Our Rehearsal (Now Without Dinner!)

Our rehearsal was a little different than most. Since Dave is Jewish and I am Christian we basically made up our own wedding ceremony. We had our rehearsal in the morning and so we didn't have a meal afterwards. We asked our friend Alissa to perform the marriage and give a sermon and we asked Dave's Uncle Mark to lead the Jewish parts of the ceremony. Here are Alissa and Mark coordinating their parts of the service.

So no one was really in charge of the whole service because everyone just did their piece. Dave and I led our rehearsal, except for the marriage part which Alissa did. We also had no attendants so that was a little different too.

Since we (intentionally) have no pictures from our ceremony I am going to lead you through the rehearsal to give you a bit of an idea of how our ceremony went. We got married at my church in a service which combined both Jewish and Christian elements. First, the pre-service singing was done by a group of friends from Dave's synagogue. Then to start the ceremony they taught the congregation a Hebrew song based on The Song of Songs.

We had a choir of our family and friends sing us up the aisle. They only all met the day of the rehearsal and so we practiced that part last. When we did the rehearsal for that part of the ceremony I was in tears and figured I would fall apart at the wedding. (Thankfully I didn't.) The choir also sang another song during the ceremony. It was sooooo beautiful.

The processional was the choir singing...


...then our parents carrying the chuppah (Jewish wedding canopy -- see the story of part of it here. The canopy was Dave's dad's prayer shawl.)...

...and then Dave and I walked up the aisle together, holding hands.

Then we had scripture readings, a children's time under the chuppah, the wedding service itself and a bunch of singing. It was awesome!

After the rehearsal Dave and I practiced our wedding dancing and my parents did too...

...our parents visited with each other...

...and Dave and I contemplated impending marriage-hood and all which it entailed :)