Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Personalizing our Wedding Ceremony

Since Mr. Rucksack and I will be married by a Justice of the Peace on the beach, we have a lot of leeway to be able to personalize our ceremony. And by we I mean I. I will be personalizing our ceremony. With a little input from Mr. Rucksack such as “No I don’t like that reading” and “Sure, I’ll list the things I love about you.”


We had one hell of a time finding someone to marry us - which let me tell you, is absolutely the last thing I thought would be difficult. It’s one of those things I sort of took for granted. Originally, I assumed we would be married in a church. But after visiting several churches in our new town, Mr. Rucksack and I just didn’t find one that we really clicked with. 

We then decided to have a good friend marry us, but quickly learned that Connecticut has strict rules on the people that can legally officiate a wedding. 

We reached out to a few pastors and officiants in the area to find that they were either booked or away on vacation. 

I finally reached out to a Justice of the Peace that I found on the Town of Madison website. Our new JP, Mitchell, emailed me a few standard ceremonies to choose from and I took it upon myself to jazz them up. 

One element that I knew I wanted added was a personal story about our relationship. Weddingbee Pro, Jessie Blum’s, suggestions for creating a love story were especially helpful and I began writing small, wedding appropriate memoirs to be folded into our marriage address.  The most difficult part of this was keeping it short. I absolutely love the true story of how we met, but the long version is better shared over drinks with friends than our wedding ceremony. So I wrote this instead:

Before Mr. America and Miss America met, they didn’t know if they would make it to this day. Mr. proclaims that he saw himself as a lifelong bachelor and Miss was starting to think that maybe all of the Disney romance and magic her mother had tried so hard to make her believe, wasn’t in fact, real.

So on a late summer night when they both ended up at a Karaoke bar, they weren’t looking for love so much as they were looking to belt out classic renditions of “Copa Cabana” and “Hot Stuff.” And yet, something about the girl in the orange Ralph Lauren sweater made Alex want to get to know her better  - even if she was on a date with a different guy. He says he went back the following week just hoping to get a chance to talk to her, and luckily she returned – this time alone.

A first date at a wine bar led to outings at local vineyards and a Ferris Wheel kiss at the Dhuram Fair. Miss and Mr. both say that they knew right away that somehow this was “different.” They quickly became inseparable and a freak October snowstorm, coupled with margaritas from Mezcal, had them admitting that their relationship had very quickly grown into love. (Mr. had actually proclaimed his love for Miss one week prior, but since there was beer involved Miss made him rescind his proclamation. To this he responded: “Fine, I take it back. But I don’t because I love you!”)

(Cue laughter)
From here I’m going to add a section about the things we love about each other, again taking Jessie’s advice on what to think about:
  • What do you love about your partner?
  • What actions of his/her say “I love you”?
  • What do you admire about your partner?
  • What have they taught you?
I’m going to keep this a secret until the wedding, but they’re pretty sweet and funny.

Did you write your ceremony script? What did you personalize?

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