Xapa to the World

Tag: Getting Married

  • Getting Married: 44 Weeks – The Church

    Some of you stopping in might think this refers to finding the right church for the ceremony. For us, that was the easiest church question. My church has a fairly large sanctuary and Matt’s doesn’t. End of story.

    But not the end of this post, thankfully. For us, the biggest, toughest question about church is: Where will we attend once we’re married? For some people, that’s not a big issue. But for both of us, it is.

    Matt has been with some of the members of his church since he was born. Their church has moved around a little and had a name change, but essentially, it’s much the same group. His church is small, but intimate. Everyone knows everyone and there’s as much a sense of “family” there as I’ve seen at family reunions, but sweeter. Some of the big points is that it is Church of Christ, they don’t have any musical instruments and it is about 10-15 minutes drive from The House (“The House” refers to Matt’s house which we will be living in once we’re married). I have been to two Sunday morning services there so far and a Wednesday night study. I like the acappella worship style and I LOVE that they serve communion each Sunday. Communion is such a dear ceremony to me. Oh, his immediate family attends there as well.

    My church is Southern Baptist, about 250 members, and only 5 minutes walking down the street. I love to walk to my church. I’ve been here since I was a freshman in high school, so a little over 13 years. I have been to a variety of churches in my day, both before and during my time here. I love my church so much, they are as much my family as my flesh and blood. We have two services on Sunday mornings, so I don’t always get to see everyone. I have taught the 4th and 5th grade Sunday School class for about 6 years now (I think) and, though it’s been a challenge some years, I have loved it! I’ve seen some of the kids I’ve worked with go into high school and turned into some wonderful, strong Christian brothers and sisters. I can’t wait to see what God does with them in life. I’ve had some amazing mentors throughout my time here, both men and women: Connie Proctor, Mary White, Lester Jones, Leslie Botts, Cyndi Blankenship, Gary Loney, Randy Baird, and so many more in big and small ways. I have seen the value of proper church discipline, sweet Christian fellowship, good fun, and God’s comforting hand in the congregation here. The worship in the second service might be a bit raucous and disjointed at times, but I have a feeling I’ll miss even that when I have to leave.

    My church is also very community-minded – the youth group does a Sports Camp each summer, we built a Community Outreach Center with a gym and cafe in order to have more opportunity to minister to those in our community. The last few years have been spent in brainstorming more ways that we can be more involved in the lives of people in our neighborhood, more relevant to their needs and then trying things out to see what works and what doesn’t work. That’s one thing I’ve learned from this church – failure of a ministry or event is not a bad thing, it just means God has something different in mind.

    So, after Matt and I got engaged, one of the big questions asked was, “Where will you go to church?” In fact, I think both of us can remember being asked this question a couple months before getting engaged. For our part, we avoided it until things settled down, until we had the big things for the wedding taken care of and could relax a bit. I know that I was thinking about it, and I’m sure HE was thinking about it, but we just didn’t really talk about it. Or when we did, it went something like, “We should probably talk about where we want to go to church…how about later?”

    Matt has been to several events at my church. Our young adults group meets every Tuesday night and just about every other Sunday afternoon for a Bible Study and service (respectively). He’s also spent a good amount of time with my dear friends from there. He likes them and he’s seen the bond I have with people there. I enjoy his church, but it’s not MY church yet and I don’t know if it will be. God hasn’t made that clear yet, and I just haven’t fellowshipped with them enough.  Matt’s work schedule also keeps him from attending church just about one Sunday a month. Oh, and my church is a whopping 45 minutes away from The House – not impossible, but definitely not in the local community.

    When we talked it out, we decided that once we’re married, we would go to his church, mostly. On the week that he couldn’t go to church, I would drive down to my church. I am going to be pulled away from my church, my community, everything I know well, so I think this will be very necessary for me. We both think so. He also said that once a month, we can check out other churches near our home together and see if we can find one that is very involved in community outreach. This is so important to me, that we be reaching out to those around us. I’m so glad that my future husband is concerned about it too, and taking the desires of my heart into consideration. I don’t know where God will put us and I don’t know what it will all mean, but I’m glad that we can talk about it together and that we both are willing to make concessions for the sake of the other.

    Have you had the whole “Church” talk before? Was it difficult for you? What compromises did you make and what things were on your non-negotiable list?

    I forgot to mention that both of our churches are wonderful for teaching and preaching straight from the Bible. Not only do the pastors value the Word of God but the teachers, leaders and lay people do too. This is absolutely imperative for both of us for wherever we end up fellowshipping. Sometimes we put too much emphasis on the physical or creature comforts and not on the Truth or lies that are propagated throughout a church body. A truthful church is necessity for true worship and fellowship.

