Now that I’ve had time to sit down with everyone in the wedding party to discuss our wedding plans thus far it’s time to share with the world! I should make a webpage on princessleia.com so I don’t need to repeat this stuff.
We have a date! Sunday October 22nd 2006
People who were invited:
Minister El Sybesma & husband
Bob
We’re sticking to our “no family” plan. Just invited close, local friends.
Location (as previously mentioned): The Castle, Mount Savage, Maryland. If weather permits it will be outdoors.
Clothing: I’ll be wearing and Indian Sari and Michael is thinking about some sort of robe. We’d like to dress the wedding party in a similar manner. And no shoes!
Ritual ideas we’ve been floating around to incorporate:
Mixing of sands: Two different colors of sand are brought in separate bottles, during the ceremony they’re mixed, which takes a little while and then is nearly impossible to separate. The mixed sand is kept as the Wedding Sands.
This instantly struck a cord with us when we heard about it. Since then I’ve been wondering about the sands – should they be sand we collect and dye ourselves? Should I ask my sister up in Maine to gather a jar of sand for me? Or should we just order some colored sand?
Wedding Runes: Sometime before the wedding, the key members of the wedding party get together and make a special set of Runestones for the wedding. During the wedding, each Rune has a short sentence prepared for it in relation to the stone and the marriage, these sentences are read by members of the wedding party. After the wedding the Runestones are kept as the Wedding Runes.
Back when Michael and I met online in 1998, one of our first real conversations had to do with the mutual interest in Runes. So even though I’m the only one who still actively practices with them, they have meaning beyond that. I also think I’ll be designing the wedding invitations with Runes on them.
Smudging: This site accurately describes it: Smudging is the burning of certain herbs to create a cleansing smoke bath, which is used to purify people, ceremonial and ritual space, and ceremonial tools and objects.
This is something I recently learned about through our involvement with the Shaman class, but Michael knew some things about it and has always been into burning herbs and incense.
There are also rituals that we read about that include candles, but since it’ll be an outdoor wedding we worried about the logistics of pulling this off in a reasonably dignified manner.
It feels so weird planning all this stuff 11 months before we’re actually going to do it.