In the face of planning a handfasting, my handfasting in fact, I'm beginning to realise that not only do I know nothing about planning an event with many people, and food, and a ceremony in the middle of it...but my only ideas so far about the actual ritual are that I like the idea of a headband with silver flowers in it, and I think I'd kind of like to be wearing a green dress.

I'm in trouble.

Most couples opt for a generic ceremony in their families chosen faith, or a courthouse, so the words spoken to cement their relationship are already mostly decided for them. Easy, but boring. We don't like boring, so we've decided to chose our own path and make a joining ritual that's entirely personal to us, not just personal vows, but an entire ceremony. We're pagans, and we evidently like to challenge ourselves. No familial expectations to work around, no worries about shocking grandma by invoking the elementals. Grandma isn't invited.

It's fantastic, and terrifying, I have so much to learn before we can even start working for real on the wordings for the ritual.

The other most unusual thing about this "wedding" is that it isn't about the certificate. In fact, legality isn't coming into it at all. We're doing this because we want to make a pledge to each other, and we want to do it our way. We are purposefully omitting the paperwork in fact. The legally binding version will come later, and Grandma will be invited to that one, so it'll be somewhat watered down in order to accomodate the catholic/baptist/atheist/agnostic/sceptic audience that is our family.

I just felt a pang of guilt that my parents are being left out of this. Even though they wouldn't really understand all of it, they'd still probably appreciate seeing something so important to me. I hope I'm not copping out by taking the easier route of keeping this to myself and promising that they'll be part of it all when we come to repeat the performance with full paperwork.

Anyway. There is going to be a lot of growing plans and wedding-related babble coming up. Along with my steep learning curve on the process of building a ritual all our own. Wish me luck!

Lord and Lady watch over us, keep us wise in our actions and kind in our words.