This evening our wedding officiant, Mimi Phillips, came over for a visit so we could discuss the progress we've made on our wedding ceremony. Wow, she's amazing! I don't think we could have found a sweeter more understanding person to marry us {again} if we'd looked for two more years. She remembered us on a such a personal level from only one meeting, and even wanted to know how our wine turned out - which we told her we were going to make several months ago.
Back in October when we met Mimi for the first time she loaned us a book called The Wedding Ceremony Planner and we've been reading through it for a couple of months. Aside from the fact that the author lives in the town next over from where Ryan grew up, I love this book because it breaks down every little part of the ceremony and has worksheets in the back (which appeals to the teacher in me). We picked out all the different wording that we wanted for the parts of the ceremony and wrote down our favorites on a photocopy of one of the worksheets. We even found a tree planting ritual in the book, which is absolutely perfect for us, and we are really excited to include this in our ceremony.
We found that, although this took a good chunk of time to do, it was really easy and very worth it. Thankfully, Ryan and I agreed almost unanimously on which wording was the best for us; however, we are still having trouble finding the right vows. We didn't really feel like any of the vows in this book fit our personalities, and we can't seem to find what we are looking for on the internet.
This is where Mimi comes in. She came over to our house and we all sat down together to look at what Ryan and I had been working on over the last several months. Mimi looked at our worksheet and copies from the book and then dove right in reading aloud the ceremony as we had planned it thus far. It was really nice to hear her read it aloud, since she will be the one reading it on the day of our ceremony, and it gave us a chance to edit as we went when we heard something that didn't seem right. Our next step, now that the three of us have combed through the wording, is for Mimi to type everything up and let us look at it, and then work together on finding or creating the vows that are perfect for us. She plans to practice reading our ceremony a few times and let us know how long it takes her to read. We are concerned about length, because it will be a July afternoon and could be very hot.
After we looked through the ceremony plans, Mimi stayed for a little while to chat. We talked about what we have planned so far, looked at pictures of the ceremony site, and ogled over our new wedding rings. This was especially important because we also had the opportunity to talk to Mimi about our lives on a more personal level and discuss things unrelated to the wedding. She helped us brainstorm some ideas for things we are having trouble with, and counseled us a little bit on how to deal with Ryan's divorced parents during the ceremony and reception. This was really important to us, because there are some things that we are going to need some outside perspective in figuring out how to handle, and she has probably seen just about every situation out there at this point in her officiating career!
Mimi is such a great person that we even recommended her to our close friends Erin and Mike, who are getting married in August. It may seem weird to some people, but I think it would be really cute for us to have the same officiant, and I know that we would really like to see Mimi again after our ceremony!
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