The first wedding in the fellowship! December 22, 2002. Both Gilbert and Ann wanted it to be simple, everyone wanted it to be simple, and all planning does start out simple. But items multiplied as the days passed, as the bride dreamed out each detail and did the legwork herself. Everyone was challenged how to be creative and yet keep it all within means. Almost the whole fellowship was soon occupied with bouquets, trains, sunsets, wedding marches, recalling wedding stories, and sobered by the reality of actual married life. It was both fun and exhausting, especially for the bride, who tracked down dresses of her whole entourage, marshalled the printer, picked the music. The couple negotiated with the manager and caterer. The Fellowship Music Ensemble was requested to play the wedding music. While we photocopied and harmonized, Rodel Carating planned the sequence of the wedding events, the bride spent her days and nights ensuring the video and photographer, making personalized wedding tokens, and counselling with married women in the fellowship. The couple counselled with the Elder who solemnized their marriage.
On the appointed day, we were all up early, at the flower market, then to the rooftop wedding pavilion, hauling equipment up the stairs, snipping thorns off the roses, testing the microphones (thank you, Ador Flores!), sweeping and mopping the floors, arranging chairs, sequencing sheet music, taping and tacking down the green runner, rushing the only rehearsal ever, tuning the instruments. The bride arrived later than expected, as it goes with weddings, they were caught in a traffic mishap. But all were in one piece. Bride’s and groom’s families, nieces and nephews, and dozens of guests arrived.
As the clarinet and sax drew out the sinuous strains of Kenny G’s Wedding Song, and the violins Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D, the sun set beautifully into a cool evening. The radiant bride, on the arm of her eldest brother, joined the groom. By the time the ensemble played Sunrise, Sunset, and Butterfly Kisses (a favorite of the bride’s father, who passed away last year), the assembly was bathed in a lovely glow.
The officiating elder and his wife composed a wedding ceremony that reminded everyone of the real purpose of our Creator for marriage, the joy of growing together and building a family in the nurture of the Lord, and the responsibilities of both the husband and the wife.
Click here for the complete text of the Wedding Ceremony
Everyone rose to sing the hymn O Perfect Love, as one seeking the Lord’s blessing and guidance on Gilbert and Ann, now Mr. and Mrs. Deboma.
Those in the fellowship who weren’t able to come because of the traffic, more terrible at this time of year, had a special request, that the next couple to be married choose any other month but December! |
