On Having a Church Wedding

Deciding on the type of ceremony we will have is something that really gave me a lot of anxiety. I was raised in the Catholic church. I was baptized, went to Bible school, participated in confession and had my First Communion. For a long time my family went to church every Sunday and I remember always having my "Sunday best" on. Joe was also raised Catholic and even went to Catholic school. As I got older we stopped going to church as much and eventually we stopped going at all. Occasionally I would go to Saturday night service with my grandma when she would take my great-grandma, but even that hasn't happened for a couple of years. There really isn't a big reason that I can remember why we stopped going to church every week, it's just something that faded out of our lives slowly until it just wasn't a part of our lives anymore. I've struggled for a long time about what I do and don't believe. I've tried many times to make sense of everything both religiously and not. It's always been something that has tugged on me and left me feeling confused more times than not. As someone that over thinks everything, this is really no surprise.

So as we started talking about our wedding ceremony we had to decide if we would go the church route, or opt for a different ceremony location and find an officiant. There have been no shortage of thoughts, opinions and suggestions. But it was a decision that inevitably ahas really been up to Joe and I. Knowing my feelings Joe was really great and let this decision ultimately be mine. After a lot of thinking, weighing pros and cons and taking different suggestions into consideration I decided that we would be married in a church.

I have been really worried about other people in this. Some of our friends and family aren't religious at all. Some follow different religions. Some really don't understand the need for a church at all or that type of wedding. For some reason the idea of someone making a snide remark about our decision or not being comfortable has worried me more than the personal decision itself. And to make me feel even sillier, this is a decision that comes so freely and thoughtless to other people. But here I am taking months to decide and worrying about everyone else. I suppose that's just how I am in most everything.

I really do feel like this will be the perfect ceremony for us. There is something comforting to me about the idea of walking down the aisle in a place where so many other people have started their own lives together, being watched over and cared for by something bigger than themselves (whatever or whomever you believe that is).

Neither of us, nor our families really belong to a church currently except for Joe's mom, so we are looking around at a couple of different churches that we feel like may be right for us. In the next week or two we plan on moving forward with the process to be married in the church. It's kind of a weird and scary and exciting experience all at once. It's going back to something that is both familiar and completely out of my comfort zone all at once. I think we're both glad to be moving on to the next step and have something marked off of the "to do" list.