We're Going to the... Bridge?

Call me crazy, but the white chapel wedding had always been my idea of a fantastic ceremony. Our relatives would be in the pews, the church would be decorated with flowers, and there would be an altar with our wonderful preacher.

Maybe we should have thought about that before Mr. Library and I ended up being different religions.

I am Protestant (United Methodist if you want to be specific) and Mr. Library is Catholic. It hasn't ever been a problem in our relationship. Really, why should religion be an issue? Spirituality or religiousness should have the end goal of greater love, so Catholic, Buddist, Protestant, Taoist, Islamic, etc. doesn't change a whole lot for me. But when it came time to plan the wedding, religion first started to create a hard decision. Which religion would we be having for the ceremony? Would we have a Catholic mass? I voted no. After all, half of my family wouldn't be able to participate, and being the bride, I felt like I should be able to take communion in my own wedding. So that was out. Mr. Library didn't like the idea of not having any type of Catholic tradition in the ceremony, so we had to put on our thinking caps.

The location of the ceremony was a result of where our reception was, so once we landed on our party area, we hit the road to preview some churches. Remember how I said I have a need to be original? It goes for churches too. My cousin J had gotten married in Bethel a couple years before, and since her marriage hadn't made it out of the trenches so well, I didn't want to repeat anything she had done. (Incidentally, my ceremony and reception locations aren't even in Bethel; they are just over the line for the next town called Newry. Score!) After looking over our very limited options, many of which didn't even come close to matching what we wanted, we decided to save the decision for later.

Then I heard about the bridge.

There is a covered bridge about two miles away from the resort we're having the reception at, and when I found this picture on The Knot, I fell in love with its charm. Thank you, Amy and Cameron, for sharing your wedding online! After a little debating with Mr. Library, we came to a compromise; if we got married on the bridge, he would be able to have the final say over the officiant. I wasn't too terribly picky over who presided as long as I wasn't forced into stating that I would raise my future children as Catholics (I am a strong believer in raising them to make up their own minds as to a denomination), so I was a-okay with it. One phone call later, the bridge was ours on July 17, 2010. For free.

God must have had something to do with this.