Last week, my fiancé and I had the pleasure of attending marriage counseling. I was raised Methodist and my childhood pastor will be marrying us, so we met with him to talk about the ceremony order and the whole point to the wedding: marriage.

Sometimes you get so overwhelmed and sucked in to the wedding planning process that the entire reason to the wedding itself gets pushed into the back of your mind. It was nice to have a refresher saying, hey, this is the day you are getting married! The day you say your vows and will promise to spend the rest of your life with someone. The day you pledge your heart and soul to someone.

One of the questions my pastor asked us was "At what part of the ceremony are you officially married?"

My fiancé's answer: Before the ceremony.

My answer: When you say "I do." (which by the way, correct grammar is "I will")

We were both wrong! During a religious ceremony, such as ours, when we say "and thereto I pledge thee faith" we are married!

Knowing this will mean so much more during the ceremony. To be able to pick a part what we are going to actually say to each other means so much more than just repeating after the pastor.

One of the things we talked about is how your spouse is the only other person you can be truly naked with, body and soul. He/She is someone you can tell anything and everything to and not be afraid to be judged.

Now, we decided to say the standard vows during our ceremony, because we don't feel comfortable saying certain things that should be shared just between us in front of so many people. He told us that him and his wife did the same thing, and separately, on their own, they shared their own written vows to each other. So we both decided that after the wedding, after all of the group pictures have been taken, we are going to share our own vows to each other. Something that will be kept just between us, but will mean so much to the two of us.

There are so many ways to incorporate special meanings into your ceremony.

Decide what is important and special to you and don't lose site of that.

Don't forget that the ceremony is the entire meaning of the day and the reception is a celebration of that.

Until we meet again,

Kacie