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

  • Getting Married: 45 Weeks – Guestlisting

     

    Thanks for stopping back! Sorry I’m a few days late in posting this. I’ve had a lot going on but am feeling loads better than the last post. This week, I decided to scrub through my part of the guest list and get it up on our website. When looking for a wedding host website, we wanted pretty themes and all, but mostly we wanted the feature for our guests to RSVP online. We checked through the various ones, but settled on http://weddingwire.com. There might be others that would do the trick, but we really liked this one.

    Matt and I have a quandary. We both have fairly large families and we have a pretty wide base of friends and coworkers who we would want to be at our wedding. However, we have limited funds and a reception venue which can only hold a certain number of people. So, how do we get everyone there and yet only having a small portion of them? We decided to have an open ceremony and a closed reception.

    This has brought a lot of relief while we’ve been casually putting together our guest list.  Family, bridal party, and close friends are automatically put through to the reception and everyone else is allotted an invite to the ceremony. Matt and I also have attended our respective churches for years, he much longer than I, and have built a strong relationship with the family there. While I would love for everyone to be at the reception to cut up and boogie down, I’m going to have to settle with having everyone at the wedding.

    We also have a couple ideas for age-specific groups. We plan to have a kids table at the reception with favors specifically for kids 10 and under. I also have something special planned for my girls 11-18.

    Two years ago, I spent a lot of time with some girls from church. They were in my Sunday School class and all in 5th grade. I remember what it was like heading into Junior High. I had a girl scout troop with some good girl friends, but 6th grade was the year that the 5 elementary schools of our district poured all their kids into one building. It was crazy to see how many kids were my age in the city and I had gone from an average-sized fish in a little pond to another average-sized fish in a great big pond. I’m not athletic by any means, and not overly outgoing. It may surprise some of you to know that I am, in the truest sense of the word, an introvert. (We have our 10 year reunion next month and some of my friends really want me to go. I honestly have a giant fire-ball of anxiety in my chest every time I think about it.) But back to junior high: It was intimidating. I had grown to know and love these 5 girls in my class and decided that I wanted to do something special with them. For that whole year, we would do something fun once a month. I bought them journals and made fun fabric covers for them. My first big sewing project and I was so jazzed at how well they turned out. We did all sorts of neat things: tea party, gong out to lunch after church, a painting class, etc. These girls were so special to me that year and the goal was that they could have a non-family adult to talk to about whatever and they would draw close to each other. They needed a support system before heading into that great big world of junior high and pre-teendom. And it worked! Those girls are pretty close now and on track to staying close for years. They’ll probably have a blow out here and there, but what’s being a teenage girl without blow outs. Trust me, I had plenty. I want to do something special for these girls…but I’m not writing it here. It will be a surprise! 🙂

    What about you? Have you planned a wedding and had guest-list woes? Have a special idea for acknowledging people dear to you? As much as we would love to have everyone at the reception with us, it’s just not possible. We hope that there isn’t too much disappointment and that an open invite to the ceremony will make up for any hurt feelings.

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

     

  • Getting Married: 46 Weeks

    I was looking forward to the week following the last post since I figured we had the two big things booked and locked away, so I could relax a bit, enjoy being engaged. Sadly, southwest Ohio weather had another idea. I started getting a bit of a sore throat by Sunday night which progressed to a full-on sinus infection by Thursday. That made for a miserable week with barely any sleep, lots of coughing and a Z-pack.

    While I haven’t been up to par, that doesn’t mean we didn’t make any headway on the wedding plans. We decided to do our own invitations to save some money. I’m excited and have been brainstorming ways to make them fun and creative without going overboard. Matt met me near my work place on a half day to have lunch and hang out a bit before going in to work the afternoon. We stopped into Michaels to peruse. I’m glad we did. They were having a fantastic sale on paper and stationery. We got an amazing deal on the blank card stock and envelopes we need for invitations including some card stock for embellishments and our separate reception invitations. When I say, “We got an amazing deal…,” I mean, we got everything paper that we needed for under $50, plus some fun red/yellow flowery things that we can use to decorate for the reception. I can’t wait to start experimenting with designs and trying out different things. I will post some of the outcome on here for you all when I get them going.

    After chatting with my sister one night, I decided I should go ahead and schedule my wedding dress shopping date. There has been a great summer sale going on at David’s Bridal this week, but it seems too soon to go get my dress already. We’re planning to go on Labor Day weekend, hoping for a sale, and also hoping that I can get myself in a little better shape by that time. There are going to be 10 of us there if everyone can show up! It’ll be so much fun though, and I want to try on the truly awful dresses too, so I’ll have some pictures for you.

    Well, here’s hoping that this week is much better than the last!

    —————————–

    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles