But first, we had a gift to present. When planning our wedding, we wanted to make it a very Catholic event. I once said the only way our wedding could be more Catholic was if the Pope conducted it in Latin! One purely Catholic element that we had to include was the Marian Devotion. We chose to honor the Blessed Mother by presenting her with a flower while our cantor sung Ave Maria.
My florist provided us a peony like the ones in my bouquet to lay at Our Lady's feet. We then prayed the Hail Mary together and awkwardly stood there trying to figure out how long we were supposed to stand there because this was yet another thing we didn't get to discuss with our priest.
We finally decided it had been long enough and returned to the front of the alter. Our cantor finished the song very shortly. (I think she just kept singing until she saw we were done, while we were wondering if we should wait for her to finish!)
The final element of the Nuptial Mass was the Solemn Blessing.
May God, the almighty Father, give you his joy and bless you in your children.
Amen.
May the only Son of God have mercy on you and help you in good times and in bad.
Amen.
May the Holy Spirit of God always fill your hearts with his love.
Amen.
And may almighty God bless you all, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Father had our best man introduce us as the new Mr. & Mrs. (I have no idea why, but I suspect it was because he could not get our last name right to save his life. And we don't even have a hard last name!)
(Notice that my husband was totally looking the wrong way and we both had to direct him. You married ME buddy!)
And this seems like a good time for another kiss!
Our organist started up our recessional, Trumpet Voluntary, and we exited as husband and wife.
Our bridal party followed us.
MOH L and Best Man A
Bridesmaid T and Groomsman M1
Bridesmaid R and Groomsman M2
(I find it hilarious that M2 has his arm through R's)
Our mothers followed after them.
Meanwhile, we were in the back of the church getting hugs from our bridal party.
We chose to dismiss our guests from their pews instead of trying to have a receiving line. This way we got to thank everybody for coming and made sure we saw and talked to everybody at least once that day.
This resulted in lots of hugs.
After we greeted our guests, they headed out to the front of the church to get ready for our "getaway."
After seeing this picture, I'm so glad we went with bubbles! It made for some really awesome pictures and it was really fun to have walk through while our guest cheered.
As you can see above, our church is on an intersection in our city and the front steps are pretty close to the street, so we got lots of attention while this was happening!
I call this our "getaway" because we really just ran around the back of the church and entered again since we would be doing family pictures in the church. Most of guests left then and we would see them again in a couple hours at our reception!
Up next: Say cheese!
All photos by Amanda Fales Photography.
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