Wedding Recap: Ceremony

It’s Wedding Wednesday and today’s post is all about our wedding ceremony.

*All photos used in this and all wedding related posts are from Elegant Imagery.

Ceremony

Scott and I wanted to add personal touches throughout our entire wedding ceremony.

The location was held at Henry Chapel, a side chapel on the property of our church First Baptist Orlando.  Since a big part of our growth together happened at this church, we wanted to get married right there and share the story with our guests.

Upon entering, guests followed our journey of meeting through the NBA with photos of us and with our friends.

They were handed a program and seated in a pew by our ushers.

I loved how our ceremony programs turned out – simple, to the point, and so us.

Angela Palacio from Paper Charm Design did a fantastic job capturing the style we wanted. We supplied her with all of the information to print and with the descriptions of our Bridal Party, we set the tone of a fun, personalized wedding right off the bat.

My DIY Aisle Paper Lanterns turned out great and added a pop of color to the blue and white space.

The stage was set, the bridesmaids and groomsmen were lined up, and we were ready to walk down the aisle.

As excited as we were for the reception, we were both equally looking forward to a loving and meaningful ceremony to name us husband and wife.

Instead of a traditional wedding march, we chose to use one song for everyone to walk down the aisle to.

“You Are For Me” by Kari Jobe has been a song that means a lot to both Scott and I.  As soon as we played it and timed out our 9 sets of girls and guys to walk down the aisle – it was perfect.

Listening to it at home, Scott and I both teared up and strategically timed me to come in at the 4:18 mark.

Go ahead – press play. 🙂

Enter Scott’s Dad and Step-Mom:

Then Scott’s Mom and Step-Dad:

Followed by my wonderful parents.

Scott was waiting at the end of the aisle with our church’s Senior Pastor David Uth.  We were honored to have him agree to marry us, as he doesn’t do it very often.

One by one, each pair of our friends walked down to the beautiful song.

Right on cue, the doors opened for my dad and I, and I got to see our ceremony set up for the very first time.

I was doing great, smiling and acknowleging guests as I walked down the aisle.  Then I saw Scott.

Seeing the groom watch the bride walk down the aisle is my favorite part of a wedding ceremony.

Seeing Scott get teary-eyed made me get teary, and I almost lost it right then and there.

Just. Keep. Going. “You can get through this,” I kept telling myself.

I got through it all right, with tears and a runny nose.

There we were: finally getting married.

The feeling of standing up at the altar is hard to put into words, and as much as I wanted to hear what Pastor Dave was saying, I repededly got caught up in the moment and looked around.

Pastor Dave did better than we even hoped for sharing our personalities, praying over us, and sharing our journey at the church.  Although I didn’t hear everything he said that day, I got to listen to again on our DVD.  It was beautiful.

To include Scott’s nieces who flew all the way from Dubai, we gave them a “Family Moment” and asked them to do a reading from 1 Corinthians.

We had no idea they were make the verse into a song and they were absolutely adorable.

Evan – the oldest – finished it off with her rendition of Justin Beiber’s (Heather is) “One Less Lonely Girl.” They had us, our guests and our bridal party laughing and smiling the entire time.

After the reading it was time for our wedding vows.  We decided against preparing our own because Scott and I both become very emotional when talking from the heart.

We knew we’d both be a mess at this point in the ceremony (which we were) and relayed on Pastor Dave to read traditional wedding vows to us,  then repeated them to each other.

Our vows may have been traditional, but our unity ceremonies were anything but ordinary.

(Did you get to the 4:18 mark yet?)

To be continued next Wedding Wednesday…

In the mean time, see what recaps are coming up on the Wedding Page!