Weddingbee Blog

The vision for our wedding ceremony changed many times while planning. I’ve written before about my inability to envision the wedding for a while after being engaged, and I also wrote about how I feel that the ceremony is the most important element of the day.

I described how I wanted our ceremony to be, and the emotional elements that I felt should be present:

It is so important to me that our ceremony reflect us in a way nothing else that day does. Falling for Mr. Oyster, and being with him every day, is one of the simplest things in the world to me. Marrying him is such a natural step for us to take, and we are so happy to do so. I hope our guests can understand what this means for us and share our happiness, and I especially look forward to feeling the encouragement and love of all those who have taken this step before us.

I think we were pretty successful. Despite a few hiccups, the ceremony was lovely, personal, and so meaningful.

Our wedding was in a long, narrow, mirrored room. The room seems perfectly designed for a ceremony, with its chandeliers on the ceiling outlining the aisle. The ceremony room was one of my favorite decorative things about the wedding day, and the florist really did a great job here.

(from Mr. Oyster’s iPhone)

A major thunderstorm struck just as people were supposed to be arriving. There was flooding, snarled traffic, and apparently, a spectacular lightning show that our early-arriving guests watched through the windows of the ceremony room. Our photographers captured the rain:

I’m a pianist, but I absolutely love string instruments, and I’m so glad we had a quartet to play for our wedding. It turned out to be a great choice: the atmosphere was very calming, perfect for guests harried from their drive through a rainy and traffic-snarled Dallas. My mother tells me that it “set the tone for an elegant evening.”

I had no sense of time that day, and it wasn’t until later that I found out the ceremony was delayed 20 minutes while the planner waited for people who might have been caught in the weather. I could hear the music from my bridal “waiting room,” and I found it pretty comforting. My maids of honor and I, all three of us pianists and music teachers, had a very nice time listening to (and maybe critiquing!) the musicians.

I highly recommend the Meridian Quartet, by the way. They were wonderful to work with, they have a great repertoire (important for this classical musician, who wanted to hear something besides the usual), and they also played additional music for our guests during the aforementioned 20 minutes, which I was mostly unaware of. (This is a photo snapped of me while we were waiting for the thunder to go away; you can see how anxious I am).

I only felt nervous in the few moments right before I left the bridal room. But otherwise, I was pretty calm the entire day. Before I knew it, everything was quiet and the ceremony was beginning. I can pretty much let the photos speak for themselves:

My new in-laws, who are pretty awesome. I’m very lucky to have them.

Doesn’t my mom look amazing? I told you she was going to be a knockout! My stepfather was ill and couldn’t attend, so we arranged for a family friend to escort her.

I can just about bet that this is a photo of my mom blushing after someone’s told her how beautiful she looks. My mom is adorable.

Our beautiful and small (and nervous?) wedding party:

My hilarious little brother. He’d been practicing earlier that day, saying, “I’m going to be a gentleman!” And he was!

It’s time to get married. I love this shot for so many reasons. Mostly because I think it captures how I was feeling as I was about to get married: pretty happy, not too nervous. I also like it because it is one of the only photos of my long veil, and is the only photo of our quartet. They were playing the only traditionally “bridal” piece of music I’d requested: The Wagner wedding march.

Mom and Brother look on. I can hear her saying, “Look, here comes your sister.”

I think I’m smiling at my mom. I love how you can see the people looking back at me reflected in the background. I remember exactly how I felt as I made my way up the aisle, with everyone smiling and so happy to be there — it is really an unparalleled feeling.

I know how this is going to sound, but seriously, I didn’t realize until I was halfway down the aisle that I was supposed to be looking at my fiancé. I remember thinking, “Oh! And [Mr. Oyster] is up there, too!” That’s me, always focused on what’s important.

By the time I got to the altar, there was no distracting me. You can see that I love my husband so much that there are fireworks (actually it’s just an interesting light in the background).

