Weddingbee Blog

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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I was raised Catholic, then Episcopal, and Mr. Pencils attended a Protestant church until high school. I would classify myself as spiritual, and Mr. P… well, he’s not sure what he believes. A church wedding was out, to say the least.

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The question remained though: who should marry us? It took literally 30 minutes of being engaged to name one person:
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Well, it’s official: my stepfather is legally allowed to marry people in the city and state of New York!

Yep, you heard that right, my stepfather is going to be our wedding officiant!

How did this come about, you may wonder? Well, as many of you may know, it can be pretty tough planning a wedding when you have divorced and remarried parents. Don’t get me wrong, I love my stepparents. I always say, why would I be upset to have four parents who love me instead of just two? However, wedding traditions can get a bit sticky when your family tree is anything but tall and straight.

It’s even tougher (and also more awesome!) when your stepfather has been around since you were 15 and has become a major parental figure in your life. Who walks you down the aisle? Who dances with you? Who contributes financially? It’s all very complicated.

I tossed around various ideas for months: maybe they could each walk me down the aisle halfway? Maybe one could do the aisle and one could do the dance? Maybe I could walk down the aisle with my mom or by myself and avoid the issue altogether? Nothing seemed right.
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Mr Frenchie is SUPER nervous about our wedding ceremony. He hates public speaking and being the center of attention (one thing we are complete opposites about). Standing in front of all 130 of our guests with all eyes on us is really stressing him out.

Last night we got together to run through our ceremony so he knew exactly when things were happening and when and what he was supposed to do and say. I’m really glad we decided to do this, because I found a section of our service that didn’t sit right with me. At the beginning of the ceremony, under “Welcome & Statement of Marriage” there was this paragraph…

“Marriage is a gift from God given to us as a holy mystery in which a man and a woman are joined together and become one, just as Christ is one with the church.”

I know this is common statement at weddings, but as a supporter of marriage equality, this just didn’t sit right with me. I sat there wondering if I should bring this up to our officiant or just let it slide. The more I thought about it the more I knew I needed to ask her to change it. I was a little nervous to make waves so close to our wedding, but I love Leanne, and I knew she would take my feeling and beliefs into consideration regarding this issue, whether or not she agrees with me.

So, I called up Leanne this afternoon and asked her if we could change it to read…
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Last night we met with our officiant for the first time. Ever. As in, I had never spoken on the phone or seen her in person ’til last night. Mr. D and I aren’t particularly religious and we come from different faith based backgrounds. We don’t have a church we attend regularly (when we’re not country hopping) and as such, we don’t have a minister or priest that we have a close relationship to. Not to mention that we haven’t solidified which (or if) organized religion suits us, and we simply wouldn’t feel comfortable marrying in a faith we weren’t 100% committed to.

Many people have asked how we found our officiant, and really, I’m just a huge review devotee. I searched on Wedding Wire for an officiant, did a general Google search (Maryland non-denominational wedding officiant), and checked out the reviews on Project Wedding. Then I scoped out her website, too. Because three sources just aren’t enough for me. I told you, I’m devoted to reviews! So I shot off a preliminary email, and when she wrote back, Laura was so friendly and warm, and I just felt comfortable working with her.

I’m a fan of “gut feelings” and I’m happy to say that this one panned out quite nicely.
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Before we got engaged, before we even had “the talk“, we talked one evening about how we didn’t want a priest to marry us. Mr. Bear Cub and I are not religious, and this tends to confuse a lot of people (especially my family). Luckily, those that don’t agree with our beliefs at least respect our right to live our lives the way we want to, and believe what we want. Mr. Bear Cub and I are both humanist.

Happy Human, the Humanist logo

I say that we have differing “beliefs” than those who follow religious sects because normally those who are religious believe that atheists don’t believe in anything.
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Recently, Mr. Bruschetta and I met with our celebrant, Father David, to continue preparing for our ceremony — and, more specifically, our marriage.

