Wedding -Ceremony-

Happy Valentines Day!!! Today's post is all about love! The love that Tate and I vowed to eachother on October 21, 2011. Happy Valentines day to my husband...I love you so much and feel so blessed that I get to wake every morning by your side!

The #1 compliment we received about our wedding was all about the ceremony which I was so happy about! We had put so much thought and effort into deciding our readings, music and the details of it all, it was so good to hear that everyone enjoyed it.

As we lined up to start the ceremony...I started just bawling my eyes out! I was crying for a few reasons. I was crying out of sadness that my Grandma wasn't there who had just passed away 3 days before my wedidng and I was crying because of the joy I had that this day I had dreaming about since I was a little girl was finally here.

We had three prelude songs. I wanted our musician to start playing the first one 10 minutes before the ceremony started so that the last one played when our family was being seated. Our musician played instrumental musica on the piano as guest were arriving. Our three songs were:

 - "Have a Little Faith" (Hiatt)
 - "I Can Only Imagine" (MercyMe)
 - "Your Raise Me Up" (Groban)

 

I could hear the songs playing while I was waiting to walk down the aisle and it sounded beautiful! For the walk of the bridal party and myself, we choose "Canon in D" (Pachebel).

We had a traditional Catholic wedding ceremony that did not include the Eucharist. I was so nervous as soon as I got up there and turned around and saw everyone. Our priest definitely took the nerves off with the way he opened our ceremony. He had everyone introduce themselves to everyone else and then we sang a gathering hymn. We choose "Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee" (Haas).

After the hymn and the opening prayer, we had some great friends of ours do the readings. For our first reading, we decided on John 3:18-24. For our Responsorial Psalm, we picked "Blest Are Those Who Love You" (Haugen). I love love love that psalm. For our second reading, we decided on Philippians 4:4-9. We picked both of our readings from the new testament because we felt like those related more to use and what we wanted our marriage to follow. We have nothing against the old testament and think those readings are very beautiful, but when you can only pick 2 readings for your wedding, decisions need to be made! :)

Everything was going so smoothly with the ceremony. It was everything I had dreamed of and more. For our gospel acclamation, we picked the ever so beautiful "Celtic Alleluia" (Walker). Our gospel reading was John 15:9-12. We really did put lots of thought into our readings (we went over all options on car rides to and from Tate's hometown that is 4.5 hours away). We were very happy when our priest approved of them all.  

 The homily that our priest did will be something we remember FOREVER! He did such a great job and we are so grateful that he married us. We have known him since we were in college and wish that he was a priest at our local church so we could hear his sermon every Sunday.

We had memorized our vows and I started to choke up when I read mine. I thought I would sob like a baby so I was happy that I kept it together!

 And then we were FINALLY husband and wife and we couldn't have been happier!!!

 

We exited the chapel as hubby and wifey to "Our Kind of Love" (Lady Antebellum). Tate picked this song becuase the beginning of the song is hard piano and it's such a beautiful song. After greeting and thanking everyone in our receiving line, it was off to the reception to celebrate with everyone!!!!

Happy Valentines Day fellow bloggers!