We also planned for my dear friend, who also has a wonderful speaking voice, to read “Unity,” an essay by Robert Fulghum. Unfortunately, my friend told me a week before the wedding that he and his family would not be there. I missed him terribly and, sadly, have not heard from him since. I’m not sure what’s going on there, but his absence is still felt and I suspect I will always remember it. We couldn’t find another person who wanted to do a reading (!), so we gave it to the officiant. This is the reading in action, and is also how I heard it as the officiant read it during our wedding:

jen + ming // san francisco highlights from stillmotion on Vimeo.

Something else I’ll always remember about our ceremony: The officiant, a week before the wedding, sent me an email saying, “Where is your ceremony?” Yes, dear readers, this is how I found out, one week prior to the ceremony, that the officiant had expected me to write out, word for word, the entire ceremony. Including the prayer. I’m sure this is just a case of missed expectations, but I wasn’t too thrilled about this.

So, our ceremony, while meaningful, was something that I could nearly recite from memory, since I wrote every word of it myself and sent it to the officiant, who printed it out and read it during the wedding (and we paid her how much?).

On the upside, it really ensured that we meant every word we said and thought about it carefully beforehand. We did not use any “traditional” wording for our ceremony. It was so unique that our guests still think we came up with it ourselves! We almost did, but we used the Wedding Ceremony Planner for help.

My husband started tearing up during the ceremony as he read his vows, which I thought was so sweet. I thought that I might cry, but on the wedding day, I was all smiles and self-assurance. For me, reading my vows calmly and assuredly was my way of asserting my belief in the truth of the words I was saying.

After the vows, we had a “group blessing,” which was one of my favorite things about the ceremony. We turned to the guests and asked their blessing and pledge of support for our marriage. After that was the “kiss” and the pronouncement. Here you can see the exact moment it hit me that I’d just gotten married.

…and then the “jumping of the broom.” In our ceremony, we had the minister include a brief explanation of the tradition for those who might be unaware (since roughly half our guest list was not African American). This also gave me time to get back down the stairs with Mr. Oyster’s help, so that we could be ready to jump.

Interestingly enough, almost none of our vendors or venue coordinators had seen a “broom jumping” either (One of them even kept asking my MOH why she was carrying a broom around)! So we celebrated and educated.

I was not about to jump with heels on. I creatively stepped over it, which totally has the same meaning:

Why am I looking back here?

Well, I suddenly realized that while we had practiced jumping the broom, we didn’t practice what to do if my dress swallowed the broom up. I only thought of this at the wedding. I think it was just one of those times when you’re really emotional and random thoughts start to pop into your head. So there I was, taking an extra split second to check and make sure the train of my dress wouldn’t drag the broom away.

The broom was fine, though, and we walked away to begin our married lives:

My Maid of Honor picked it up:

We walked back down the aisle to an awesome, awesome rendition of “La Bamba,” performed by our quartet. It was the perfect quirky thing to hear after such an emotional ceremony. It’s this same arrangement:

After the ceremony, we escaped to a private room (the bridal changing room), where I said, “Hey, we got married!” about a million times. I was unbelievably happy and in shock, a condition which continued throughout the day and into our honeymoon, where I would randomly call out, “Hey, we got married!” and Mr. Oyster would say, “Yep.”

Here I am fixing my rings, while I get a newly-married kiss. As much as I tried to be unaware of the camera, I do remember my photographer-brain kicking in for a split second when I glanced up and saw David Wittig snap this shot as the doors closed. And then I kissed my husband.

Everybody says that there will be things about your wedding day that you can’t control, and of course, that’s absolutely true. Sometimes they say, “It won’t matter, at least you got married.” Well, to be honest, it does matter, though how much it matters will likely change over time. (I can tell you now that some of these photos are my favorites… because I like how my dress looks! See, I’m thinking about what’s important.)

Seriously, though, we had a beautiful wedding ceremony. After all this time, I vividly remember the happiness that we felt from everyone on that day, and of course, the ceremony was incredibly emotional and wonderful despite the last-minute changes. In fact, they just add to the story.

Photos by the Chicago based wedding photographers, David Wittig Photography.

Previously:

• A dark and stormy night
• Our Wedding Rehearsal
• The rehearsal dinner
• The Wedding Morning
• Getting Ready
• The Unveiling
• Fun With Cameras
• More than a Bridal Party
• Wedding Portraits and the Scary Moment