Snuggs on the loose: Wedding planning 101.......let someone else do it!

It's been one month and 10 days since Alex and I joined our lives in holy matrimony.........and it has been an adventure; so many stories to tell! But I guess I'll start at the beginning, with the whole, 'need to plan a wedding'. Wedding planning is not my forte. But thankfully God sent just the right people to help out right when we needed them.

I had never really planned to have a proper wedding, for various reasons, but always figured I would just go to a Justice of the Peace (JP). That was until two years ago. After my brother got married, my new sister-in-law said that if I ever got married she would be my wedding planner. Which was fantastic in my book! In my mind I would just show up and not have to make decisions on all the little details because...........I'm just not that bothered about it! But, as it turned out, I ended up getting married halfway around the world, so unfortunately she couldn't arrange things. fortunately I have four wonderful friends who are also on the ship, and lots of others who were eager to help out. (Oh, and my wonderful husband who is great at planning things!)

So I went online and looked at many wedding dress styles (the choices are endless!) and found a simple style that I really liked. This was only about three months before the wedding, seeing as we planned to get married only 3 1/2 months after getting engaged. Really didn't have time to order one and get it shipped out, so decided to get fabric at the local fabric market and have a local tailor make it! The material was quickly found - it was white with a faint whiter heart pattern on it.

Here are two photos of me trying it on,

after the final alterations, but before ironing!

Do to various things, mainly my procrastination, didn't end up finding a tailor until only a few weeks before we were due to leave Togo for South Africa. We had also found fabric for the bridesmaids dresses; so we all got measured, gave the tailor pictures of what we wanted the dresses to look like and the fabric. Then we prayed that they would look at least vaguely like we wanted, since african tailors are known for doing their own interpretation of whatever style you've picked. When he found out mine was a wedding dress, I had to insist that he NOT cover it in sequins and flowers. We finally agreed to a few white flowers on the bottom edge of the dress, and sequined trim around the top (it was strapless) and at the waist. In the end he also put white flowers around the waist area above the trim, but it looked ok. After multiple alterations we got all the dresses back two days before we left the country. Nothing like waiting until the last minute!

I had originally thought it would be nice to get married on the beach, since we thought we would be staying near the ocean. So we asked Marty, our chaplain on the ship (he had done Gateway with us and known us as long as we had known each other) if he would do the ceremony, and he eagerly agreed. But, since he isn't South African, he couldn't do the legal/paperwork part. We figured we would just go by the local marriage office and get the equivalent of a JP to do the official part. Unfortunately, they didn't have any openings until AFTER the date that we had already booked our honeymoon to start, and so would be out of the country.

As it turned out, there is a Lutheran church right across the street from where are staying in Appelsbosch, so the Advance Team leader went and spoke with the Zulu priest of the church, and he agreed to do our wedding for us. But once we finally were able to meet with him (four days before the wedding) he said he wouldn't so the paper work part, which is what we needed him for. So then it was time for the backup plan. The ship's Academy principle, who had volunteered to be our wedding planner (she did a fabulous job!) and is south African, has a brother who is an ordained minister and lives in Cape Town. So she called him up for us and he said he would be glad to fly in and do the legal part of the wedding and let Marty do all the rest. Such a huge blessing!

So eventually it all went off wonderfully without any major hitches. There were so many other things that had to be changed multiple times, truly a 'Mercy Ships style wedding', and many funny instances, but if I wrote them all here, this blog would end up being the length of a small novel! One of the funny things that happened was when we were meeting with the Zulu priest (which was a very cultural experience!) when he asked us our ages.

Zulu Priest: how old are you (me)?

Me: 27

ZP: Oh! You are well matured! And you (Alex)? How old are you?

Alex: 25

ZP: She is older! And you still love her??

In african culture women are married long before 27, and men don't marry older than themselves. Alex's answer was of course "yes"!