During the week leading up to your wedding ceremony, I have many little rituals. I’ve written a blog post all about how I prepare for your wedding, so you may have read some of this before. In a nice easy list, here are those things I do the week leading up to your wedding.
WEDDING WEEK TASKS
- Format your ceremony, print it out, cut off the edges and glue it into my beautiful officiant book
- Format your vows, print them out, cut off the edges and glue them onto a blank white 5”x7” note card
- Format any readings you’ve chosen, print them out, cut off the edges and glue them onto a blank white 5”x7” note card, which I’ll give you to your readers either at the rehearsal or on wedding day
- Create your full-color custom keepsake wedding certificate and send it to the printer for printing
- Finalize your rehearsal agenda, include an attendance list of everyone who is going to be there, print it out, and attach it to the clipboard I’ll use at the rehearsal
- Read through your ceremony out loud and make any notations or minor changes
- Record myself reading your ceremony
- Listen to myself reading your ceremony, then make any additional notations in my officiant book based on anything I heard that needs a little tweaking
- Pick up your custom keepsake wedding certificate from the printers
- Pack up my rehearsal/wedding bag which includes an emergency kit (with things like bandaids, extra floral pins, Tylenol, scissors, etc.), my clipboard with all your ceremony materials, my officiant book, my notary journal, and many, many black pens (the marriage license can only be signed in black ink)
ON THE WAY TO YOUR WEDDING
Ok, so those are all the tasks I accomplish to prep for your wedding. Now I’m going to share with you what I do in the car on the way to your wedding!
- The very first thing I do is play your ceremony…again. I’ve already listened to it a few times leading up to today, but I always listen to it once more on the way to the wedding. I’ve got Bluetooth in my car, so it plays nice and loud over the speakers.
- Next, I open my mouth really wide to stretch my face and then scrunch up my mouth and purse my lips. Basically, I’m trying to warm up my facial muscles, which will help my diction while I’m performing your ceremony.
- Then I do some vocal warm-ups. I learned many of these during my time at a children’s summer theater I did when I was a kid. They’re crazy and fun and I thought you’d like to hear them.
Unique New York
Irish wristwatch, Swiss wristwatch
Amidst the frost and stoutest boasts, she beats her fists against the posts, and still insists she sees the ghosts.
She stood on the balcony inexplicably mimicking him hiccuping and amicably welcoming him in.
No thank you, I’ve had an elegant sufficiency of the numerous delicacies, anything more would be unsophisticated superfluity, since gastronomic satiety admonishes me that I have arrived at the ultimate state of deglutition consistent with dietetic integrity.
Now I’m all warmed up and ready for your ceremony!
THE LAST 30 MINUTES OF THE RIDE
Sometimes, if your venue is far from my home, I listen to a podcast for the rest of the trip. But I always turn it off about a half hour before arriving. This gives me time to align my energy with the job I am about to do. I take this time to do a few visualizations. One of my favorites is imagining I’m a vessel through which the love of the universe flows to you two. I see it coming through my head and out my hands and into each of you.
Is that too woo-woo? Lol!
It may be a little “out there,” but it helps ground me in knowing that my job is to guide you two through this process. I ask that I may be of service to you and your beloved and this is the visualization that helps me live into that feeling.
See you at the wedding!
