ceremony hassles are sorting themselves out, and my uncle has shown that he is flexible when it comes to deciding what we want to include in our day. Here’s to hoping that it stays that way, and that now we can slowly get into the juicy stuff of the ceremony details.

Anyone else have unexpected roadblocks when it came to planning your ceremony or choosing who would marry you? Or has anyone had family members saying what you can and can’t do for your ceremony?