I posted about my engagement the other day, but I also love to talk about my wedding - like Nyght and me, it was kinda different, and totally us!

The poll question today on how long an engagement should be is part of what made me think about it all again. As I noted there, the biggest obstacles we had in planning our wedding were (1) money and (2) my mother. Part of the money was resolved when I was notified by my employer's workman's comp insurance company saying that the wrist surgery I'd had done (that I hadn't even *considered* a workman's comp issue, so my company must have filed the claim on their own) had left me with a 3% permanent loss-of-use, and they were sending me a couple thousand dollars as a settlement.

We were able to rent the church we were married in, hire the minister, have our wedding outfits made, get the candle holders me and my bridesmaids used instead of flowers, have a friend make our cake and pay for a nice weekend at a bed-and-breakfast from that, and my parents paid for the reception, which was basically renting the church basement, putting some paper table cloths and little foil wrapped weights holding helium balloons on the tables, a bit of banner-type draping and getting a boom box to play some songs we'd taped (mostly classical music, since it was a pretty mixed crowd, but for our first dance, we used Metallica's 'Nothing Else Matters'.)

I think the whole wedding, both what Nyght and I paid for and my parents contribution to the reception, totaled less than about $5 grand, and was absolutely PERFECT for Nyght and me. I was really glad, though, that we had the year to plan it. We had to take time to find someone who could make our outfits at a reasonable rate (and have enough time for them to do it,) and we needed a LOT of time for me and my mom to butt heads over damn near everything. I don't know HOW many times I wanted to just give up and elope.

My mom's biggest problem was that both Nyght and I love the colour black, and other dark colours, and that we don't really worry about what is or isn't "traditional." In contrast, my mother? Tradition personified. When I told her my dress would be black, she nearly passed out, and you should have SEEN the look on her face when she saw the onyx-and-silver engagement ring Nyght had give me! One of the main reasons I insisted on a black dress is that even though *I* hadn't had any dreams about what kind of wedding I wanted, Nyght did, and for him, the biggest dream of all was for his bride to wear a black dress, and I was gonna be damned if he didn't get that! I finally agreed to include some "colour" just to mollify her - I picked a nice, dark burgundy brocade, and worked with our seamstress to design it. I had a black-velvet slightly-longer-than-waist-length jacket with small black buttons up the front, a peplum in the back that came down to a point, black lace cuffs and a basic collar. In the opening at the neck, we put a small panel of burgundy brocade, so it looked like there was a top underneath it. We also made a floor length skirt from the brocade, and did a three-quarter top-skirt of black lace that went over it, leaving a narrow part of the brocade uncovered down the center front and the rest with the burgundy peaking through the lace.

Nyght's outfit was made from a lot of the same materials - he had a black velvet tail-coat with a burgundy wainscott and an ivory shirt with an ivory lace ruffle down the front and at the cuffs. We didn't get special pants made, though - his dress slacks worked just fine.

The ceremony itself was really short - maybe 20 minutes, but it didn't feel even that long. We stared with a processional set to the song " Promentory" from the movie "The Last of the Mohicans." It was a movie we both loved, and it was while watching that movie that I accidentially kissed him for the first time, so it seemed particularly appropriate. We also liked that the music had a very "old world" feel to it, representing the past years of friendship we had to build our new marriage on.

My bridesmaid and his groomsman walked down first, then Matt entered, followed by the maid of honour and best man, and then my Dad and I. When we got to the altar, there was a circle of white linen on the floor that Nyght and I stood in, representing the circle of love that would bind us together and in which only we two existed. I loved the symbolism of that because, even though everyone else could see us - just like they can see us as a couple, in our marriage, we see each other in ways no one else knows about or sees. We exchanged vows that we'd adapted from both a Unity church marriage ceremony and a Wiccan handfasting ritual, and then instead of using a unity candle, we had a rope made of dark burgundy, ivory and rose coloured satin that was wrapped around our hands, symbolizing the ties that now bound us together.

For the recessional, we went to movie music again - we'd initially met when we were both members of a (please, don't laugh) Star Trek fan club, and we wanted music that - like how our processional looked back at our friendship - would look forward to our future - so we chose the end title theme from Star Trek VI, which had the dual blessing of being very joyful and having bells ringing, AND, if you shut the tape off soon enough, wouldn't be recognizable to anyone who didn't pay much attention to end credits at Star Trek music. I was QUITE glad, however, that we'd done a run-through with the music the night before the wedding, since my bridesmaid, her husband and another friend of ours who was helping out were all *quite* familiar with the music and simultaneously burst out laughing when it started playing. During the wedding, they were able to contain themselves, thankfully

Once Mom and I had finished the battle over the dress (my dad had to intervene to get Mom to back down after my asking her "Why is it the groom EXPECTED to wear black, but it's wrong for the groom to?" produced little more than several sputters, tears and moaning of how this just wasn't the kind of wedding she wanted for me... ), we got to move on to the non-traditional elements of the wedding, though those battles went better when I promised that even though we were making use of a Wiccan handfasting, we wouldn't have an anti-Christian wedding. We wound up keeping all references to "Deity" or "Divinity" or "The Sovereign Power" as neutral as possible, and that kept everyone happy. Then, we got to the reception. Mom was ABSOLUTELY determined that not a single piece of decoration in that reception was going to be black, until the day her cousin came over, looked at the decorations she was making and, offhandedly, said "You know, I think that would really look better with something dark and dramatic, like black" - not knowing the history of the battle of the dress. I think Mom just kind of gave up at that point. Well, on the black issue, any way.

There were a LOT of times I wanted to elope, but I'm glad we didn't. Like our engagement, it's another precious memory I can cherish, and it really was - for us, anyway - a beautiful ceremony