Weddingbee Blog

We had always planned to light a Unity Candle during our ceremony. I think it’s a beautiful tradition with a lot of sentimental meaning. I love that Burger’s Mom and Mom Cheeseburger will light the taper candles individually, and that Burger and I will use them to light the pillar candle symbolizing the unity of our two families.

So, what’s the problem?

Well, I kinda forgot to get us one. Whoops!

I’m not sure how it works at other churches, but at the church we are going to be married in, if we want to light a unity candle, we have to provide the supplies ourselves. I happened to mention my forgetfulness to Mom Cheeseburger a while back, and just a few days later, she had a surprise for me!

When I realized that I forgot, I figured I’d just pick up two tapers, a pillar candle and some candle holders at Michaels and call it a day, but my mom really went the extra mile! Apparently the pre-made unity candle sets can be kinda pricey, so Mom Cheeseburger decided to break out a little DIY of her own.

Check out the results!
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We have a curious situation with our ceremony. I was raised Catholic and Ribs was raised… well, sort of Jewish? He had a Bar Mitzvah. That’s about it.

We’re doing a semi-Jewish—in the loosest sense possible—ceremony anyways.

As a writer and deeply observant person, I’ve become completely mystified by the world and, even more, the universe. I won’t go New Age on you, but trust me: it all blows my mind.

Having my mind blown by these things, I’m much more “spiritual” than religious. I think there’s a lot of beautiful things about Catholic mass, but the teachings don’t jive with my worldview. However, most of my family does continue to practice Catholicism. I didn’t want to create some humanist ceremony that’s completely devoid of their familiar text—the Bible. I also knew I literally couldn’t have an outdoor Catholic ceremony in a town where I’m nowhere near a member of the church.
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Yup, that’s what’s on the to-do list with Papa Paisley this weekend. In other words, I’m crazy! I’m heading up to wine country to my grandma’s house tonight, where the wedding will be. There, the plan is to build a driftwood arbor, drink bar, wine bar. We have a couple of other projects in the works, as well. I hope brother Paisley helps us out, too. That would be awesome, because we’ll need all the help we can get!

Here’s our inspiration driftwood arbor:

Source

That should take up one day pretty sufficiently! It takes a long time to collect pretty driftwood from around the lake.
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I booked the church without ever actually stepping foot inside. This is a little out of character for me. I typically research up a storm on everything wedding related. The weekend after making it official, I just had to go and see it, partially to ease my mind, so I’d have no worries. So, the following Sunday after booking, I had two of my bridesmaids come on a mini road trip to Newport… to go to church.

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When I teach art to my students, I emphasize that there’s no such thing as a mistake. You can always turn it into something. If you do that a few more times on your piece, it’ll look like you did it on purpose. It’s a happy accident.

Well, I had a happy accident the other day. Over the weekend, Mr. Lace and I, after determining we needed to kick wedding planning into high gear, decided to take a look at tuxes. By the time we finished all our previous engagements and were ready to go it was 5. I decided to call ahead and check the closing times on two of the tux shops we were going to visit. The first one closed at 5 (of course). With my fingers crossed, I called the second shop. They were open until 9. We got there, sat down with the sales rep, looked through the tuxes and were out of there in 20 minutes. We ran a couple of other errands and then decided we should stop for dinner before heading back to Mr. L’s place.

We threw out a couple of places, went back and forth and finally decided on Panera Bread. It was the healthiest option in the area and we had just started our wedding diets and didn’t want to break them so quickly. While parking, I saw a wee little bookstore.
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Tradition has it that the father of the bride walks the lovely bride down the aisle, “giving her away” to the groom, like so:

My dad and sis at her wedding in 2005

For the Hammy wedding, I thought it would be meaningful to have both my mom and dad walk me down the aisle, since both of them had played integral parts in my upbringing. However, big sis then told me that my dad was really looking forward to walking me down the aisle solo.
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I am not going to lie, for this particular project I haven’t being as involved as I would like to be. Do you know why?

Because Mr. Poodle, my FIL and lots of their friends like big machines way more than I do! And that doesn’t mean I don’t like them! But most of the time we are at Mr. Poodle’s grandparents’ ranch, I have a box of wedding crafts so the girls can help me with them, while the boys play out in the field!

I think I should start this post with the very first decision we had to make about our chapel, which was finding the perfect spot for the altar and choosing the direction of the aisle.
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One of the things I’m really looking forward to on our wedding day is my walk down the aisle. It will be the last walk I will take as a single gal, all eyes will be on me in my beautiful dress, and I’ll be walking toward my future together with my best friend, Mr. Cola.

And an important part of this walk will be having my father walk me down the aisle. I’ve always been a bit of a daddy’s little girl, and couldn’t imagine him not by my side. But there are some difficulties with this, since my dad had a stroke several years ago that left him partially disabled. A recent boards post touched on the subject of how to handle the walk down the aisle with a disabled father, so I thought I would share my plan with the hive. It will be so worth it for me to make a few changes from the traditional walk to have my dad walk with me.