He’d asked us to come with the names and phone numbers of two “witnesses” each, family or friends who we’d be calling together to conduct a brief “interview” about us. We were uncertain what to expect, but selected four family members — Daddy and Sister Bruschetta, and FMIL and FBIL Bruschetta — who agreed to converse with Father David.

After catching up, we started our phone calls. Mr. Bruschetta and I dialed our family members, and then passed the phone to Father David, who walked them through a series of questions. (Let me clarify: These weren’t questions Father David had prepared himself. They were part of the materials we needed to complete in order to marry in the St. Thomas of Villanova parish.) All the queries were pretty serious in nature, and dealt with our preparedness to marry. At the end of the “interview” — which really only did last for about five minutes each! — Father David asked each person if he/she swore what he/she said was the truth, since the yes/no answers would, at the conclusion of the call, constitute a legal document.

Once the four family interviews were complete, Father David spoke individually (and in private) with me, and then with Mr. Bruschetta.
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Normally, brides hope for a wedding day free of theatrics. But, when I marry Mr. Bruschetta, I’ll actually be hoping for a bit of flair. See, our priest teaches in the Department of Theatre at Villanova University — and once spent four years working as a professional actor in New York City.

Father David and I became friendly during my junior and senior years. We both love exercising, and often debated news and current events. We share an obsession with Banana Republic, and it was actually following Father David’s recommendation that Mr. Bruschetta purchased his now-beloved Doc Martens. He’s just really not your typical Catholic priest.

Here we are following the Baccalaureate mass the day before graduation.

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I’m extremely thrilled to announce that my hometown pastor will marry us! I’ve attended Messiah Lutheran Church in Valdosta, GA since 1999. My pastor, Rev. Richard Pieplow and his wife will travel to Savannah to officiate our wedding ceremony.

I was fortunate enough to get to choose my religious denomination when I was younger. My family never really attended church when I was a child, so I would tag along with friends here and there to different church services (everything from Southern Baptist to Pentecostal). I never quite felt like I “fit in” even though I enjoyed the messages of the services. It was the style in which those messages were delivered that made me know they just weren’t right for me.

After my father died in 1998, my mom decided it was time to turn to God to help answer some of our questions and problems. Her best friend was already attending a church, so it was only natural that she picked the same one. That church, Messiah Lutheran, ended up being my pick as well. It was also the church that handled my dad’s funeral and I remember how much Pastor Pieplow’s words helped my mom during that time.

My mom wanted us to go with her the first few times when we began attending. But she made it clear that it was our decision whether we wanted to continue to go after that.

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Well, folks. It was inevitable. Plans have been coming together too easily. Things were falling into place too neatly. It was only a matter of time until something major happened, and that time was this past Thursday.

On that fateful day, I was in the local drugstore, shopping for soap, when I got a call from the pastor who I had asked last May to perform our ceremony. Since I had been trying to get in touch with him about beginning our premarital counseling, I thought he was calling to set up our first session.

Boy was I wrong.
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I thought we had our officiant in the bag.

Early on in our wedding planning, Mr. Martini expressed that he had a specific person in mind when it came to who would preside over the ceremony. He became close with this person at the church he attended during college, and although it has been years since they’ve spoken, this man held a special place in Mr. Martini’s heart and he wanted to reconnect with him. Of course, I agreed.

Over the next few weeks Mr. Martini did give him a call, caught up on the last 10 years, and eventually met for dinner. Unfortunately when Mr. Martini popped the big question about whether he would be kind enough to preside over our ceremony, he found that he was not ordained and is currently serving as a counselor at his church.

We were sad that he could not marry us, but excited that he will be able to witness our marriage as a guest after losing touch for 10 years. But now we had another issue. Who was going to seal the deal for us?
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In Montana, you don’t need a minister. You don’t even need an officiant. Anyone can marry you… without any certification. I think that guy above looks like fun, but I’m pretty sure he’s unavailable.
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