|
My fault, really, for saying the 'N' word (as in, no thank you, I'll NEVER get married - lol). For then my prince swept me off so fast I'm still spinning. Smart move, too, cause our wedding preparations took off with such a flying leap all I have/had time for is stressing and worrying about getting all the pieces together in time, with no time left for cold feet.
My instant new "Mom" (serious, it was like two souls meeting and merging instantly), of course, made another dream come true, and despite the fact that we will be married in the middle of wilderness, I WILL have a cake :) Jamie wanted angelfoodcake, some lemon concoction, obviously.... well, it can't get better than homemade, so at least it'll get consumed, hehe. So then, methinks, I have to find a topper couple... needless to say, there are none that looked like us, and no, thank you, I won't compromise.
We settled for swans by way of representing us. After all, I WAS an ugly duckling, starting extremely late in the game, and they do mate for life ;) Works for me. Of course, the matter of finding nice crystal swans with a pretty setting was impossible, so I had to get several sets to combine into the one I liked (lol). Picky, who, ME??? Nawwwwww.
The Waiting is Over
I always wanted a nature wedding (well, those times where I dared dreaming and not said NEVER). Turns out, my hubby to be had similar ideas. The scenery in the Rocky Mountains, Medicine Bow National Forest, was breathtaking. This area has been my new family's hideout for decades, and my bethrothed's secret dream. I'm good at making dreams come true, so a forest wedding it was to be :) And I am not regretting a second of it. None of us missed the (so-called) civilization.
It was the time before GETTING there was absolutely crazy. Everything that could have did go wrong (I understand that makes for a prefect marriage because we already HAD all our crisis -lol).
The paperwork did not arrive in time for the wedding. Therefore, we had no marriage license.
Absolutely NO wedding boots were to be had in my size, so the night before the wedding I finally blew a gasket and bought a pair of fire engine red, gorgious, little ankle cowboy boots, and to HELL with tradition - lol.
Daddy's camcorder recorded, but delivered a blank tape as end result because the salesman insisted on selling us the wrong brand of tape.
I forgot to reset my digital camera to a distance further away than 'flower petal closeup' for those who took the pics for us. Which means most of them turned out with fuzzy 'there is someone there but it's up to you to decide what or who it is'. The only quality pictures I ended up getting are the few I took myself, and even those are debatable.
Some of the wedding party got lost/car broke down on the way up the mountains and they arrived too late.
We forgot to bring the champagne for the chalice along (lucky this blonde always has a bottle of spring water about her person on hiking trips, yup, even in a wedding gown. So we used that -
Momma trying to tell me something???)
Heck, I forgot the CHALICE (wanted the gold one from my own altar). Father Dave snickered and produced his own. He said that's even better, because the lovely old thing had been through so many ceremonies it packed quite a nice ooompf of power all by itself.
-
but, the ceremony was breathtakingly beautiful nevertheless, and I could not have wished for a better setup. Father Dave decided to go ahead with the ceremony despite it all, considering both of us out of state and far enough away to get away with it. We missed nothing, really, he only changed the word 'wedding' into the pagan 'betrothal' (pssst, for the xtians, tis the same meaning, and such a lovely way to errr... bypass the, ummm.. you know :)
Father Dave, btw, turned out to be converted pagan priest and came double powered, so to speak. Bless my Mommie for digging HIM up! Amazingly, we did have a few seconds to talk religion, and I found myself agreeing with him completely. You CAN'T say no when the big guy speaks up, but one doesn't forget or scorn what was before....
I felt an instant click, as if I had known Father forever, and he was just wonderful. Still a very 'witchy' kinda guy, if you know what I mean :) Positively glowing from within, and radiating so much good humor and love, he was family within a few seconds.
From consecrating the grove (I got a beautiful huge smudge bundle) to reiki'ing me up (I was about to fall flat on my face when it finally got to the point of 'all done waiting for groom' - and yes, it was the other way around, we went first doing our thing, as Father Dave decreed it was important and pretty much told the boys to stay put, hehe. The men followed us later - HAH!). Father D is now orthodox catholic, his main calling performing mixed faith weddings and showing people that there is more than the church most of us knew... I have to tell you, pagan or not, if this guy was in MY neighborhood, I'd be going to church again(grins)
The mountains were gorgious, the weather balmy and very windy (y'all know how I feel about a good storm), I found the perfect grove (we were supposed to pass it to cross a little creek, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not get passed the twin tree, it kept pulling me back, so that's where we stayed).
The wedding tree that called out for me to stay is a twin split old pine tree. We went back later and harvested loads of resin from its gracious body. It had a perfect nook for the prayer insence and smudge stick (Father didn't want to put it out after use, it was supposed to burn down all the way, so the Tree got to hold our goodies), to a protusion like a small shelf at eye level, made to hold the chalice. Everything went perfect, so we're not complaining too much (although we are, respectively, considering to kill the salesman who sold Dad the wrong malfunctioning tape. Or at least give him a serious case of terminal warts or something).
Right in the beginning of the ceremony a doe stepped out of the forest and into the clearing, and watched the whole ceremony. Once she was startled by something, but simply moved over to a different spot on the other side of the meadow, still watching. She departed when the redneck hunter down the path (a pre-arranged thing, I dunno whether to laugh or be glad I had no brothers of my own until this point) fired off his really, really loud gun when the 'you may kiss the bride' thing happened :)
So basically, there was a lot of chaos, but when all was said and done it could not have gone any more perfect in the end if we had planned it out in detail.
Which, once again, teaches me that in Momma's own crazy way chaos is good :)
The following pages show the different stages:
To Photos of the Wedding garb
The Ceremony and Vows
The Actual Wedding Photos
The Wedding Shower (read: The gifts)
The Honeymoon :) (winkwink)