Since my last update, I've been thinking a lot about the actual ceremony part of the wedding. I looked into a bunch of different officiants (I basically looked at every non-denominational officiant on Disney's preferred vendors list), but I was really undecided. How do you decide who's going to take part in one of the most important moments of your life from a website? After talking it over with Jeff a bunch, he suggested having one of our good friends officiate. I thought it over for a while before actually asking her, because I was nervous about her having never officiated a wedding before. But I've heard about great weddings officiated by friends or relatives of the bride and groom, and it seems so personal. So we asked her, and she said yes!
So the next part is actually putting a ceremony together. Any brides reading that have written their own ceremonies, if you have any templates to share, that would be amazing. I've seen a few templates, but I haven't actually gotten down to figuring out what we want in the ceremony. I'll probably nail that down once we get a little closer to the date. I don't affiliate myself with any religion, and while Jeff is Catholic, he's not super religious. So we're looking at a non-denominational ceremony.
I've been researching different unity ceremonies as well. The unity candle and the sand ceremony seem to be the big two, but I didn't feel any particular desire to do either of those (just not my thing). In fact, I had been sort of indifferent on unity ceremonies in general, but I was intent on finding one I liked. The wine box ceremony sounded interesting, but I wasn't 100% on board. I had also heard of things like handfasting and ring warming, but I couldn't find anything that stuck out to me. Finally, last week, I came across two different unity ceremonies that I was really interested in: the Lovelocks Tree of Life ceremony and Unity in Glass.
The Tree of Life is made from a company called Lovelocks that makes those tiny padlocks that you put on stuff, like in Paris. I like the picture frame looking one on top, but I included the bottom photo because it shows the locks. The basic idea is that you start with an empty tree, and then each set of parents adds a lock on either side, at the bottom. This represents your "roots." (Get it?) Then the bride and groom attach their lock in the center. Since the lock has no key, it represents your separate lives coming together as one forever. I think depending on your wedding size, you can also purchase additional locks and have your guests add locks on the branches, but we aren't doing that. Also, I suppose if you have kids in the future, you can add locks for them on the branches.
I really like the unique-ness of the Tree of Life, and I like that you have it forever to display. I also like that it gets the parents involved. I think that the moms especially would enjoy that. On the other hand, it's sort of cheesy, which we're not. But if you can't be cheesy on your wedding day, when can you?
On the other hand, somewhat more popular, is Unity in Glass. Unity in Glass works basically like a sand ceremony, but instead of sand, you use tiny bits of glass that you later send off to get blown into a sculpture or bowl. I really like the end result, and Jeff thought of the cool idea of using our birthstone colors. The downside to this is that during the actual wedding, it functions like a sand ceremony, which I don't love. However, the sculpture you end up getting is super cool.
Jeff likes both ceremonies and won't decide either way. So those are the two we're stuck between right now.
Other than that, there's not a whole bunch to report. We sent our save the dates two days ago, so I'm hoping that soon our guests will start to let me know that they've received them! I'm glad we got that out of the way, since we're going on vacation to
Disneyland at the end of next week, and then we're moving apartments shortly after that. We're also going to the DFTW Bridal Showcase here in Florida on the 28th, so I'll try to take pictures and report on that after we go. In the meantime, I'm not sure if anyone's interested in following our Disneyland shenanigans, but if anyone wants to follow me on Twitter or Instagram, I'm amandaenchanted on both!