Five Favorites About Our Wedding

This coming Monday will mark the 2nd anniversary of the night the Southern Baron proposed to me on a train platform. It's hard to believe we've already been married for 8 months! It's also World Marriage Week,  (whatever that means) so I'll link up with Hallie at Moxie Wife and share:

5 Favorites About Our Wedding

I don't miss the stress of wedding planning at all. Long distance logistics combined with major projects at work and some family health issues made life an emotional tornado of stress. As the crazy memories fade, though, being married is pretty darn great, and we have lots of wonderful things to remember about June 15. The planning did pay off - guess it was an expression of our unique personalities after all. 

1. History nerdtastic readings

We really enjoyed being able to choose many of the elements of our wedding Mass, from the scripture passages to the propers of the Eucharistic prayer. It's not often that you get to be the ministers of a sacrament, so we wanted to be very involved. It was fun to sort through a booklet of liturgical options on the
drive back from our Engaged Encounter.

Many of the reading options are teachings on the meaning of love, but we were drawn towards actual stories that showed divine involvement in marriage. 

First Reading - Tobit 8:4b-8. The prayer Tobias and Sarah pray on their wedding night, asking for God's protection. 

Psalm 103. The Lord is kind and merciful for bringing us together. 

Second Reading - Revelation 19:1, 5-9.  The wedding feast of the Lamb places marriage in the context of salvation history. The Southern Baron decided this option was "the most epic ever." 

Gospel - John 2:1-11. The wedding feast at Cana prefigures the feast of the Lamb.

Fun fact: our homilist decided to explain more about the book of Tobit, including the bird poop and fish guts. Our little nephew Joe got very concerned about my sordid past when he heard father say "And so Sarah had married seven different husbands..." 

2. Our favorite hymns

We were very blessed to have several musically talented friends who served as our choir and organist. Keeping with the "epic" theme, we included some of our favorite hymns because they had powerful lyrics and dramatic chords. O God Beyond All Praising always makes me tear up, and the lyrics are so apt for marriage, marveling at God's blessings and trusting in His care "whether our tomorrows be filled with  good or ill." Lift High the Cross as our recessional was a shout-out to the fact that the Southern Baron shares his birthday with the feast of the Triumph of the Cross. I have a soft spot for Jerusalem, the unofficial English national hymn, for its connections to William Blake's poetry and the movie Chariots of Fire. Hearing it as the prelude right before I walked down the aisle was made me realize this is it! 

3. Having our friends and family in the ceremony

When I was a teenager I always thought it would be cool to have every priest I knew concelebrate my wedding. That's not really practical, but our Mass did have a lot of personal touches besides the wedding party. My parish priest is good friend of my family, and I even gave him a museum tour once! Another priest friend from the Southern Baron's former parish in New Jersey gave the homily. College friends and my sister-in-law did the readings. My youngest brother was an altar server. We even had our godchildren bring up the gifts - and two of them were in their First Communion outfits! That's like three sacramental references for the price of one.

4. Locations with interesting stories

Hotel ballrooms are places I associate with academic conference Powerpoint presentations, not fun parties, so I tried to find a more unusual event venue that wouldn't break the bank. There are many cute historic houses in northern Virginia, but I quickly learned that "just renting a tent" was neither easy nor cheap.
Our 1940s colonial revival style community center reception site was practically a providential accident. I drove through an historic town on the way to a when I went on a silent retreat just after we got engaged. On my way home on Sunday, I stopped to look around and get a snack, and noticed the cute yellow building. "I wonder if they do weddings..." After a little research we found out the building was affordable, available, and had a super nice staff.

Fun fact: later internet searches uncovered that President Kennedy and his family attended Mass in the Middleburg Community Center several times since there was no parish nearby yet. Eventually one was established since the Kennedys loved spending weekends in the Virginia countryside - it has a bulletproof cry room. 

 


5. Seeing the people we love celebrate together

Second line!

We grew up in different time zones, but somehow our far-flung social circles ended up in the same room. His parents chatted up my aunts over breakfast at the hotel. My childhood best friend and his sister compared notes about raising four kids. The east coasters and mid-westerners learned how to do a New Orleans Second Line dance. Two of my girlfriends hit the dance floor together wearing baby carriers. People from five different class years at William and Mary belted out the Alma Mater. When I looked across the room and saw his LSU pals and my St. Louis roommates building a pyramid of empty beer bottles, I knew the party was a success.

Being married to this gentleman and scholar is a joy and a privilege.
I love you sweetheart - here's to many more months and years together! 

We're getting married!

Now for the good news: what I held off announcing on Ash Wednesday is that The Beau and I are engaged! (Should I call him The Betrothed now?) He popped the question on Friday night, starting off what was definitely the best Birthday/President's Day/Mardi Gras weekend ever.

I had suspected something might be up, but Mark completely surprised me by asking the minute I arrived in New Jersey. My Bolt bus was late, we had to reschedule dinner, the Newark train station was confusing, and then I couldn't find him on the train platform when I arrived. Once the crowd cleared and we met up I was ready to lug my bags off. 

But then he said "Wait, I want to ask you something...do you like sacraments?" 

Then in a moment that was both in slow motion and over too fast, he knelt down and asked if I would like to enter into the sacrament of matrimony with him. I dropped all my bags and managed to squeak out "Are you serious?!?!" and then "Yes, of course!" I proceeded to laugh uncontrollably in disbelief for the next five minutes as we ran to catch our dinner reservation. The next day we called our families, and then hosted a dinner party where we told most of The Betrothed's friends. (This engagement party had been cleverly disguised as a birthday party for me. Sneaky!)

The train platform was really the perfect spot. Not only are trains romantic locations in old movies, but this one is next door to his church. It's the same place where I spied him in the campus ministry center, waiting for me to get back from thesis research in New York. And it's pretty symbolic of our 2.5 year long-distance relationship, punctuated by trips up and down the eastern seaboard. 

My ring is also perfect, which shows how well he knows me. The diamonds are from his grandmother's engagement ring, and he had the setting custom made based on a 1940s design he liked. I'd be a fool to reject a man who can invest such great material culture research. 

Being engaged feels both normal and surreal at the same time. In many ways our relationship is the same it has always been, and yet we can finally speak of hopes and dreams that were under wraps until now. It's so great to talk openly about things from wedding readings to our future children to what kind of drapes we would buy for our home. So the past few days have been full of "OMG we're getting married," "future husband," "future wife," and of course, many recitations of this classic Seinfeld scene.