Ceremony

It's very trendy these days to write your own vows.

Well, without offending anybody who did that, it's just not our thing. We're both good writers, but we also have spent years and years in schools where sometimes it seemed that the only objective was to instill in us a sense that compared to the literary greats, we are not so.. well.. great.

Or, as Dave put it, "if a pre-written ceremony was good enough for my favorite writers, it's good enough for me."

Of course, the question still remained as to which pre-written ceremony we'd use, as of course every denomination seems to have one. Even here, though, there wasn't too much digging around. We discussed it once or twice, confirmed that we agreed about this as we do about most things, and that was that--the Book of Common Prayer it is.

Most people would be able to leave it at that, but we are not Most People. Oh no. We are, very proudly, English Majors. Not for us the modern Book of Common Prayer, with its standard spellings and newfangled edits of a word here and there.

Did you know, for instance, that there are slight differences in the Book of Common prayer depending on whether you are Episcopalian (USA), Anglican, Episcopal Church of Scotland, Church of Ireland, Church of Wales, or Anglican Church of Canada? And that's to say nothing about the fact that, like most reference books that have been in print for a while, there have been multiple editions.

So, knowing what sort of thing we had in mind, I asked myself.. to which Book of Common prayer do we wish to refer? Surely nothing so new as the 1956 edition, or even 1900. Something from the 1800's, perhaps? No, not even that.

Illumination came to me one day as I was thinking about the British Literature Survey class in which I first set eyes on my intended. In the first semester of that delightful two-semester course, as part of our coverage of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, we have to read the Book of Common Prayer.

The original Book of Common Prayer, as penned by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, this Book is of course still available, even if it's considered a wee bit archaic by most people now. It's exactly perfect for us, and we intend to use pretty much the whole "forme of solemnizacion of matrimonie", although I still need to find out if we'll be allowed to have a communion service in the chapel, since the written policy is that absolutely no food and drink are allowed. I wonder if the Body and Blood of Christ get an exemption.

I'm very excited about our wedding ceremony. I think it will suit us exactly.

The Booke of Common Prayer - 1549 Edition

Venues: Ceremony

The readers of this blog who have gone to school with me (or visited me at school) are of course already familiar with the chapel on campus.. probably painfully familiar, if you were a student. Given our required chapel attendance, we students get to know the interior of our chapel pretty well over four years.

But there are people who read this who have never been here, so for your benefit (and for my own mental processing of how I want things to look for our wedding), I post the following.

(all pictures by me)

Our chapel was built in 1936. It's fairly simple in design; I hesitate to describe it as "gothic revival," but it definitely has some gothic elements to it, especially in the smaller details and the indoors.

It's a very popular location for weddings, and it's actually really hard to reserve it. We were fortunate enough that when we realized we'd have to move our wedding from New York to Pennsylvania, someone else had just canceled and we got the last available slot for the summer. It meant changing our wedding date, but all that means is that we get to get married a month sooner than we originally planned, and I'm not about to complain about that.

Because the interior of the chapel is so beautiful, I don't feel a need to gussy it up with a huge amount of flowers, especially since the vast majority of our wedding day is going to be spent elsewhere.

What we will have are candles on every other pew (a setup provided by the college). I'd like to have some kind of small floral decoration on the pews that have candles, and a pretty altar arrangement.

View from the front of the chapel

Sorry this photo's so dark. All I had was natural light, and it was fairly late in the afternoon. Also, wow, that is a lot of pews.. I'm going to be walking forever! Please note the beautiful stone floor I will be walking on.

The college recommends an aisle runner, but I will be barefoot, and I love walking on that stone barefoot, and it's so beautiful.

As you can see in the photo mosaic, the front of the chapel has fairly dark wood paneling, so I'm thinking some light flowers--probably white, to balance out that darkish wood color. I think they'll stand out beautifully.

Luckily, our chapel is so beautiful that it doesn't need a lot of extra adornment. This is good, because we only get access to it starting at 5pm, and the ceremony is scheduled to start at 6... and we have to have everything out again by 8, which includes using the space for any photos. We're on a tight time budget.