Wedding Recap Post #9: The Ceremony

Finally (nine blogs later), it was ceremony time.  The ushers made sure things were under control.

 

 

The parents and grandparents were seated while my parents' neighbor played Clair de Lune.  This was my late Gran's favorite song, so I chose it especially for the seating of the grandparents and parents in honor of my grandmothers who have passed away.

Next up, it was time for the guys and the girls to head in.  They walked in to Miranda Lambert's Makin' Plans.  One of my favorite songs!

 

Then came the flower girl.  Y'all.  It was the cutest thing in the whole world.  My little God daughter took off down that aisle in a room full of 400 people and was precious.  About mid-way, she saw her grandpa and decided she needed some help.  So for the rest of the way down the aisle, he carried her and held her basket while she threw the flower petals.  Seriously, had I known he was that good at it, I'd have asked him to be a co-flower girl from the beginning!

The ushers still had things under control.

And then, it was my turn to walk down the aisle.  My sweet, amazing SoulMate Friend sang Heavenly Day by Patti Griffin and just absolutely rocked it.  In fact, I'm convinced her version was better than the original.

 

 

Minor mishap when I tripped coming up the stairs and had to have my dad hold my bouquet to get up the steps.  Eh, live and learn.

 The ceremony was a traditional Methodist wedding performed by my parents' preacher.  Any man of the cloth who does weddings in wranglers and a bolo tie is our kind of people.

Another comical moment occurred when the preacher asked if anyone objected and then waited a bit too long for an answer for my father's taste. At this point, my dad said, "That's long enough, let's move along."  I about died laughing.

There were two readings, the first by Baby Hepburn (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) and the second by Cousin Mim (These I Can Promise by Mark Twain).

There was praying, exchanging of rings, saying of vows...the standard.

Next up, was the unity ceremony.  I'm not much of fan of unity candles and The Boy from Texas (smartly) let me do whatever I wanted, so we did a unity cross.  The Boy from Texas made the cross and it was in two pieces.  During the ceremony, we put it together and then we prayed with each other.  It will now sit in our living room.  During the ceremony, we had a slide show of pictures playing and Tuba Man sang a song selected by The Boy from Texas, "Yours and Mine" by Kyle Park.

 

Then towards the end of the ceremony Little Cowboy came up for another reading.  When we got engaged, I asked if Little Cowboy wanted to read at our wedding.  Of course, he did.  He then asked if he could select his own verse.  I have a policy about being an aunt....which is that I never have to say no.  "Sure," I told him.  Whatever you want.  He selected Psalm 23.  You know, the one you hear at funerals, "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil...."  Well that day, it became a wedding verse and that little 7 year old reading those words from his little Bible just melted your heart.  He closed with "My cup runneth over."  Indeed, it did.

 

 Then The Boy from Texas and I took communion.  It was important to us that this was part of the ceremony and we wanted it to be our first act as a married couple.  While this was going on, we played "I Shall Not Want" by Audrey Assad, which I swear is the most beautiful song in the world.  About 10 minutes before the wedding, Teacher Friend who was coordinating things came in to ask where the communion elements were.  Cue panic....I didn't have them.  The preacher didn't have them.  She said, "Don't worry, I'm on it."  I still don't know what she did, but somehow, the elements were there when it was time to go.

 Finally, The Boy from Texas kissed his bride, "Goodbye Lonely" by the Randy Rogers Band played, and we were officially hitched!