Weddingbee Blog

I had been ordained online, worked on writing the ceremony with my friend and gone to the city clerk to make sure all was legal. Catch up with part one here.

It was time to boogie!

We spent a few extra days in Ithaca before the wedding. Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to have coffee with another bee, just a few weeks before her own wedding - anyone recognize this lovely lady?

personal photo

On Sunday morning, we headed over to the venue. We were a little bit worried about the weather, hearing whispers of possible rain, but we arrived and it was spectacular.
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Before I dive into my recaps, I wanted to share with you an absolutely wonderful experience that I had recently. My very close friend asked if I would officiate her wedding in September. Honored beyond words, of course I said yes! I have to say, if you are considering asking a friend officiate, and you are willing to work together on a ceremony, it can truly be an amazing experience! Here’s what you need to know if you or a friend would like to officiate a wedding (please keep in mind that there are slight variances from state to state, and even city to city, so please look up your city—mine will focus on NYC and New York State).

Step 1: Visit www.themonastery.org and follow the steps to become ordained to perform weddings.

Step 2: Research the laws pertaining to the city where the wedding will be taking place. I live in New York City, and know that there are special rules that exist here, so I will talk about my experience with that. The website actually has a NYC packet that they will send you with everything you need (for a relatively small fee), so I went ahead and did that.
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Remember how I said I wanted to talk about people being disappointed in our decisions? Yeah, let’s talk about that now. Then, I promise I’ll shut up about this topic. At least for a little while.

When we asked BIL Cardy to officiate our wedding, he was a bit reluctant. Partially because of nerves and partially because he wasn’t sure how my parents would feel about it. Honestly, this hadn’t even crossed our minds yet, and Mr. Cardy and I were a bit perplexed as to why my parents might have a problem with it. Maybe we were just being naïve, but we honestly figured they would just be happy that we had found a solution we were so excited about, and that would be that. But these things aren’t usually that simple, are they?

It turns out that my parents were very disappointed and upset when they found out that we weren’t planning on having a pastor officiate our wedding. They expressed that they had already been extremely upset that we weren’t getting married in a church (which I had no idea of until about a week ago), and now that we didn’t want to have a pastor, it was an even more difficult situation for them. BIL Cardy told Mr. Cardigan and myself that he didn’t feel comfortable saying yes to marrying us until he had my parents’ blessing.

I’ve had multiple conversations with almost every member of my family in the past couple of weeks, and I feel like I’ve had to justify my decisions and desires more in this week than I have in a very long time.
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The father of one of my BFFs is a Methodist minister, and on top of that, just a wonderful man. You know those people that you meet and just like right away but you can’t really explain why? That’s him. He always has a sense of calm about him and he’s just a genuinely caring, genuinely interested in other people kind of guy. After seeing him officiate the weddings for two of the women in my house party (including his daughter’s), I knew I wanted him to officiate mine.

Mr. K at his daughter’s (House Party Jessica) wedding

Tim Watson Photography

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One of the issues with having my dad officiate the Pin Cushion ceremony was figuring out how to make the marriage legal. Before the wedding, we applied for our marriage license, and my dad applied to be a “Deputy Commissioner of Marriage” for one day.

My dad practicing his officiant duties at our rehearsal

But post-wedding, we were a bit perplexed about the next step. We didn’t bring the marriage license to the wedding to sign…because we couldn’t find it!

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One of the easiest ways this budget bride has saved money is by recruiting help wherever possible. Fortunately, I happen to have some pretty talented friends! I love the concept of a “friendor” because I feel that it makes a wedding more personal and intimate. On our wedding day, we’re most looking forward to being surrounded by the people we love. Why not have that feeling extend to our vendors, too?

The first friend we hired was Sister Lioness. Though Sister Lioness is currently studying “Teaching ASL as a Foreign Language” at Columbia (bee tee dubs, their mascot is a lion…woot!), she does some pretty sweet graphic design on the side. It’s more of a hobby for her, but she kind of rocks at it. I don’t know much about graphic design, but I do know that I’m a sucker for fonts. Choosing fonts happens to be Sister Lioness’s favorite part of graphic design, so it’s been great to have her artistic eye around! She’s designed our invitation suite, and I plan to collaborate with her for other paper projects like programs and menus. Here’s a sample of her work, a little ditty she came up with to give to family and friends when she moved from Gainesville to NYC:

Ugh. So sorry I had to censor that!

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Mr. Pin Cushion and I? We don’t like to feel clueless. We like answers. We like feeling like know-it-alls. Our thirst for knowledge runs nearly as deep as our thirst for chocolate.

My desire to feel smart extends all the way to my photography poses.

(I seriously have boatloads of photos like this.)

So we didn’t like it when we realized we were feeling clueless about our wedding officiant. We felt lost. Adrift. We brainstormed and created flow charts and acted out scenarios and set up computer algorithms to work out the problem.

