Once again, let’s bring back the ol’ favorite!
Noodle Bowl
Hooray for a veggie-packed noodle bowl!
Today’s pasta explosion contained:
- Carba Nada egg fettuccine pasta (12g protein per serving!)
- Marinara meat sauce
- Eat Smart broccoli slaw
- Roasted Brussels sprouts (the ones that Sadie didn’t eat)
- Small handful of arugula
Mix it up and you’ve got a nutritious and delicious mid-day meal.
Get a Load of This!
Get That Sauce Everrrrywhere
Pasta is so good. Plain and simple.
Wedding Ceremony Brainstorming
When I get off work today, Ryan and I are heading to my parents’ house in St. Pete for the weekend to accomplish some wedding-related to-dos.
First up: Meet with our pastor about our wedding ceremony.
Wedding Ceremony: Renaissance Vinoy Tea Garden
Our pastor has a basic outline of traditional ceremonies he performs, but we want to omit certain aspects and replace other parts with pieces we create ourselves to give our ceremony a more romantic and personal feel.
To me, the ceremony is the most important of the whole day. Of course I am looking forward to the reception and gettin’ my boogie on, but I really want our ceremony to be memorable and signify the commitment we are making to each other.
Ryan and I want our ceremony to convey love, hope and excitement, but also recognize that we’re about to embark on a journey that will require work, nurturing and constant care. By including those sentiments in our ceremony, I hope it will help us to always remember to make our relationship a priority and cherish the love we have for each other for a lifetime.
Being the avid “Googler” that I am, I set forth on a internet-wide search of creative wedding ceremony ideas and boy-oh-boy did reading through vows and words of devotion make me an emotional nutcase.
Must… not… cry… during… lunchbreak…
Ryan and I already created a personalized segment of our ceremony that we love, but I’m still on the lookout for inspiring ideas.
For example, I thought these vows were absolutely beautiful:
Groom
In your eyes, I have found my home.
In your heart, I have found my love.
In your soul, I have found my mate.
With you, I am whole, full, alive.
You make me laugh. You let me cry.
You are my breath, my every heartbeat.
Bride
You are my inspiration and my soul’s fire.
You are the magic of my days.
You help me laugh, you teach me love.
You provide a safe place for me, unlike I’ve ever known.
You free me to sing my own song.
You are more of an amazement to me, each day I rediscover you.
You are my greatest boon.
– Frau Ava, 1160
So romantic.
I don’t want to share our ceremony ideas on the blog because I want our ceremony to be a surprise for our guests and our parents, but I will definitely post a recap after the wedding… which is in 50 days. AH!
Please share any ideas you have to make a wedding ceremony feel extra-special. Any stories from your wedding or weddings you have attended are more than welcome!
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Wow – those totally gave me chills! I can’t believe it is only 50 days a week. That is so exciting!
goosebumps! we did our own vows but also said traditional ones as well. i had things that i wanted to say personally to nate, but we also loved the romanticism of saying vows that others have said for centuries!
For ours, the Deacon had us writer letters to each other on why we were getting married. And during the ceremony, just before we said our vows the Deacon read some segments from each of our letters.
I love love Carba Nada noodles. I finally found them at Meijer and they are so delicious. I like how the egg fettuccine noodles have a denser feel to them. I don’t like too wobbly of a noodle, haha.
totally agree! they’re like LEGIT noodles!
One thing I experienced at a wedding that I thought was great was that the bride and groom didn’t have a microphone or anything while saying their vows. The vows are a commitment between the couple and it just made that commitment seem even more sacred.
Love those vows. We wrote our entire ceremony. It was short but sweet.
http://sillylittlemischief.blogspot.com/2008/07/recap-ceremony.html
Those vows are SO beautiful! I got married two weeks ago (newly wed bliss is so real!), and we also wanted a more modern and personal touch to our ceremony. We ditched the old school vows with “death do us part” for ones in which we promised to inspire and love each other for “all the days of our lives” (the “inspire” line was what really drew me to those vows. It’s such a huge part of a great relationship!).
We also picked one reading, and as much as I love the words of Corinthians, we went with “Union” by Robert Fulghum (of Everything I need to Know I learned in Kindergarten fame). It really summed up the moment and the day for us, and it flowed so well with the whole ceremony.
Enjoy your search and you meeting! It will be here before you know it! 😀
You can find the reading here: http://www.weddingplanningwords.com/wedding-poetry-union.html
Awwww! Those vows are amazing! *tear* We personalized our vows and it was so special. Not a dry eye in the house. 😉 Mission accomplished!
OH MY GOODNESS!!! 50 days! How exciting 😀
That’s so funny you did a post about this- I was doing the same thing @ work today- googling a ton of wedding ideas 🙂 I actually looked at vows too- just to see what I could find. I thought these were really pretty:
I love you. You are my best friend.
Today I give myself to you in marriage.
I promise to encourage and inspire you, to laugh with you,
and to comfort you in times of sorrow and struggle.
I promise to love you in good times and in bad,
when life seems easy and when it seems hard,
when our love is simple, and when it is an effort.
I promise to cherish you, and to always hold you in highest regard
These things I give to you today, and all the days of our life.
