Okay, so the more observant of you will have realised that my sidebar suggests today's post is going to be about the invites. Well, I forgot about that when writing yesterday's post and put them right in there, so I needed a new topic to show you today. So, meet the Blessing...
Tim and I opted for a register office wedding, as neither of us felt comfortable taking the traditional church vows: Tim is not sure what he believes in and I am just a bit too "new age" (for want of a better word) to feel comfortable swearing to 'love, honour and obey' in the way it is expressed in church. Not that I don't love church, in fact I have many happy memories of it, we just didn't feel it was right for our own wedding.
That being said, we also didn't want a simply legal wedding, because we are very spiritual people. So we decided to hold our own blessing ceremony at our chosen venue, and set about writing the blessing ourselves (or, rather, I wrote the blessing and Tim approved it!)
The blessing itself is very personal to us. We have asked friends and family to lead it, rather than opting for a single spokesperson (although, I must give a "shout-out" here to Jen who was originally going to lead the ceremony for us and helped me write the final blessing we chose). We have kept it simple, knowing that within our guests there will be those who have no idea of what it is we believe: we have chosen a symbolic gesture to replace the exchanging of rings (which we will do in the register office) and have asked a friend to explain the reasoning behind it in the simplest terms possible. We are not there to give people an introduction to our beliefs, after all, but to let them share in the joy we have in celebrating our marriage.
So the blessing is written, and however much I would love to share more with you, I cannot until after the wedding. I don't want to spoil the surprise for our guests by posting the readings and vows with you now. In fact, the vows themselves still have to be written. I know what I want to say, but saying it how I want to may be difficult as I know I shall be rather emotional on the day itself!
Good for you to make it personal! :-)
Posted by: Tina | July 28, 2010 at 02:51 PM