Weddingbee Blog

Last week I got to hang out with the always-fabulous Mrs. Octopus, who has been writing some stellar wedding recaps, most of which bring tears to my eyes or at least make me smile. So there we were, cuddling with her dog and talking about how cold we always are and the abilities of the amazing seltzer-making machine, when she suddenly declares, “You know, you really need to write your recaps.” We talked about other stuff, too, but really? Yes, I do need to write my recaps. So welcome back to Wedding Recap Land, where we last talked about our vows. This is a bit long because I just want to tell you all about it!

As we finished reading each other our vows for the first time, our rings returned from their travels among our guests.

About a week before the wedding, we met with our minister to go over the script of the ceremony. There were some things we really wanted her to include and other things where we said, “If you can just get the gist of this idea, we trust however you’re going to say it.” After she all, she is a minister, she’s done a lot of weddings, and we really like her and the sermons she has given in the past.

What I mean to say here is that I don’t actually know exactly what we said about the rings. She talked about what they represented, and maybe said something about how we use our hands for almost everything in our lives, and that in everything, the rings will be a reminder of our promises to each other today. We repeated after her, which I really liked; we could hold hands and look at each other for all of this.

After all of the repeating and the promises came this:

With this ring, I give you my promise to honor you, to be faithful to you, and to share my love and life with you in all ways, always. With this ring, I thee wed. And I put the ring on her finger.

Then she repeated her promises, and said the same: With this ring, I give you my promise to honor you, to be faithful to you, and to share my love and life with you in all ways, always. With this ring, I thee wed. And she put the ring on my finger.

Fancee’s long-time dance teacher and friend stood up to give our final reading by Rumi:

Face that lights my face, you spin
intelligence into these particles
I am. Your wind shivers my tree.
My mouth tastes sweet with your name
in it. You make my dance daring enough
to finish. No more timidity! Let
fruit fall and wind turn my roots up
in the air, done with patient waiting.

At this point, it’s all a little bit of a blur. A blur of happy, of Oh My God we’re married, I think—are we married? Has she declared it? I think we’re married! Somewhere in there, our minister said, “By the power vested in me by God and the state of Massachusetts, I now declare you legally married!” Everyone whose face you can see in this picture is absolutely beaming.

And then I think she gave us permission to kiss. So we did:

Which was closely followed by our flinging our arms around each other in utter joy. I love the looks on everyone’s faces here:

You know how sometimes you’re just like, “Why do I/you/we/they need a wedding? Why not just go to the courthouse, or just stay together and make that decision every day? That’s romantic. Who needs a piece of paper?” If you do know what I’m talking about, then you also know that there are about a million different entirely-accurate answers to that question. But this picture here reminds me of one of them: here, we are thrilled to have each other, and everyone around us is thrilled that we have each other. Here, we have just promised big things and all we want is to be in each other’s arms, full of that joy. This is a picture I can look back on and forget that my wife didn’t take out the dog or that we’re worried about our heating bill or that I’m supposed to be cleaning the house rather than writing thing (maybe that last one is irrelevant, but oh well). This picture brings all of the Love, all of the Yes and the I Do back to the surface for me.

Okay, now hit play:

We stood there, grinning, in front of everyone and waiting for the music to start, and when it did we rocked our way back up that aisle (please note my grandmother’s wonderful expression here; she’s in the amazing orange):

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all images by Ellie Leonardsmith Photography