Different...

Today is the day that we celebrate our 17th anniversary.  There were a bunch of different things that we did in our ceremony that I don't think I've seen anything like them in any other ceremony.  I thought I'd list a few of them out.

As I already mentioned in my previous post, we responded with "Yes" when others normally respond "I do."

Unity Candle - We had a unity candle.  But we did something neat with it.  I took my candle and Tammie took her candle.  Together we lit the unity candle at the same time.  But then, after we blew out our individual candles, I gave mine to her mom and dad and Tammie gave hers to my mom and dad.

Vows - We wrote our own vows, but we used a passage from Ruth 1:16-17 to write them.  Here's the inspiration for our vows, "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.  Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me."

Rings - We copied a scene from the movie, The Scarlet Pimpernel, for our ring ceremony.  Too much to explain, you'll just have to rent the movie.

I Will Be Here - My brother, Pete, played my 12 string guitar and sang this song by Steven Curtis Chapman in our wedding.

Reception - I refused to kiss on demand when people clanged their spoons on their glasses.  In fact, at one spot when the clanging was especially loud, I excused myself to the restroom.  Oh, and there was my friend, Will, who clanged so loudly/hard that he broke his glass.

One other interesting fact - It was a sunny, hot and humid day.  It did not rain at all that day... except for about 10 minutes during the ceremony.  It was just perfect enough to ease the humidity.  And honestly, if someone didn't tell me that it rained, we never would have known.  It was sunny otherwise.