the ceremony on the hill

I walked downstairs, followed by Liv, my mum, Hannah the photographer, Adam the videographer and Carly and Kim. I could see people in the garden through the window - Liv was right, everyone was there - and then stepped outside.

A weird moment - it's just you, facing 80 people, most of whom have cameras. I stood for a second embarrassed and laughing before suggesting we make our way to the tractor. On we got, and off we went.

Up the hill, everything was ready. On hearing the tractor approach, Jon and his brother (as best man) had hid, and while everyone took their seats on hay bales, I stood in the forest with my dad at the back of the aisle looking at Tom, the friend that would marry us. Dad asked if I was ready. Jon's brother was in charge of the music, and when we heard it start, we walked in...

Photos as ever mostly by the genius Hannah Dornford-May, with a couple by friends and family thrown in

writing a secular ceremony

Well, if I thought deciding on a dress was hard, it was nothing compared to writing our ceremony. It's not done, but yesterday our friend who is doing the ceremony came round, and after much prevaricating over sushi and ramen and coffee and a walk in the park and four pots of tea, we decided to sit down with a pen and paper and actually do it.

For those who aren't aware: we are getting married on top of a hill by a friend. We aren't religious and so don't think we should go to church. so we're doing the legal bit in a register office first. But I think the law is an ass on the whole 'not letting you get married outside' thing, so we're working our way around this by having the ceremony we want, outside, on a hill, done by a wonderful friend.

T, our friend, was fantastic. I'd sent him some links (to A Cupcake Wedding and Wedding for Two's blog posts - ladies, what would we do without you?) and he'd done his own research, turning up with a rough outline of how he felt the ceremony should go.

So far, so simple. But then it gets harder. Here were some of the things that we found hard. If you're involved in your ceremony at all, you might find these things hard too. Or you might find something else we haven't thought of hard. Either way, please share in the comments. I need all the help I can get on this...

1. How do you want to involve your guests? We're not having any singing and possibly no live music - though we may have some sort of amp. So how do we involve those people who are there to support us? Hand fasting? Considered but ultimately rejected as a bit pagan for us - some relatives are already convinced we might as well have it at Stonehenge as on top of a hill. Passing rings around? A good idea but will it mean anything to people? I'm uncomfortable with the idea of a 'blessing' and what else would you call that? So we're going to have a 'We do' from the congregation. We will say our vows, and then T will ask if the congregation will support us. And they will hopefully answer, with a prompt: "we do".

2. Readings. These are full of pitfalls. That lovely poem you remember liking from years back? Yeah, it's probably going to have a line or word in it that's going to make you snigger. We went through hundreds of poems and readings, without exaggeration.We rejected some for lines that were suggestive of procreation - can't read those in front of elderly aunts. Others trigger words for getting the giggles ("shaft" - as in "of light" being one, and "sheath" being another - we're very mature people). Beautiful poems but if J hears the word 'shaft' and raises an eyebrow at me, I won't be able to hold it in.

Also - some poems you might feel you want to read to your partner - how would you feel if a friend read them? Do you want to do the reading yourself? Hmm. Is it too soppy? Maybe you need to pick a different poem. Also, I hate any poem with a trace of twee or awkwardness. Anything that said 'tis' was out, unless it was Shakespeare. Modern verse all the way for us. But in the interests of mixing it up, we are trying to find something traditional to break up the flow. TBC.

3. Who is doing the readings? You might love your friend Bob, but if Bob is the shyest man on the planet, would, and could he do a reading? How about bridesmaids? How do you pick one to read if you have several 'maids? Do you want to involve new people?

For us, we wanted to involve our friends that were outside of the 'inner circle' of bridesmaids and family etc. And we had to make sure we picked people that wouldn't be freaked out by the prospect and could stand up and do justice to the words.

4. The inclusion of any religious elements. One thing I have always loved about church weddings is the Corinthians reading - just the passage that starts: "Love is patient, love is kind". It's beautiful, and true and I agree with it. But I am not religious and I feel you cannot pick and choose what bits of religion you like, and excise the rest.