One day, we finally got a break in the case. Our combined 41 years of education helped up come up with the perfect candidate:
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(source)

I was a little stressed out about who was going to officiate our ceremony. I didn’t want a friend or family member, although I did want an elder in our community and someone with a message to share. Even though we are marrying at a winery and not a church, I knew we wanted more of a traditional Christian ceremony. Not knowing what to do, I sort of pushed it to the back of the list, knowing that it would eventually get sorted out.

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My grandmother decided she would be the one to marry Mr E and I way back before our official engagement. To be fair, she did “ask” us first (in the kind of way that you can’t say “no” without hurting her feelings). At the time we said something along the lines of: “Thanks Grandma for offering to do it, we will have a think about it and see what will work out best.” Which she took as a “yes” answer. And then the problems began.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my grandmother, admire her for all she has done in her life, adore her lamb roast and her hugs, BUT I also have learned very quickly that she is not right for marrying us. Grandma has been marrying couples for years, often in the very same garden that Mr E and I have chosen for our venue. She is no stranger to wedding ceremonies: she has seen the good, the bad, the ugly, and she has opinions about them all—which brings us to the problems. Because of all those ceremonies she has taken, and all the things she has perceived “wrong” about what was included and what was not, when she assumed that she would be marrying Mr E and I, she immediately saw it as an opportunity to finally run “the perfect ceremony” according to her views.
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We recently met with our officiant, Mac, to discuss wedding  ceremony details. He’s a friend, and this will be his second wedding ceremony. He accompanied Mr. Taco to a bar outing before we were even together, and he was one of the first him-people I met. Dallas-bred Mac sounds a lot like the bully from Bottle Rocket, so, sometimes, his voice alone makes us laugh. (Jump to 0:55 on the YouTube clip.)

It seems fairly common these days for a good friend or family member to perform the ceremony; I did it myself for Bridesmaid A in 2008. When our time came, it made perfect sense to go the same route. We much preferred someone who knows us to do something this important. We’re also not God-fearing people (refer to previous references about living in Satan’s handbasket), so a Reverend Lovejoy-style minister was out of the question.

Still, more people than I thought are surprised by secular weddings.
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Since we got engaged, every time I talk to my mom on the phone she asks, “Did you get an officiant yet?” I think she thinks if we don’t then it’s not official (is that true??) and we won’t be married. Well, 10 months into planning we FINALLY have the person who will marry us. No worries, Mom!

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I didn’t expect that looking for an officiant would be much work. Neither Mr. Lobster nor I are particularly religious, we don’t belong to a church, but we wanted someone who would unite us in a meaningful way. We met with two officiants before we were set.

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Months back, we found out that our California pastor-friend was not legally allowed to perform marriages in Hawaii.

Well, after a few letters of recommendations and some official filing business done right before the due date of two-and-a-half months prior, he is now allowed to perform one marriage on one specific day in Hawaii. And I sure hope it’s ours. (Kidding!) I’ll have to figure out a good thank-you gift to give him and his family for going through all this legal tape on our behalf!

With that major victory finally won (yay!), I think it’s best to see what other legal hurdles we’ll have to jump over before the wedding day.

First, we’ll need the Hawaii marriage license application. It’s good only for thirty days, so we’ll have to apply for it when we get to Hawaii in July. Luckily, we picked up one of the forms on our trip in December, so we can at least fill it out beforehand. (Though, I found out that the same form is also available online.)

“You want me to change my name to what?!”

Actually, there isn’t anything about name changes on the form. But there is something else that interested me:
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Mr. Veggie and I (in all our non-religious, non-cultured glory) were having a difficult time deciding who should officiate our ceremony. The only thing we were sure of was that we wanted our ceremony to be personal, delivered by someone who knows us. Preferably someone who knows us well.

According to usmarriagelaws.com, in Wayne county, PA: “Any ordained minister, priest or rabbi of any regularly established church or congregation, Judges, Justices of Peace, and Wayne County Clerks or their appointed Deputies may perform wedding ceremonies. Mayors of cities and boroughs are also authorized to perform marriage ceremonies.”

So we were looking for priest, rabbi, deputy or mayor. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, or the casting call for a Village People revival band.

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If I had my choice, we would definitely be married by the construction worker. He’s rad.

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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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Recently, Mr. Sewing and I were presented with another hurdle the destination wedding decided to throw our way.

Officiants.

Sure, it would have been easy enough to book someone already in Hawaii, but we had to be difficult, didn’t we? You see, we have the blessing of being quite good friends with one of our “mainland” pastors, and it just seemed like a perfect idea to have him marry us. More meaningful, perhaps, since he already knows us as a couple.

So we talked to him, and as luck would have it, he was already planning a vacation with his family there that same summer! And as they hadn’t firmed up their plans yet, they moved their schedule around our date.

At this point I was pretty happy, we had our officiant, and he was someone I knew. What could go wrong?

Mr. Sew’s dad, even more practical than Mr. Sew himself, pointed out: “Is a California minister legally allowed to marry people in Hawaii?”

Ehhh.
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