If anyone asked me what my favourite part of our wedding day was, in a heartbeat I’d say the ceremony. Even with 140 people it still felt intimate, most likely due to having it in my childhood backyard. Everything was perfectly us with details we worked hard at making come alive over the year of our engagement (thanks friends!). From the Hooray Flags finished months in advance to the cake banner I repurposed as chair reservation holders just days before, so much of the ceremony was handcrafted by and made to fit us and who we are. Just as a ceremony should be.
But yes, as I mentioned last week, the ceremony didn’t come without its drama.
A lot of conflict happened, and some I won’t go into as it is quite personal, but I will tell you this one thing,
I’m first generation Canadian and grew up in a Portuguese home. A very Portuguese home. This meant good food, loud family members and Roman Catholicism.
Every Sunday I was groomed into a frilly dress with frilly socks with my butt long hair combed to perfection. Every Sunday I sat in complete boredom while the priest droned on an on in a language I didn’t understand. When my little brother and I got scolded for passing the time with thumb wars, I ended up standing and sitting, standing and kneeling, standing kneeling standing kneeling sitting, all while daydreaming of my little ponies and strawberry shortcake.
As I got older I would stay in bed as long as I could on Sunday mornings, hoping my parents would forget or just give up hope that I’d ever come out.
They’d drag me out.
My only salvation was when I turned 15. I had to be the only girl at school who wanted to get a job.
“Are you free to work weekends?” the employer would ask.
“Yup. And every single Sunday!” I’d reply.
This was the only way me and my siblings ever got out of going to church.
Breaking the news that we wouldn’t have a priest (let alone one who sounds like the Charlie Brown teacher when speaking English) wasn’t easy, and it would take a lot of conversations and coaxing.
Instead of a priest we had a Unitarian lay chaplain. It was perfect. Unitarian ceremonies are about joining people of different faiths and tailoring the ceremony to the couples’ beliefs and wants. Between our two families and ourselves with all have different beliefs, how could we go any other route than to have someone who is completely neutral yet understanding of all faiths? Our lay chaplain Peter was fantastic. He understood what we were about, what we needed and what we wanted, which is why we had to have him, no matter what.
We originally booked a historic orchard on the grounds of an old nunnery for our ceremony. It’s a stunning space that books up quickly, which is why the only time we could get was 11am. We booked it and the whole time I thought “11am…that’s going to be a rough morning, but it’ll be fine”.
I never got comfortable with the idea of having a morning wedding. No matter how I looked at it, I hated the idea of getting up that early to get ready and having a huge gap between ceremony and our dinner reception. When it came time to finalize our invitations, we changed locations. Sure we lost our initial deposit, but that was worth it. But we nearly lost our lay chaplain.
We thought we confirmed a time, sent out invitations, and all was good. A couple months before the wedding we learn he isn’t available for the 3:30pm time we already sent out with the invitations.
We went through the agonizing process of looking for someone else to perform our wedding ceremony, but no one else could accommodate the language we wanted (i.e. no jesus/god etc) and that was something we couldn’t give up. This was the beginning of our life together. It had to resemble us.
And so, we did what probably all wedding aficionados would tell you NEVER EVER TO DO.
We called up all our guests and changed the time from 3:30 to 3pm.
Thankfully they all showed up.
It was really hard sticking to our wants, needs and beliefs. We did have to let go on some things we wanted, because in the end if you try to win over absolutely everything you’ll just exhaust yourself. The key thing was to make sure we had what was truly important to us and to let the little things go (like the bouquet and garter toss..definitely didn’t want to do that).
All the drama was worth it. The above image always makes me smile. At this moment when I looked around, all I saw was happiness, and I felt truly blessed to be married to the man I am so deeply in love with, and to be surrounded by the people I love and hold dear.
My only wish is that we had more lemonade and cookies for cocktail hour. It went way fast.
Join me next week for the last part – the reception, where nothing went wrong, except for my dress ripping and almost catching fire…
What you said about not being able to please anyone, so true! For us a lot of the give was on the side of the “fancyness” of the wedding – we wanted to go camping, but there was a push for something a bit more upscale. So we found something that suited our tastes and pleased the ones that prefered something nicer.
And the take, was definitely in the ceremony. Not having a religious official marry us and tossing out a lot of small traditions (we also opted out of the bouquet toss and garter toss).
PS Your wedding looks like so much fun 🙂
A camping wedding would have been so fun, and so you! But yes, we always have to try and appease others don’t we? But I’m so glad you made it work for you two!
I love how you both stayed true to what you wanted your wedding to be. We had a non-religious ceremony too… we kept it short and sweet. 🙂 Gorgeous photos!
short and sweet are the best!
Gorgeous wedding! Would you mind sharing where you found or how you created the beautiful ribbon stakes? Thanks!
Hi Mary! I’d be happy to share
I bought 14 garden bamboo stakes at only .75 cents each at a local garden store. I (and by I I mean everyone who helped) staked them into the ground along the aisle, then four up front to create an altar. For the aisle, we just tied pink ribbon along the stakes, connecting to each one, then tied shorter green ribbon onto each stake to let it flow in the wind. For the altar we tied ribbon across the side two stakes on each side, then used this ribbon to tie more ribbon and tulle across the altar.
Hope that helped!