Our ceremony and reception are at the same place, but the ceremony site is across a good sized meadow, which poses a bit of a problem as my father usually uses his wheelchair for long walks, but can walk short distances with his leg brace and cane. But walking this far would take him a very long time, and he is not very steady on uneven surfaces like grass.

This is a picture I took, standing at our ceremony site in the meadow, looking back toward the lodge and deck, to give you a better idea of the distance (and it’s even further than it looks):
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When I first got engaged, Mr. Argyle and I both decided that we wanted to ask a friend or family member to officiate our ceremony. From the start, I had my heart set on the Jewel Box in Forest Park for our ceremony (which is where our ceremony will take place), so it was a matter of finding someone to officiate. We had toyed around with the idea of hiring someone, but after some thought, we just weren’t in to it.

So, we forgot about it for a while, until it came up in discussion a few months ago. I suggested that we ask my mom’s sister, my Aunt Kat, to officiate our wedding. It would involve her getting ordained. And, before asking her, I searched around the internet about getting ordained online, just to see how easy it would be (and in the process, got ordained myself).

The question then, became when we would ask her. I wasn’t game for asking her online or the phone (she lives in Albuquerque, NM), and was hoping she would be in town soon.
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Having a summer wedding outdoors? Heck, depending on what part of the world you live in, you might have to deal with this year-round. What is it that I’m talking about, you ask?

The sun! There’s the squinty eyes, the sweating, and the sunburns. This past summer, I attended my cousin’s beautiful beach wedding. Even though she had a shade hut that we all sat under during the ceremony, all the walking around afterwards left me utterly sunburned. I’m actually in Chicago sitting outside and the temperature is about 30 degrees, and I STILL have the tan lines to prove it, even though it’s February!

What could save your guests? SHADE! Let’s explore some options.

At least, there are the programs. Talk about multi-use paper products!

source

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No joke, this is how I envision myself walking down the aisle:

*Sigh* My dream! Mr. Sewing says no way. But I mean, come on, Sewing-Dad can even do a Wookiee yell halfway down the aisle!

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Last time, I oh so maturely b*%tched and moaned about having a ceremony. But on the upside of having a ceremony, this is what I found:

1. It gives better purpose/focus to the wedding for our guests. I suppose this is obvious to most people except me.
2. In my imagining/dreaming/planning of every wedding aspect until now, none of them has made me tear up the way thinking about our ceremony does.
3. It’ll give my parents a chance to walk down the aisle, which I think will be nice for them.
4. I will get to have a moment, albeit a short one, where I walk down the aisle and people are looking at me in my EXPENSIVE get-up.
5. I’ll get pictures like this!!!

Source

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I previously wrote about how we’re ending up with a more traditional wedding that I had originally anticipated. To me, what the real hallmark of this more “traditional” wedding was that we are having a “formal” ceremony (as opposed to something like City Hall). Or the Ceremony, as it likes to be called.

This is my idea of what big scary Ceremony is like (AP photo via here)

I had a struggle with Ceremony. We fought, we wrestled, I think we even kicked each other in the guts. Or butts. It’s been a blur. But I surrender now. Just lift your heel from my larynx, please.
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When we first got engaged, I wanted to do something “different”, partly because I felt that at being post-30, I should be over the frills and chills of a traditional wedding. Well guess what, folks?  There’s not a chance.

After going through countless scenarios and considerations, I found myself at a place that resembled much more the traditional wedding than the I’m-so-over-the-wedding-industry celebration that I ever so presumptuously thought I would have. And you know what? There is no crying over spilled milk here. It’s all good. I’m inclined to say that it’ll be great. Because we chose it to be that way and we’re gonna embrace it.

In the meantime, though, let me share with you a few of the possibilities that I had previously conjured and then reluctantly surrendered.

Once upon a time, I thought of having a simple no-frills ceremony at a place with signs like this:

Source (City Hall)

And having a little moment like this, where I get to treasure something really special while still in the everyday world, with people around me going about their business, but me and Mr. Pug knowing and sharing something so happy that it makes things surreal:
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Selecting our wedding officiant was pretty easy for us, although I know many couples that find this process difficult. But for us, it came down to figuring out which friend of ours, who isn’t in the wedding, would be good at it!

We never even considered a pastor/priest/religious figure, since we aren’t religious ourselves. And even the justices of the peace and other non-church affiliated officiants in the area were pretty expensive—the lowest I found was around $400. For an approximately 16 minute ceremony, that was pretty steep. So, we decided to ask one of our good friends to do it, and I know we will be very happy with our decision. He’s totally cool with us writing everything he has to say, he’s great at public speaking, and he’s a really fun, entertaining guy. He even took the initiative to get ordained online right after we asked him to be our officiant (even though it appears in our county they don’t actually verify if your officiant has been ordained or not)!

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