Weddingbee Blog

Cinnamon Buns and I have started to plan our ceremony. We’ve borrowed the headings from Mrs. Cherry Pie’s ceremony to give us a place to start. At the moment, we’re not so much writing as just copying and pasting things we find that we like under the proper headings. Later we’ll go through, edit, change stuff, and really make it our own.

(the Christian Bauer ring we’re basing my custom wedding band on)

Something that is important to me (well, both of us!) is that our guests are involved.

I don’t want them to just sit there, like an audience at a show. Waaay back in the summer, soon after getting engaged, I heard about ring-warming ceremonies, and that just clicked so well for me. Basically, you pass the rings around to all your guests, and they take a moment to hold your rings and think good thoughts over them. When you get them back, they are physically warm from being held, and full of good wishes for your marriage. I was a little scared to bring it up with Cinnamon Buns, in case he thought it was too “woo woo la la” (my term for what my mum calls “New-Age-y”). Luckily, he thought it was a great idea, too! Ms Seahorse wrote about her ring-warming recently.

I think the ring-warming will be a good fit for us, as we’re only expecting about 65 guests. We have written in a little paragraph in the ‘intro’ part of the ceremony explaining what we want people to do with these rings, and they’re going to be passed off right after that. That means they should hopefully circle the room and come back to us by the time we need to exchange them. We also need to decide where to start them! It makes sense to me to start them in one of the first rows of chairs, then they’d slalom back and forth on that side, before someone in the last row crosses the aisle and starts them at the back of the other side. I like the symmetry of the rings starting and ending with our parents, but which side will be which?

To keep the rings safe from dropping and rolling away, I’m planning on finding a gorgeous vintage book and tying a ribbon around it with a nice bow. Then I’ll attach the rings with another ribbon looped around the bow. I could tie them directly to the book, but I want some slack in that ribbon so people can actually hold them in their hands.

We’ve started writing our own ceremony text for the ring-warming, to make it just right for us. We are having a secular wedding, as we’re very secular people and so are most of our friends, so neither of us was quite comfortable asking for people to pray over the rings. We did both agree that we were okay with the word ‘blessings’ though. Blessing is also a good word, because those of our invitees who do have more of a relationship with god and faith will take it one way, and others can bless in their own way.

Once the wording is more final, I’ll post it here, but basically we are asking for their blessings, good thoughts, and best wishes. We could talk about infusing them with energy and life-force, but that might get a bit ‘New-Age-y’ for some, and I want everyone to feel comfortable with it. I think we’ve definitely made a good start at it!

Did have, or have you been part of a ring warming?