Goin' to the Chapel...

And we're gonna get maaaaarried.

Well, we're definitely not going to the chapel, but after we booked our venue and some of the other vendors we started to think about who would marry us.

I need to take a second here and explain that both Mr. Coyote and I were raised Roman Catholic. The Church has played a very significant role in my life and we both went to a Catholic college. But the truth is, neither of us have been practicing in quite a few years. Mr. C has a few issues with the Church (which I think are justified and I completely respect) and he didn't feel comfortable having a Catholic ceremony. And so we decided to not get married in the Church.

This wasn't a decision that was made lightly. I would have preferred to have a full-on Catholic ceremony, but after many conservations, I knew it just wasn't the right choice for us. I also know that if I had pushed back hard enough Mr. C would have just sucked it up and gone through with it. Because he loves me and he knows it's important to me. But was that how I wanted our marriage to start? With me pushing him to get married in an environment that he was uncomfortable with? Not exactly. 

Sacrifice and compromise come from both sides. We sat down and decided that instead of the Catholic ceremony (that I wanted) we would include a few religious prayers and songs (this was a concession from Mr. C, as he wanted an entirely secular ceremony). Religion is still a topic for debate in our home, but I hope that compromising and finding middle ground for something as important as our wedding ceremony shows how strong our relationship is and is a glimpse into how our marriage will be.

As I mentioned before, we decided to have our ceremony at our venue. Here it is all set up:

Image via Franklin Plaza / Photo by Michael Gallitelli

Gorgeous right??

Because we made the decision not to get married in the Church we needed to find an officiant. We had a few different options.

Many couples now ask a friend or family to officiate, but we just didn't feel comfortable with that. We want everyone we know to be able to sit back and enjoy the show (so to speak). 

We started to poke around and asked some of our vendors for their recommendations.

I think our photographers first recommended Robyn Posson to us, but I know that others had mentioned the name to us too. We set up a meeting with her and sat down to chat about our ceremony.

The first thing I noticed is that she had a very calming presence (a great quality to have when dealing with nervous brides, grooms, family members, etc). She walked us through the ceremony and talked to us a bit about how we could personalize it. We could make the ceremony as religious or secular as we wanted (which was important considering my discussion earlier). She was incredibly thorough.

After we got through the initial chat our conversation started to wander. She shared with us that she was getting married soon too! And then we learned that we had the same photographer (not too much of a coincidence seeing as they recommended her). But we also learned that we have the same DJ (okay, this is getting weird). And purple is going to be her main wedding color. (Well... Our colors aren't purple, but close enough, right?) And after our last meeting with our venue, we told our coordinator that Robyn was our officiant and he told us that she was just there scoping out Franklin Plaza for her wedding venue!

We are obviously kindred wedding spirits. 

We booked her right away and didn't meet with anyone else. It was such an obviously perfect match that we would have been crazy not to!

Who is officiating your wedding? A friend? A family member? A pastor or rabbi? I want to know!