Vendor Review - The Ceremony and Church

I want to keep this brief, since I was not originally planning on saying anything about the ceremony at all....As it turns out, I think the ceremony may have been my favorite part of the entire day.

We started about 10 minutes late (I just told you why, in the past post), and as soon as I got to the alter, Father Steve (or rather, Monsignor Steve!) said to me "Take a deep breath, relax, we'll get this thing back on track!!". After that, Father Steve proceeded to give the most down to earth, heartwarming ceremony I have ever, ever heard....

Let me give you a little history about Mike and I and Father Steve. When Mike was a volunteer fire fighter and EMT, Father Steve was the department Chaplain. Everybody loves Father Steve, he is a down to earth guy that is always genuine and kind, but has a wicked good sense of humor. I say "wicked" good because he's from Boston - well, actually, I think he's from Ireland originally, and then Boston. Either way, the man rocks.

When Mike and I got engaged the very first thing I said was that we needed to go talk to Father Steve to see if he would, please please pretty please, marry us. I was so excited when he agreed! Over the past three years Father Steve has since become a Monsignor (congratulations!) and left the Fire Department to take on greater responsibilities. A few weeks before the wedding I told him how afraid I was that I was going to cry the entire time - or worse, giggle the whole time! He reassured me that even if I did cry or laugh, and on the day of the wedding, when I got to the alter in one piece, he said "you did good!" in his endearing Boston/Irish accent.

In fact, on the day of the wedding I did not cry at all, I was too in awe of everything around me to even feel anything other than joy. I took a sigh of relief when Father Steve told me I was sitting up too straight, and I laughed when he joked about the different methods I may need to try in order to wake Mike up from deep sleep. He told all of our guests about how, when Mike was in the fire department, the department installed amplifiers to Mike's pager because he was such a deep sleeper that he would sleep through the normal alarms....Father Steve told us never to text the words "I love you", but to speak them, face-to-face. Overall, the ceremony really felt like a conversation between us and a man/friend we deeply respect, love and look up to. It was touching and beautiful, and I genuinely regret not having a videographer, because I wish I could replay the ceremony over and over again...

Here are a few pictures...