Summary
I hope this chapter was exciting for you to read through. We started to talk about some very real aspects of your wedding, including finding the perfect place for you to become husband and wife and the perfect person to marry you.
In today's busy world, not everyone has time to be a part of a religious community. If this describes the two of you, then you may have had to start all over again by finding a house of worship that you might consider joining and could possibly get married in. Hopefully, with the resources I've provided, doing so was a snap. If you aren't planning to incorporate religion into your ceremony and don't wish to have the ceremony in a religious site, this chapter also offered some inventive ideas for finding the right location for your secular ceremony. And you learned a bit about the advantages of planning a destination wedding, including some great ideas for Caribbean locales.
We also talked about choosing an officiant, whether you are looking for someone within your faith, an interfaith officiant, or a justice of the peace or other officiant not connected to any religious tradition.
Once we got the essentials of where you're going to have your wedding out of the way, we got down to the business of planning your actual ceremony. I provided a very basic structure for a wedding ceremony, which you and your officiant can build off of as you blueprint the ceremony. We also talked a bit about blending religious and cultural traditions into your ceremony. I hope you found my suggestions helpful.
And then we ended the chapter on a shiny note by discussing what you need to know when buying your wedding rings.
Next up in planning your wedding: How to deal with family issues that are bound to crop up as you delve deeper into planning your wedding, including how to cope with divorced parents at your wedding. I'll also help you work through choosing your attendants and start you thinking about how you'd like your attendants to be dressed at your wedding. So let's move on to the next task on your to-do list in Chapter 4, "Planning for Attendants and Family Participants."