However, we are not dismissive of religion, and also recognise the truth in the words. One way around this that we discussed was the possibility of asking a friend, who is religious, to read this. However, we are currently leaning towards leaving it out.

Anyway. This post is very much unformed thoughts about the challenges we encoutered. I'm sure I'll be much more coherent next time.

the process of actually getting legally married...

...is turning out to be harder than we thought.

One of the things we learned during our visit to the venue at the weekend was that our plan to go to the nearby registry office in the morning before the outdoor ceremony will probably not work. This is given that it's a Saturday, the office is in a small market town and the traffic is always horrendous. Just to get there, we'd be looking at an hour. Then an hour back afterwards. I don't want to be sitting in traffic for two hours on the wedding day.

But here's the thing. There is another registry office closer. But it's horrible. Horrible building, opposite a supermarket car park in a town that is often dominated by the odour of the nearby chemical plant. It's not what I had in mind (the other registry office is in a beautiful tudor building).

There's also a local hotel that will just do the ceremony. The room hire is £180 - reasonable. Getting the registrars to come out - £320. Making the total cost £500. Not reasonable, given that going to the small room at the registry office is £43.50.

J thinks we should do it the day before. He feels that it's 'just a piece of paper, just signing a contract' and I know that this is a totally logical position. But I really can't feel the same, no matter how hard I try. I really don't want to be married when we go to sleep the night before our wedding. It feels like a sham. We can't afford £500. So the grotty registry office it is. (For new readers - hello! - we are being married up on a hill by a friend that afternoon. This is the real wedding - the declaration in front of all our family and friends, but we have to do the legal bit first.)

So ladies, and any gents that might read this, I urge you to sign the ANY campaign petition, set up by photographers Tino & Pip, which needs to reach 1000 signatures in order to be delivered to the government. This campaign urges those in power to reconsider the laws that state you must be married between the hours of 8am and 6pm, in a building with foundations and a roof.

Fellow bloggers - will you help spread the word?

walking down a sort of aisle

(Thanks to Anna, for inspiring me to write this post. I've been mulling it over for days.)

I'd always known I didn't want a church wedding. Like many a modern gal, I'm a happy atheist/agnostic (though I wish the words didn't sound so harsh). I love a visit to old English church as much as the next person, and I'm not anti-religion, but it's just not for me.

What I hadn't realised, before getting engaged, was that if you're not religious, your options are basically a boxy room in a stale council office, finding a hotel or other venue with a roof that is willing to register to marry people, or eloping.

One of my friends is getting married in New York, in Central Park. Imagine getting married on the top of Richmond Hill in London, or even in your local neighbourhood park or pub garden in this country. Lovely. But outdoor is out of the question, if you want to get hitched legally.

Register office type weddings can be a bit 'bish bash bosh' - in and out and over in minutes. While I don't want religion, it's a shame that the other trappings of a beautiful service are denied to those wishing to marry in a civil ceremony. When I've been to family weddings (every single one in a church, every single one with a non-religious bride and groom), the services have always been incredibly moving, religion or no.

I don't want to make a vow before a God, but I would like lovely music, readings, vows that are more than perfunctory. And it turns out that my Dad, bless him, is very excited at the thought of walking me down the aisle. So there needs to be an aisle.

But it turns out there is one option for those of us in this limbo: Humanist weddings. The humanists are a lovely bunch of people that will do nice, non-religious ceremonies for the likes of me and bf. They also do naming ceremonies and other things.

Ok, they're not legally binding in England (though they are in Scotland), so we'll need to do a register office jobby first.

But we can get married outside - in fact, we are going to have this service on the edge of a forest, where the aisle is through the trees and under a willow arch, up to an alter consising of a giant rock, with beautiful music (see post below) and with readings and vows that mean something more than legally defined proximity. The picture above is of the spot.

So hurray for the Humanists. But roll on the day when British (and indeed worldwide) wedding laws leap into the 21st century and let anyone marry anyone wherever they like.