Weddingbee Blog

Last time, I shared my personal experience with church in the past, and shared my feelings about getting married in a church.

You might be wondering where my parents stand on all of this. After all, I did explain that they’re both extremely religious and still heavily involved in church. Well, I’ll get into more detail on that later, but at the time, they said nothing. We chose our venue, we moved on.

When Mr. Cardy and I very first got engaged, we made the decision to email the youth pastor from my parents’ church (we both know him and attended that youth group for a couple of years) to ask him to officiate our wedding. It seemed only natural, since he was the only pastor that we both knew.

Then, I began reading wedding blogs and wedding forums. And I began to see that there are people out there who are married by people who mean a lot to them and who are special people in their lives. I learned that getting ordained is extremely easy, and it’s entirely possible to have a friend or family member be the one to marry you.

This idea was very, very appealing to me. Partially because of how special it would be to have someone we know marry us, but also because of my past experience with church. I don’t want to get into all of my ideas and thoughts about it, but in essence, I don’t believe that we need a pastor in order to have a religious ceremony. The God that I believe in will be present at my wedding whether or not it’s in a church, and no matter who the person is marrying us. I don’t believe that we need a pastor to marry us in order to make our  wedding more spiritual or make our marriage more holy.

I discussed my thoughts with Mr. Cardigan and almost immediately, we both began to wish that we were going to be married by someone who knows us on a more personal level. Someone who has seen our relationship grow and evolve, and who will see officiating our wedding as a truly special, once in a lifetime honor, and not just another wedding.

Once we made the decision that this was what we wanted to do, there was no doubt in either of our minds who we wanted to do it.

Sister Cardy & BIL Cardy

I’ve known BIL Cardy (Sister Cardy’s husband) since I was four years old. He and Sister Cardy have known each other almost all my life, and he became a permanent fixture in my life at a very young age. I don’t remember a time when BIL Cardy wasn’t a part of my life, and I’ve always had a very good relationship with him. He’s one of the few people in the world that I can talk to about anything and that I know without a doubt will always be there for me.

BIL Cardy has also known Mr. Cardigan since I first started dating him. He’s seen our relationship from the very beginning, and even though he wasn’t sure about Mr. Cardy at first (Mr. Cardy is definitely not my “type”), they couldn’t be closer now. BIL Cardy has seen our relationship evolve from a simple high school romance to what it is today, and he knows us better than any pastor ever could.

As soon as we got the idea in our heads that we wanted BIL Cardy to officiate the wedding, it began growing into something that is now extremely important to me. I can’t imagine anyone else standing up there with Mr. Cardy and me, and it makes me so happy to think about how the person who marries us is someone who will be an intricate part of our lives forever.

So, it’s simple, right? I email our old youth pastor and explain the situation, I ask BIL Cardy to marry us, he says yes, and we live happily ever after!

Not so much. But I’ll talk about that later.

Did you have any trouble choosing your officiant? How did you deal with it?