Unique Weddings

Doug and I celebrated our five year anniversary yesterday, so let’s talk about weddings!

Most of you know that for a while all Heartsongs had to include a wedding scene of some sort to fit our titling plan for the three-in-one collections. With our new collection titles the wedding scenes aren’t absolutely necessary, though an engagement or promise of a wedding is encouraged and wedding scenes are still very welcome. Anyway, I always like to see a unique spin on the wedding scene. I’m not asking for a bunch of bizarre bridal moments or that the wedding be completely nontraditional; I just like to see some unique elements that fit the characters or a unique perspective on the scene to make it more interesting than just a quick description of the dress, vows, and kiss.

Doug and I like to think our wedding was unique. It was a beach wedding in St. Augustine and while those are becoming more and more common, we managed to pull ours off in September 2004 in the midst of one of Florida’s worst hurricane seasons ever. God gave us absolutely perfect weather for our wedding and honeymoon even though a hurricane had hit St. Augustine just a few days before and another was headed their way. It was quite the adventure and we were happy to have about forty close friends and family experience it with us.

Ever since our wedding, Doug and I love to hear of others getting married in a nontraditional way. So we had fun this past August attending two very unique weddings. The first was a completely relaxed event that totally fit this casual, fun-loving couple. Matt and Becki planned an evening, outdoor reception with delicious barbecue fare and melt-in-your mouth chocolate Bundt cake for dessert, and they made sure to have one of their favorite beverages, milk—whole, skim and “real” (meaning straight from the cow)—available to wash it all down if desired. After the reception they had their ceremony, which was at dusk with candles lighting their path to a beautiful arbor where they promised their lives to each other. So beautiful.

The second unique wedding was a 1940s style affair that my friends dubbed their “Bluebird Wedding.” We started out in Coolville, Ohio, where the 50+ guests certainly did not fit inside Ohio’s Smallest Church, so we watched Nikki and Scott say their vows on the beautiful open field right beside it. Then we headed to Marietta, Ohio, to board the Valley Gem Sternwheeler where we enjoyed a delicious dinner, great conversation, and even a magician’s show while we cruised the beautiful Muskingum and Ohio Rivers. The evening ended with cake and dancing back at the historic Lafayette Hotel. So creative, so fun, so appropriate for the cool, artistic people that Nikki and Scott are.

I’ll end with a few pictures from the Bluebird Wedding just a couple weeks ago. Enjoy, and remember that if your hero and heroine are getting married, think about their characters and try to incorporate some unique and interesting elements into their wedding scenes.