Tell me about your weddings/committment ceremonies! - Page 2

[east carolina]

Most marriages in the Czech Republic are officiated by county clerks and they're really dry and boring. Also, you can't write your own vows or influence what is read during the ceremony. We had a tiny wedding with just three guests (two witnesses and DH's sister), and I wore a summer dress with a 1920's style white hat and a very long black boa. We spiced up the ceremony by having our friends who were our witnesses read the text of "Love and Marriage" as a serious poem in both English and Czech (the county people liked it so much that they asked for the text afterward).

We went out to lunch and then went bowling, then drank the evening away! We didn't have any professional pictures done during the ceremony, and the camera we used was pretty old (not digital), and the pictures are sooooo funny! We look really crazy, especially DH who made some pretty silly faces at the camera. My mom laughed so hard when she saw the pictures. I'm sure our kids will have a blast looking at them when they're older.

[sophi4ka]

I am Jewish and DH is Christian Orthodox. We couldn't marry in any of those religious tranditions so we had a civil ceremony in San Francisco City Hall - which was THE BEST!!! . I don't feel connected to any of those religions anyway

http://images23.fotki.com/v871/photo...007_107-vi.jpg

In addition to it being a very nice ceremony, I am also very happy that I got married in a place that also weds gays and lesbians.

[elizaveta]

I found out I was pregnant with dd and we had actually planned on getting married, we just hadn't set a date and I didn't know at that time what would happen, so we decided to get married as soon as I was pregnant, because it's not allowed to have a baby here unwed. I ended up not having dd here though as it turned out.

We're both Russian Orthodox and here we do not have a full time priest, we have a priest who stays in Iran full time and comes monthly or so. We were lucky enough to catch him and ask him to do a small ceremony for us. My Mil did most of the planning and he gave her instructions on what to buy. We went searching for a white dress and found one in the last place we looked that fit me and was beautiful. We were married in my mil's sitting room! I don't know how to explain an Orthodox ceremony, but they are very beautiful in my opinion. It was small and I didn't get a chance to have the crowning part because there were no crowns available at that time, but it was still beautiful. I remember sitting in my sil's room with my bil's wife and I was so excited. And then they took me to another room and I was talking to dh through the door and I started to cry because I wanted to see him and I was so happy! I didn't cry during the ceremony because I was too nervous! Afterwards we had an appropriate meal for the priest that my Mil had made. He is a monk, so he has a different diet. We ate, had many toasts and were asked to kiss kiss so many times! And we did a few Russian traditions: my mother in-law brought bread that she baked and we had to bite off a piece and whoever bites off the biggest piece will be the head of the house. My husband got a bigger piece, of course. And then he drank a shot out of my shoe, which is to show he loves me. We went out to dinner at a Marriot later that night with some family and friends (we ran into our priest there drinking a beer, which I thought was hilarious!), but I was in the morning sickness stage and we went home early and I fell asleep. I was a horrible bride. I was actually feeling terrible the day of our wedding, but it had subsided by the ceremony. A few days later when we were fixing up all the wedding documents a friend was driving us to a ministry to sign some papers and I had to ask him to pull over to I could puke in the trash bin. It was so embarrassing!

I wish we could of had a ceremony where my friends and family in America could have attended and we have family in Russia that didn't get to come as well. But it was still beautiful and I probably wouldn't actually change it, except I would have been happier if it could have been in an actual church in Russia. We didn't have a honeymoon, but I wasn't in much a mood for one with all the morning sickness.

[Julz6871]

I don't regularly post here, but this thread inticed me Im a white american and he is west african. Im nondenominational christian (at best) and he was raised catholic but no longer attends. We avoided all the family pressure by having a caribbean beach wedding and inviting people literally two weeks before the event.

