Civil, religious or symbolic ceremony?

Ours will be a civil ceremony. I have been working on our ceremony for a few months. I'm using bits and pieces from the internet and from our officiant and things that I wrote. I really love it so far!

Beautiful! Thats what I want...only the Gord and Melissa spin!

The passing of the rings was definitely one of our favourite parts! We went back and forth with our officiant a couple times so he could get to know us and make our ceremony very "us." The first version was beautiful but it could have been about anyone and we wanted everyone to walk away from the ceremony saying "That was so Sam and Collin!"

We did a slideshow before the ceremony and I think that everyone liked it! (It was so hard not to be in there seeing everyone's reactions!) It started off with baby photos of Collin and went chronologically and then we did mine and then we did pics of us together and made sure to incorporate ones of us and our guests as well.

Our officiant started off the ceremony by telling "our story" of how we met and our first date. Not everyone necessarily knew it and there were lots of laughs and smiles so it was a great way to start. He did a section called the "intent of marriage" which basically said "why do we get married?" and talked about love. He added things into it like love is about fostering our love of Disney and how love is giving each other space, so Sam can read a book and Collin can watch sports. Little things like that! And a lot of our guests when we asked them what their favourite part of the wedding was said that they loved our vows, which surprised me. We wrote our own vows and I knew that they would be meaningful to us but I was suprised how much other people enjoyed them as well. There wasn't a dry eye in the house!

what sorts of changes to you make to the traditional?

I am feverishly re-writting the template guide the officiant sent us. And then I'll pass it on to FBIL who can touch it up to things he is comfortable saying. I'm really excited about it....and you know I'm stealing your ring warming to add in there

Us too! I love when weddings are personalized to the couple.

Civil for sure. And very personalized!

Civil ceremony for us as well!

We will be having a civil ceremony that has very personal elements that represent us as a couple and a new family