A Homemade Wedding Homestead-Style: The Ceremony

Or, we seal the deal for the second time.

Since I am Catholic (not a very good one lately) we had a Catholic wedding ceremony inside a Catholic church. But not just any Catholic church. This church is the only Catholic church in my hometown and is dear to my heart. It is the place where I was baptized and the place where I used to altar-serve. Like I've mentioned before, I wanted everything to have as much meaning as possible, so even though its not the most gorgeous church in the area, it was the only one considered because it holds so much meaning to me (and now Cowboy H).

Sidenote: I did not add any decorations to the church because I was too cheap, and thought it would be a waste of money, i.e. it was not that important to me. The church already had flower arrangements in it, which were bright red and white. I hate red. During the rehearsal, I made a note to myself "Have the coordinator remove the flowers before the ceremony" which I completely forgot about. Halfway through the ceremony I looked up and say those dagum red flowers, and thought to myself "Aw, man. I forgot to have those taken down. Oh well". Good thing for black and white, you can't tell what color the flowers are!

The ceremony began with a welcome from the priest. This priest has a long history with my family, as he was the principal for the school my mom taught at when I was born. He also remembers my parents from when they were in high school. Like I said, everything and everyone had very special meaning.

Photo by Katie

Then a series of readings from the Bible were read. My girl Cassie read the first reading, which comes from the Old Testament. I tried to find the booklet with all our readings marked in it because I was going to torture y'all with each and every word stated during the ceremony, but I think I forgot to get it back from our priest. That's how sentimental I am. Whoops.

Then comes a responsorial psalm, which is taken from the Book of Psalms. A line is read, then the entire congregation chimes in with the response. My friend Juan did the honors here.

Cowboy H's sister read the second reading, which comes from the New Testament. It was a huge deal for her to read for us. She used to be painfully shy, but willingly offered to stand up in front of 150 people she didn't know and speak into a microphone. It really meant a lot to us.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the red drapes. There was just red, red, red everywhere. Any other color but red...

The priest then read the gospel, which comes from one of the four books of gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.

I believe the priest then addressed the couple (us) but honestly, I don't really remember. I'm going to go hang my head in shame now.

And then, it was time to say our vows (again). I was just a little giddy. We opted for the traditional vows, and repeated after our priest.

Ha ha, I forgot to mention, that I became sick in the last few days before the wedding. In the middle of the ceremony I had a major coughing attack, which I refused to let out. During all the readings I had my head buried in Cowboy H's armpit trying to muffle the sound of my hacking. Needless to say, my vows were less than heart-stopping. I could barely get any sound out of my mouth. At least I made the people laugh.

And then it was time for the rings. You may remember we had a little, ahem, ring trouble. So we borrowed a ring from a family friend, who, ironically was married by this exact priest a year and a half before us. The same ring was blessed with Holy Water a second time by the same priest. It goes unstated that their marriage had better not fail, being doubly blessed and all.

Cowboy H slid mine on my finger nice and easy first. Please note my bouquet on the altar behind the priest. The night before, our coordinator managed to forget to tell us when the bouquet should be handed back to me, so Jenna jumped the gun and gave it to me right before the ring exchange. I didn't know what to do with it, so our priest grabbed it from me and set it there. Just another one of those moments.

Then, I was my turn to return the favor.

So far, so good.

And then it got stuck. Right at his knuckle. But he told me before the ceremony that it would fit, so I tried to jam it onto his finger. By golly, that ring was going on if he said it would. And Cowboy H grimaced. And then I cracked up. And so the ring was left were it was, halfway up his finger. Sigh.

The Prayers of the Faithful were then read by my dear friend Lauren, who has a couple of blogs of her own: The Next Adventure and Lauren's Next Adventure.

The priest then gave us our final blessing.

Finally, we got to face our guests and were pronounced officially married by the priest! I promise you, Cowboy H is excited too.

And THEN, we got to kiss! Hahahaha.

I realized, at this moment, that I hadn't really kissed him all day, and just grabbed him! Everyone started laughing.

Cowboy H was a little confused. But he survived.

Just as we were supposed to be walking back down the aisle together, we had a music glitch and there was an almost awkward silence. However, my baby cousin Amelia ran out of her seat to me and gave me a cough drop. Yes, she handed it to be because I was coughing so badly during the ceremony.

It was easily one of my favorite moments of the whole ceremony. It was so pure and sweet.

Then, the music started up and down the aisle we went to the chords of Randy Travis's "Forever and Ever, Amen"!

And then, we rode off into the sunset!

Up Next: The Reception Kicks Off

All photography credit goes to Applemoon Photography, unless otherwise noted. You guys rock!