Our Priest

So, I've told you about our church, but I've never told you about our priest, which is too bad, because Father Mike is awesome.  Like, one of the most awesome priests I've ever met.  The story starts thusly:

Our church is known for holding a lot of weddings; it's how they pay for structural upkeep.  When you commit to a ceremony time, the wedding coordinator asks if you will be using one of the parish priests or bringing your own priest (BYOP, hah!).  My mom thought it would be a nice nod to my childhood parish to ask their incumbent priest to officiate.  We did, and he told us that having our wedding in Saint Louis was treating it as a "destination wedding," that our reasons for holding it there were not sufficient to leave our home church, and essentially we weren't taking our marriage seriously.  It didn't make sense to ask our priest in Columbia to officiate, since we weren't sure if we'd even live in the state at the time of the wedding.  As a person who attends mass every week, I was horrified to be without a priest to officiate our ceremony.  I was a homeless Catholic.

Enter Father Mike.

The St. Francis Xavier wedding coordinator, Ruth, gave us the contact information for her priest friend and we set up a meeting with him.  Father Mike is a Jesuit priest who got a Ph.D. in mathematics at Berkeley in his spare time and now teaches chaos theory at SLU.  He completely understood that the reason we were "homeless" Catholics was because we were still living the semi-nomadic lifestyle of young adults and academics.  He likened himself to a sheepdog, "Most priests shepherd a flock.  Jesuit priests work on the fringes."  And, he was totally nonjudgmental and laid back about everything.  He did an excellent job with our preCana (required Catholic premarital counseling) and has been very reasonable with ceremony planning.  We are so lucky to have him!

As for the first priest we asked: we recently went to a wedding that he officiated, and we were so grateful that we ended up with Father Mike.  He's just a much better fit for our personalities, our outlook on life, and our interpretation of the faith.  We can't wait to have him marry us!

Snacks. Snacky Snack Snacks.

As we've mentioned before, food is one of our wedding priorities.  There have been several fun food trends pop up over the past few years.  I'm a fan of both food and injecting your personality into your wedding, so I love these trends!  Some examples:

Cake alternatives, like pies and donuts:

Customizable food, like potato, ice cream, cupcake, biscuit, and hot cocoa bars:

Adult/mini milk and cookies:

Seasonal/theme foods:

Food trucks:

Anything in a shooter:

Signature drinks:

And comfort food/fast food:

As for us, we toyed with the idea of a signature drink, but I don't really drink and Lance's drink of choice is a screwdriver, which isn't exactly romantic, so we haven't committed to that.  We could use a blue one as our "something blue" or have a holiday themed drink, but we don't have any ideas for the time being.

The idea we really love is the fast food idea.  These snacks are usually passed around a few hours after dinner, with the intent being to keep the energy level up and to loosen up the vibe.  We are huge fans of Chick-fil-a; Lance nearly lived on the stuff in law school.  So, we are planning on ordering a few trays of nuggets and/or chicken biscuits as snack at the end of the night.  Hopefully it's a hit!

Hey, DJ, Play That Song

With just three months left until the wedding, we have our DJ planning meeting coming up this weekend!  As a result, we've been working on selecting our special songs (our dance, cake cutting songs, etc.) and building our do-not-play list.  One thing we're short on, though, are songs on the play list!

Overall, we would like prime country love songs, old rock and roll songs, and top 40 pop songs, but more than anything we just want people to be able to dance and have a good time.  So, it stands to reason that said people should help choose some songs for our play list.

There are a few common ways to ask guests for their song requests.  First is the RSVP card.  Our RSVP card had an option for the line, "I promise to dance if you play:" but we opted for the "leave us a note" version.  Second is the wedding website.  I learned how to develop a Google survey earlier this year, which populates a spreadsheet of answers.  Lance really liked that option, but I don't know how many people will visit our website.  I really hope they will, but some of the locals might not think there is anything pertinent to them on there.  Finally, there are reception cards.  I like the idea of people being able to fill out and drop cards off with the DJ in the moment, and there are a lot of cute printout options out there.  On the other hand, they are another detail to keep track of, poor use of a lot of paper, and potential clutter.  What do you think?  Website or print-outs?  Maybe the DJ will have an opinion.  :)

Suit Up

We have tuxes!  Choosing a tux rental vendor was the hardest part of this endeavor, since we already knew exactly what we wanted the guys to wear.

I've been obsessed with Lance in bow-ties ever since this wedding!

As I've mentioned before, Lance has been in a LOT of weddings.  In all of those weddings, mayyyybe two of his tuxes have fit appropriately.  Several have not, one to the point of ruining his friends' photos.  As a result, we had a definite list of "no way are we ever going back there" tux vendors.  My mom suggested Mr. Penguin in Trenton, Illinois.  At first we were hesitant to go there because Lance's groomsmen live as far away as Connecticut, and we wanted to use a national chain.  It turns out that Mr. Penguin is actually a branch of Jim's Formalwear, so we decided to check it out.

We were incredibly pleased with the people at Jim's Formalwear.  It turns out that Mr. Penguin was actually the very first Jim's store (small town claim to fame ftw!), and one of their national warehouses is literally a few blocks away.  Translation: they can fix misordered tuxes even if the guys try them on the day before the wedding.  They also carry half sizes and were confident that they could find something that would fit Lance appropriately.  We wanted very formal, classic, Bond-esque tuxes.

We ordered tuxes with notched lapels,

This is the actual jacket we chose!

bow ties,

and suspenders, because they are so cute when the guys take off their coats at the reception!

The people at Jim's were incredibly helpful during this process, albeit super traditional.  It took a few tries to explain that we wanted the most simple, formal thing they carry.  I wanted to avoid that matchy-matchy prom look, so we opted for cummerbunds.  When I tried to explain this to the man at Jim's, I started, "We don't want vests--" and he interjected, "Oh!  But you have to!  Otherwise," (gesturing wildly at the jewelry on the shirt) "you have button... button... button... NO BUTTON!!"  We calmed him down by finishing the sentence "We want cummerbunds instead."  Crisis averted.

He was also very helpful with choosing shirts, pointing us to the looser fits and less restrictive standard collars.  They had a giant book of pocket square colors, so we chose white for Lance and silver for our ushers.  And, if our bridesmaids have extra fabric from having their dresses hemmed, the shop will make custom pocket squares for the groomsmen!