[jgm06]

We were married in a Catholic Church with a full mass. DH is Filippino so he (and all the men) wore barongs. His mom wore a traditional Filippino dress. We incorporated the candle, chord, and veil into the mass as well as the presentation of the coins. We had "sponsors" as part of the wedding party which are people who are supposed to help support us throughout our married life. Women were handed fans from the Philippines when they entered the church. Favors were chocolate Needhams in little palm grass baskets. It was a lot bigger than I had wanted since it was hard for DH family to trim guest list...but it was a wonderful day.

[slmtoya]

Dh was raised Catholic, I am COGIC to strains of Christianity that don't mix. I was not willing to have anything Catholic in our ceremony because it just really goes against the grain for me, and DH wasn't really into Catholicism anyway. Our first ceremony was at the court house with the JOP. The second was supposed to be an outdoor ceremony in a garden but it rained (yay for hurricane season in FL).

I did try to incorporate some of DH's Irish hertiage. It was hard for me to include things from his side of the family because he really knows nothing about his hertiage and could care less about trying to learn. But I had irish music for the wedding party to march to. The rest was a typical ceremony. We did do one African tradition that I was adamant about, we jumped the broom after the ceremony was complete.

[kJad29]

This is my second post here...I think I may have to introduce myself formally sometime.

I'm Nigerian American (Nigerian father, Black American mix with other stuff mother) and my DH is 4th generation Polish, Hungarian, and Croatian, but has no ties to his mother countries or to the languages so he tells me he has no ethnic identity.

Anyways, neither my DH nor I are Christian. I'm a Vaisnava (Hare Krishna) and at the time my husband was a Buddhist so we had a double ceremony with a Zen Buddhist monk and a South Indian Vaisnava bramhin. It was a blast because I wore a traditional wedding sari, DH wore a nice kurta pajama and he had a mandap and everything. His family are all non-practicing Catholics and my family is kind of half/half on religions where my parents are Vaisnavas (initiated last August!!! ) and my younger brother is also practicing as well. The rest of my siblings are various Christian denominations. We had our wedding at my parents house where they have 4 acres of land. We set up a beautiful tent, with flowers and a stage for the ceremony and a dance floor. We had wonderful caterers from a pure vegetarian South Indian restaurant (DH and about 1/2 of my family and all my friends are vegetarians). It was such a wonderful day. We also have friends from all over the world (ethnically) so no group was missed. I had my relatives from Nigeria who live both in the states and in the UK, co-workers and friends of my parents from East Africa, Black American, India, Indians from South Africa, Mauritius, SE Asia, The Phillipines, White people, Latinos, you name it, they were probably there. We basically had representatives from every continent and mixes in between. It was as my friend's mother called it, the way the world should be, everybody getting along in peace celebrating together. That's what it was for us. So we had a wonderful wedding. DH's family showed up strong as well and we were all just so happy.

Now we're just waiting for the babies to come....

[StarJune]

kJad29 Your wedding sounds amazing. You should post some pictures.

[ernalala]

We had an official town hall wedding (without ceremony even :-) with two witnesses and a friend, almost got late for it, even 'forgot' to wear each other the rings, so we did that ceremony outside :-) Got some pictures shot by townhall photographer, we were not allowed to do it ourselves. Whatever, we look very happy on those! I wore a silvery-pinkish long dress with a black long half-open 'vest' in velours.
We had no family over, we did not want to have a big wedding and it would also get very complicated with two cultures involved (and different religious backgrounds and I am atheist myself), and all family living far away from where we wedded. We got a barbecue with one of the friends who had come over by an 11h drive for just 5min. witnessing (the friend who partly helped in acquainting us :-). Afternoon we had a sudden out of the blue mosk-ceremony (with a small adventure finding a mosk with imam willing to wed us) since my husband felt that was necessary for him and his (feelings towards) his muslim family to do so, I asked 1Bfr, equivalent of 1/45 of 1€ as bridal gift from HB . Evenings we went to eat out chinese by the two of us - we really overate us that day:.
The next day we left on a short honeymoon and right after that we visited my FIL for the first time, and as a freshly married couple and me a foreign bride, we got a lot of curious attention, it was very overwhelming for me but I felt very welcome too.

