A teary evening...

I *had* big plans for my evening, but since my garage door is not cooperating (gr!) I'm at home doing wedding stuff.

Thinking about the Catholic vows and how much I wish we could have them say something a little different (case in point, I don't want to talk about death, in any fashion, on my wedding day. "'Til death do us part" has always sounded SO morbid to me!), I set out into the e-world to find out "how to write your wedding vows".


Here are some of my favorite suggestions.

I love you. You are my best friend.
Today I give myself to you in marriage.
I promise to encourage and inspire you, to laugh with you,
and to comfort you in times of sorrow and struggle.
I promise to love you in good times and in bad,
when life seems easy and when it seems hard,
when our love is simple, and when it is an effort.
I promise to cherish you, and to always hold you in highest regard
These things I give to you today, and all the days of our life.
Source

_______, I love you. You are my best friend and will be forever. Today I give myself to you in marriage to be your wife. I promise to encourage you, to laugh with you and to comfort you in times of sorrow. I promise to love you in good times and bad. I promise to cherish and respect you. Because of you, I laugh, I smile, I look forward to spending the rest of my life with you, caring, loving and being there for you in all life has for us. I will always be the person that you can trust, talk to and the person that will always understand. I will make my home in your heart. These promises I give you today and all of the days of our lives. I vow to be true and faithful for as long as we both shall live. Take this ring as a sign of my faith and commitment.
Source **I changed this one a little bit.

I promise to give you the best of myself and to ask of you no more than you can give.
I promise to accept you the way you are.
I fell in love with you for the qualities, abilities, and outlook on life that you have,
and won't try to reshape you in a different image.
I promise to respect you as a person with your own interests, desires, and needs,
and to realize that those are sometimes different, but no less important than my own.
I promise to keep myself open to you, to let you see through the window of my personal
world into my innermost fears and feelings, secrets and dreams.
I promise to grow along with you, to be willing to face change as we both change
in order to keep our relationship alive and exciting.
And finally, I promise to love you in good times and in bad, with all I have to give
and all I feel inside in the only way I know how... completely and forever.
Source

Today I will marry my best friend,
the one I will live with, dream with and love.
I take you to be my husband/wife.
From this day forward I will cherish you,
I will look with joy down the path of our tomorrow's
knowing we will walk it together side by side, hand in hand and
heart to heart.
Source

So they all brought tears to this bawl-baby's eyes. None are perfect and, obviously, I've got some thinking to do on length, style, etc. But it was a fun project. :)

Which of the vows above is your favorite??

Ceremony A: the easy one

So, putting together a wedding ceremony. Not something many people do on a regular basis. One thing you can say for the Catholics, they're organized! At our meeting, the priest gave me a book.

In this book are sections where you choose one reading from the "B" category and assign some one to read it, one from the "C" category, a Gospel reading from "D", etc.

Mr. SB, as a non-Christian, isn't really that invested in the readings, but has some interest. Especially that we choose readings more focused on moral codes/lifestyle than direct religion or religious figures. Our conversation actually went something like this.

"Mr. SB, do you care about the readings I choose?"
"Can we pick the readings that aren't too churchy?"
"You do realize they're all from the Bible...?"

I'm going to read through the book and choose two options for each category and then have Mr. SB put in his two cents. (Ok, I'll be honest, I hope he chooses the "Love is patient, love is kind" passage from 1 Corinthians.)

We're both a little disappointed that the Catholic vows are the priest talking then you say "I do." But let's be honest, I'm sure I'll be crying and "I do" will be plenty for me to try and squeak out. And later we can share our more personal statements. Hooray for benefits of two ceremonies!

Honestly, I'm pretty excited to have the opportunity to include more people in the ceremony because I have a few people who will be in attendance (my godmother, godfather, dad who's studying to be a deacon, godbaby) that it would be nice to be able to include. Unfortunately, I also need a vocalist & musician and don't really have those in the family. So we'll be looking for another set of them (we have the reserved for the winery).

Coming up with a "free form" ceremony will be a little more challenging, and will be a soon-to-do project.

Did you have trouble selecting readings for your ceremony or did they seem to fall into place?

Two look bride

I had read how some ladies are choosing to be "two dress brides," a more formal gown for the ceremony followed by a more dance friendly version for the party. And I thought that was crazy. You're spending all that money! Wear the dress all night!

Until...

