Finding a Field Turns Out to be Fraught
Mar 13th, 2007 by Katie
Today, I am pleased to pass you over once again to our blogger bride, Jenny:
“We plan to sign the legal marriage register the day before our wedding, so that we can hold our ceremony and reception wherever we want and write our own vows.
I love the idea of being able to marry somewhere close to home and having space to invite everyone! Holding an unlicensed ceremony and a reception in a marquee also seems to make the day a lot cheaper. Important for us - we are saving money every month to make sure we can invite all our friends.
I also thought a field and a marquee would be simpler to book than a licensed building with catering and all the trimmings. But there I was mistaken!
Considering we live in an area full of farms and parks, it’s surprisingly difficult to find a field to hold a wedding on. Our first choice venue, the cricket field at a local school, has fallen through because the bursar of the school says he thinks it will be too much hassle. I guess I can understand his concerns… a party for 200 people is sure to be a noisy and busy event. But we do need to find SOMEWHERE to hold the wedding!
Our next choice is a field belonging to a local Christian activity centre for disadvantaged children. I am keen to hire this field as it is very close to the village where we both grew up - walking distance for many family and friends, so will involve fewer carbon-greedy taxis at the end of the party.
I would quite like to support the activity centre by hiring their field. They provide a really good service to local children’s groups and it would be nice to give them our business.
They are keen to help us to hold our wedding and may even be able to provide the marquee. However, we plan to hold a humanist ceremony and they have asked this week whether our ceremony will conflict with their Christian principles.
We want to hold a humanist ceremony so that we can write our own vows and involve our families in just the way we want to. I’m hoping we can write a ceremony that won’t conflict with anyone’s beliefs – we will have guests at our wedding of different religions and of no religion, and I think that a humanist ceremony could fit the bill.
It’s going to be an interesting task writing vows and readings that will encompass everyone’s ideas… but I think it will mean we have a very nice ceremony in the end!
So, our next job is to write our ceremony and show it to the owner of the activity centre. The question is… what do we want to say to each other when we make our vows??”
Thank you, Jenny. Look forward to hearing how the vow writing goes!
Happy planning!
Katie
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