Practice makes perfect…

During a wedding ceremony, the bride and groom can pretty much sit back and enjoy the show, BUT there are two parts of the ceremony where they have to do a little bit of work.

1) the vows

2) the prayer of the newly married couple (optional, around 60-70% of couples say this)

A little while back, one of my couples came to collect their wedding DVDs and were dreading watching their vows and their prayer of the married couple. I didn’t remember their vows being any better or worse than anyone elses.

They told me that in all their wedding preparations, they didn’t ever actually practice their vows or marriage prayer. Then I realised that most people probably don’t, I know for my own wedding we didn’t.

For the vows the priest will often prompt you through it, so you normally just repeat what the priest tells you. Placing the rings on each others fingers can sometimes be tricky. You are meant to say “In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit” and many people try to hover the ring over different fingers as they say “father”, “son” and “holy spirit”. Not sure what is the correct way to do this, but I imagine whatever you are comfortable with is fine.

The Prayer of the Married couple is a different kettle of fish. This is a pretty long prayer that the two of you read out together. This is where the fun begins! Not only do you have to read out a prayer, but you have to try to read it out at roughly the same pace as your better half!

So, my advice is, the week or so before the wedding, just run through the vows and prayer of the married couple together a few times. 10 minutes set aside for this would make the world of difference and you can go into your ceremony knowing that you won’t have any surprises!