I was very happy to have had our wedding as 'OUR DAY' completely, and just very low profile. NO wedding stress at all apart from the fear of not understanding the wedding official when he would ask me 'THE' question and/or other things in Turkish .

Only maybe my family may have felt left out a bit, but it really was how I/we wanted it. It didn't really matter for my FIL if and how we would celebrate, that we were married was the most important, not attending the wedding.

I designed our wedding announcements myself, only we sent those out AFTER the wedding to tell everyone we got married !

[DRJ]

We were married by a friend in an art gallery. Non-religious, but pretty traditional.

The rehearsal dinner was a different story. After the dinner, my DH presented my father with a water buffalo (cute, stuffed animal version), which is the traditional Malaysian dowry.

[xochimama]

We had a fairly conventional Episcopal wedding in terms of the ceremony (DH's preference—he's rather committed to the Church), but I basically organized all the other details to dovetail with my (Mexican Catholic) family traditions: I wore a white dress with my grandmother's mantilla blonda (a kind of lace veil) and a big Spanish peineta. The ceremony—out in a big New Mexico field—included the lasso and arras (lasso and coins) that my grandmother, aunts and uncles, and all my cousins have used in their weddings.

The music was by played by, get this, "El Trio Jalapeño", who were pretty good (!) -- mostly typical Catholic stuff during the ceremony and then lively norteño music during the reception. Unfortunately, we did not rehearse any dance for this so we looked pretty dorky out there--esp. because dh does NOT dance. Like, AT ALL. Also, it turned out that the accordian player was some kind of "living legend" of Hispano music-- she was a little funny--during dinner she was eating chile serranos off our plants.

The sun was setting over the mesa to the west, and we had luminarias lining all the walkways around the property, and everyone was drinking serious margaritas. I loved every minute of it!!

[la mamita]

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[~sweet pea~]

I'm Catholic, DH is Jewish and we had a blended ceremony.

We found a reconstructionist rabbi who performs interfaith weddings, and had the ceremony officiated by both she (the rabbi) and the deacon from my childhood parish. I had to get "special dispensation" from the Catholic church which was just filing a bunch of paperwork, which the deacon took care of because he was excited to do his first interfaith ceremony. For some reason that was never fully explained to us, the Catholic church took the position that although the ceremony did not need to be in the Church, it had to take place indoors. The huppah didn't count, although I really tried to push that one because I would have preferred an outdoor wedding. However, we found "neutral ground" at a beautiful function hall (a renovated georgian mansion) that was ironically owned and operated by the Greek Orthodox Church.

The ceremony took in elements from both religious traditions. My mother was thrilled about the jewish tradition of both sets of parents walking their respective child to the altar. We had the candle rite, the explanation of the huppah, the blessing of the rings, the seven blessings, readings from old and new testament, and the breaking of the glass. It was beautiful, and my DH and I joke about being "doubly" married in two religions, and "triply" if you count the Gr. Orth. hall.

[umsami]

We had a 'traditional" nikkah (Arabic marriage ceremony... basically signing of the marriage contract) at the mosque.

My parents were sort of mortified that we basically eloped with no party (my Mom and Dad are all about the party), so threw us a celebration about 10 months later. We had at a hotel in St. Augustine, FL which sort of has this Spanish Moorish look...which was about as close to Egyptian as I could do. We did both traditional Continental cuisine as well as more Middle Eastern inspired.

I had plans for how to integrate things but in the end I couldn't justify the cash. I guess that's one of the problems of being married in my 30s, I had grown too practical.

I just got a really great Persian cookbook called "New Food of Life" and in it, Najmieh describes the wedding feast/traditions... as well as some cool stuff around babies and breastfeeding. (Special post-partum food.)

[sophi4ka]

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