🙂 pretty!
we had a priest and a rabbi officiate to show that both of our religious backgrounds are important…they walked down the aisle together, and create a religiously blended ceremony, much like our relationship. The priest also married nathan’s parents 32 years ago, and baptized him as a baby, so there was some deeper meaning there.
We signed a ketubah (a jewish tradition) in front of our guests, that had our marriage vows on it. This piece of art will forever hang on our walls at home and be a constant reminder of the vows we said to each other on our wedding day.
Instead of a unity candle, we poured wine from two separate cups into one, and drank from it. the wine signifies the bitterness and sweetness of a marriage.
Depending on how well behaved Sadie is and where your wedding location is going to be, you could have her be part of the bridal party! My brother had his lab be a groomsman and he was so well behaved. He sat in his spot up front almost the whole time – he just got a little excited when the bride was walking down the aisle! You could tell he was thinking “mommy mommy!” haha
we would honestly LOVE to have sadie in our wedding, but she is pretty much insane. it would never work. she’d run at ryan & then run at me… and then probably pee herself in excitement.
Instead of a unity candle or sand we planted a fig tree together. Our parents brough dirt from our childhood homes to represent our foundation and then we held a pitcher together and watered it. It actually wasn’t supposed to produce fruit the first and sometimes second year, but we got a single fig off of it this year and we each took a bite…it was delicious!
my husband and i are both the oldest siblings in our families and the first to get married of all the siblings so we knew it would be hard for our parents even though they were excited for our marriage and wedding. so we wrote letters to our parents thanking them for their support, how they raised us, etc. then before we lit our unity candle (which wasn’t exactly a candle- it was 2 colors of wax candle-making beads that once lit, melts together into one candle while retaining its respective color) we walked down to where our parents were sitting and gave letters to each family. they loved it- and it was a surprise part of our ceremony. 🙂
At the last wedding I attended, the pastor told a short recap story of how the couple met. I thought it was really cute since a lot of people in attendance hadn’t heard the story before. It gave a more romantic feel to the ceremony, hearing how the couple came to be standing in front of an alter together.
Do you know what my stepbrother and his wife did? They actually during the ceremony gave roses to their Moms thanking them for raising them well. That’s pretty personal.
we want to do that too. shhhh… 😉
I’m not very good with coming up with ideas but those vows are absolutely beautiful. And I have to say that I’m so excited for you! I can’t wait to see the recap of your wedding. 🙂
Love the wedding talk. We personalized pretty much every bit of our ceremony in May!
http://www.savvyeat.com/smart-life-2/wedding/
Omg those vows are adorable! 50 Days is soon! You must so excited! You will make a beautiful bride! =)
I can’t believe it’s so close! How exciting!
My boyfriends brother had his college roommate perform their ceremony so it was super personal and special. I really loved it!
Awww, YAY – 50 days!!! That will absolutely fly by!
My husband and I wrote our own vows, and it was the best wedding decision we made (besides hiring an amazing photographer). It made something traditional (a Lutheran wedding ceremony) into something very personal and memorable for us and for our wedding attendees. The sweetest part was that my hubs could not keep it together when reciting his vows, and since he never otherwise gets overly emotional, it made me realize how important this was to him.
When I planned my wedding, that’s the exact thought I had – I wanted a very personalized and special ceremony.
My husband doesn’t speak English so we had part of the ceremony in Spanish (although in VT it was pretty impossible to find someone who spoke Spanish so it was really a ceremony where the officiant sounded out Spanish words and my husband and I tried not to laugh).
We also did an Arras Ceremony, which is common in Honduras, and then we did a Jumping the Broom ceremony, which is African American. Neither of us is African American but I thought the ceremony sounded really cool, so I used it anyway. My mom made the broom out of maple branches from her yard and people helped decorate it as they came in and then we will eventually hang it up in our house.
I also looked at hand-fasting ceremonies, which I thought looked really interesting, but didn’t include it because we didn’t want our ceremony to last forever.
We had two readings – one from the Book of Ruth (specifically because it had a line that said “your people will be my people” which was appropriate since we are from two different cultures) and the other was On Marriage from The Prophet by Kahlil Kibran. I recently wrote up the ceremony on my wedding blog:
http://mapleandmud.blogspot.com/2010/08/more-wedding-photos-ceremony.html
I’m sure whatever you do will be great. I had my mom do a reading and my aunt do another because I wanted everyone involved in the ceremony (my dad walked me down the aisle, my sisters were bridesmaids, and my uncle was the best man).
Beautiful vows!
My suggestion? The best weddings I have attended (including my own ;)) are when the couple did everything in a way that reflected them… making it personal and true to who you are as a couple will make it more special than any expensive ice sculpture or fancy table linens!
have you seen the site oncewed.com? So many adorable wedding photos.
Those vows are great! I choke up every time I read things like that, too — which only makes me worry more that I’ll be a huge mess at our actual wedding!
We are doing the big Catholic thing, so we don’t get to personalize it much. I love that we’ll be participating in the exact same sacrament as others have for so long, but at the same time, printing a few readings that we would have loved to — but can’t — include isn’t quite the same. It’s the best compromise we’ve come up with so far, though.
