Stinkerpants

Stinkerpants Wedding: The Ceremony

October 8, 2008 in Our Wedding • Ceremony • Recap Photos

Originally, we’d planned to have some photos taken after everyone was dressed.  Unfortunately, that didn’t really work out.  We were missing a bridesmaid, and everyone seemed disorganized.  Note to self: don’t assume anyone has actually read the timeline you spent hours slaving over.  Anyway, I guess the bridesmaid went with the groomsmen the reception site; they didn’t want to be late for the trolleys, which they’d be riding to the ceremony site.  As it turned out, this was a good idea.  The DOC who was responsible for loading people on the trolley thought it would be better if she joined the other DOC at the ceremony site, so Y and the groomsmen had to direct guests onto the trolleys.  Meanwhile, my parents and I took a limo (I’ve never been in one!  That was exciting!) to the ceremony.

At the ceremony…one of my lovely signs!

My cousins Carol, Brian and Teddy surprised us with a basket of customized yarmulkes, which was so awesome.  They accidentally ordered too many for Teddy’s bar mitzvah a few years ago, so I asked if I could have the leftovers.  Instead of yarmulkes that read “Teddy’s bar mitzvah,” Carol ordered us our own, so we had some with our names and our wedding date in them!  So awesome.  I have a great family.

Here are a couple of our guests, showing the yarmulkes and the little parasols we provided:

The bridal party, lining up for the ceremony…

Y, being walked down the aisle by both of his parents (this is traditional in a Jewish wedding):

And then it was time for my parents and I!  My dad’s glasses are Transitions lenses, so they turned into sunglasses when we got out of the limo!  I noticed and he ended up taking them off for the ceremony, but I really love this picture with them on:

This is one of my favorite photos from the wedding.  I love my parents so much!

The guests, waiting for the ceremony to start (and reading the programs!  Yay!)

Time for me to walk down the aisle!  Can you believe the weather?!  It was amazing!

I think it’s funny that I’m looking directly at the camera.  I have zero memory of our photographer being there at all…I just remember looking at Y and having to fight back tears.

AAAAAH!  I love our chuppah!!!

We had two readings in our ceremony.  The first one was done by Y and I, from the children’s book “I Like You,” by Sandol Stoddard Warburg.  He read some lines, and I read some lines.  Although it’s silly, it made a few people cry during our rehearsal!

I seriously cannot believe this scenery.  I feel so incredibly blessed to live in such an amazing place on Earth, and to get to have our wedding in such a beautiful park!

Mazel Tov!

In a Jewish wedding, the bride and groom have some time to themselves after the ceremony.  We had a few moments to ourselves while the guests were organizing for their group photo.  We were then joined by our photographer for a few formal photos.

Heading back to the ceremony for the group photo…I loved that there were strangers at our wedding.  Everyone was super nice to us!

All in all, the ceremony lasted about 15-20 minutes.  We wanted to make sure that it was personal and fun, but we didn’t want to torture our guests by making them sit outside for a long period of time.  We were also worried that people might not be able to hear us that well–we couldn’t have any amplification because of some nesting owls near the ceremony site–and we didn’t want to bore or frustrate anyone. All in all, I think it was the perfect length.

The ceremony planning was a lot of work–we wrote the ceremony ourselves, and then we wrote our own vows.  I didn’t even know where to start when writing the ceremony, but some Weddingbee readers recommended “the Wedding Ceremony Planner” by Judith Johnson, which proved invaluable.  I also used the internet to learn about how to incorporate Jewish traditions.   It would have been helpful for me to have the entire transcript of a wedding ceremony to look at–what do you guys think?  Should I post the whole thing?