I know Mr. SB was really looking forward to our "first look" at the winery with my fancy dress and the beautiful back drop (and our photographers present to capture the moment..). I have to say, I was/am too. But now with us having a little ceremony first, 3+ hours before we see the rest of our guests, with our photographers not yet present, isn't the set up for a "Wow" moment. So... I did a little thinking/online shopping and have decided I'll be a two dress (and completely different look) bride.

Look one: To be worn at the winery (first look, ceremony, and all night). The dress has a full skirt, strapless, sweetheart neckline, trumpet shape. Sparkly hair clip, no veil.

Source

Look two: To be worn at the church. Simple, more formal material, but simpler silhouette. And a steal. :) And I'm going to wear a veil. So I'll actually have seen him in this look first, hopefully get some of my cry out of the way, and then come out for a Wow! moment in the dress above.

Source

Dress two isn't his favorite style, but I think it's totally acceptable and works well with our funny ceremony set up. I'll be recycling shoes, possibly jewelry. I'll talk about jewelry another time.

Do the two dresses/styles seem to work with what I've got planned?

Two ceremony bride

So after MUCH deliberation (and I can't believe I'm saying this), I'm going to be a two ceremony bride. And as much as I am overwhelmed by planning two ceremonies, I'm relieved to have reached a decision and feel pretty good about it.

Backing up.....

Getting married in a Catholic Church is important to my family. Mr. SB isn't Catholic, and while I would like the blessing of the Church on our union, our vision (outdoor wedding, writing our own vows) isn't consistent with a Catholic ceremony.

Source 1 & 2.

The priest at the local parish was very nice. Whereas all guides online say you MUST contact them 6 months in advance, he wasn't stressed about the time line at all (so long as neither of us had been married before). He's not making us go to a couples' weekend or anything.. in fact the whole procedure seems painless.

He mentioned that there is a lot of "wrong" information regarding Catholic weddings. Per him, they can be said "off site," but not outdoors. I was stumbling through a description of our day when he realized I was trying to ask for something besides a church wedding.

"Miss SB, let me ask you this. What is your dream for the day?"
"A priest will come to Nicholson Ranch to say the wedding."
He laughs (literally, laughs) and says "What is your second dream?"

Hear that? That was my bubble bursting...
Source

Well, I suppose the second dream is a ceremony at ~2p for anyone who wants to come and then the "real" wedding at 5p as planned. So we're getting married twice. On the same day. There is basically no point to the second one, except it's more "us." It's for "us." The whole first one is for me and my family, not at all for Mr. SB who is a little irritated by it, I think. He even suggested canceling the second ceremony as it'll be a big farce. :(

I don't think it's ideal. I also don't think it's a farce. But it IS more money and more work.

Time to get started.

Is two ceremonies overkill? Would you cancel the second one?

Furry babies, part II

One random discussion lead to another... and Mr. SB & I came up with the perfect way to incorporate our furry babies into the big day.

They are pretty small-ish cats, short haired and about 10 lbs each. We have threatened to dress them up before in small dog clothes (because they'd be cute), but as far as we got was a Santa hat last year.

Look how thrilled Olivia is with this idea...

BUT! What if we dressed them up like a tiny bride and tiny groom (one is a boy and one a girl, after all) and took the pictures for the table numbers! (If you remember, I loved the pics w/ the pets + the cake topper... but I don't want a cake topper.) A quick search online found very reasonably priced options.

Including a veil!!

We didn't actually get this one, but that hat is cute!
Source

We busted out the tape measure and found our (chubby?!) babies are actually a size medium! (XXS, XS, S available too. Man, some dogs are tiny!)

So, one cold winter day, Mr. SB & I will have a little kitty photo shoot. We need ~8 good shots for the tables... we'll see!!

How do you feel about pet clothes? (And aren't these adorable!)

Updates soon...

I've been down on the blogging lately.... BUT I've had several breakthroughs in the past 24 hours and can't wait to share them with you soon!

Mr. SB has to work tomorrow (Saturday) night, perfect time to blog!

Yay for wedding progress!!

Monogram

As I referenced before, I all-of-a-sudden have a need for a monogram! (To use as the "sealer" on the bellyband on the wedding program, if you had forgotten. :)

I have two fonts that I've been working with and love: ChopinScript & Caramella (from dafont.com) so I wanted to work with them (and green of course) to see if I could create something.

Crummy quality image for some reason, but you get the idea.

I think this is pretty acceptable. Simple, but effective. And matches the other stationery we've had - same font/colors/proportions. Now to wait and see how it works in the mock up.

Did you have a monogram? How was it incorporated into your big day?