Do an actual rehearsal! That’s my advice. We didn’t rehearse, just sort of talked about what would happen.
On my wedding day the moms lit the candle before the ceremony, instead of during it like I said on the paper. No one was sure who was walking when, my flower girl started walking into the crowd with the ring bearer having to drag her back to the middle. Oh, and I forgot to wear my something blue which I didn’t realize until afterwards.
On second thought, they make for great memories. So really, just try to relax and enjoy!
those vows were so beautiful.
Your noodle bowls always look so appetizing. Looking at it just made me hungry, and I just ate lunch!
That was beautiful. I can’t wait to read all about your day. 50 days is so soon. How exciting!
Those vows are beautiful! I can’t believe your wedding is coming up so soon! I can’t really think of any wedding suggestions right now, but I am sure whatever you do will be beautiful!
We had a very personal ceremony for our wedding, and it had a lot of the guests crying! I will dig through my files and see if I can find it and send your way.
thanks so much!
Those vows are so beautiful! I can’t believe you’re getting married so soon! I can’t believe I’m getting married too. Wow! Your blog has given me so much inspiration for my own wedding. Thank you for sharing it with us!
Congratulations!
I just got married in October! My hubby and I wanted to involve family. We had one uncle give the marriage discourse, a second cousin give the vows, and another uncle give the prayer blessing.
One of the first things my uncle did for the discourse was to ask us what we liked about each other and what we were attracted to, and we answered. It was a good way to ease our nerves and he weaved it into the introduction of the discourse, that these must be the qualities we always see in each other and never to forget them.
My mom walked me down the aisle; I had wanted my mom and grandfather to walk me since I don’t have a dad, because I had seen brides walk with both parents, but he passed away 6 months before my wedding. 🙁
For our invitation we chose a non-traditional bible text; people here usually choose something from the Song of Solomon but we chose Ruth 1;16,17 because we felt it better represented solid commitment rather than just romantic love.
Best wishes on your plans!
This is not a ceremony idea, nor is it something YOU can really do, but I had to share:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbifVafI_Eo&feature=player_embedded
The Best Men wrote and performed a rap song dedicated to the groom. It is incredible.
Oooh I love all these wedding stories. My hubby and I said traditional vows that were a little modernized. But to personalize our ceremony a bit, we did a sand ceremony, while 2 friends sang one of our favorite songs. It was fun!
Those vows are beautiful! They send chills up and down my spine..I am absolutely positive your vows with Ryan will be every bit as beautiful 🙂
I think my least favorite part about a wedding ceremony is the feeling that you can’t even sneeze because everyone is trying to be still and quiet and it can be rough on people, especially kids. So it might be helpful to have kinda an ice breaker. The most creative one I’ve seen was this couple http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0 who dance down the aisle. I think the ceremony is very important and should be enjoyed by everyone. This idea just makes it a little more fun.
That pasta bowl looks delicious. I am so motivated when I read your blog because you weight train, which I am trying to do waay more of and the blog is just so positive in general. Thanks!
We wrote our own vows which was truly a memorable moment. Another thing we did was the unity sand. I still have the vase of mixed sand and look at it every day. We also took communion together which was an incredible experience.
Your wedding is going to be amazing no matter what you decide to do.
At My wedding rather than a “message” we had the minister use an object for each of us describing our personality and how it complimented the other.
Everyone loved it!
Ahhh that’s so exciting! Those messages are so sweet. The best ones are always from the heart and your own words. Your wedding is going to be so beautiful!!
Love the noodle bowl! I feel like that’s something you’re famous for, hehe 🙂
so you broke up with HS bf midway through freshman year of college and ALSO started dating ryan around the same time? so you’ve NEVER been single for at least a year?
I had one of my best friends (who wasn’t in the bridal party, we had a tiny bridal party) read two poems during the ceremony. I actually spent a good deal of time on indiebride.com trying to find just the right poems.
Hey! i have been reading your blog for a few months now and love it!
I have been meaning to comment on your wedding ideas for a while, I just got married 6 weeks ago. I planned the wedding in 3 months and was doing everything at the same time you were!
My hubby and i thought our ceremony should be short and sweet but meaningful. We worked with an officiant who let us totally run the show. We picked out poems that reminded us of each other for her to read, then we exchanged personal vows. His vows to me were a total surprise and i totally choked up but held it together up there! Our whole ceremony was under 6 minutes, but it was perfect for us. Remember that whatever you do, it is for you, so have it exactly how you want it. I was so happy with ours!
If you want to make it really special you should have your friend Kaitlyn wear her halloween costume. I heard she always has really great ones. Also as an ode to halloween maybe carry a jack o lantern and keep the Til death do us part. It’s wonderfully morbid
You have been together for such a long time, that incorporating person pictures of your relationship, as a journey, would be such a great touch. The Evolution of your relationship! Also, writing a letter to each other for your 1st Wedding anniversary, 5, 10 etc and opening it when the time comes. A time capsule is a great idea as well! Something you can look back on! I know you’re wedding will be incredible!
XO
Barbara