Graham and Nancy's Adventures: Our Handfasting Day

So far I’ve been writing about the honeymoon and have written nothing about our wedding day.

Before that however, I have to tell you the tale of our marriage license. Because Graham was divorced in the US, we had to go through some major hoops to obtain a marriage license. We had to have a lawyer write a “Letter of Opinion” stating that in her opinion Graham’s divorce was legal in Canada. Then we had to send the letter, our divorce decrees and our marriage license application to Thunder Bay. We did all of this about 4 weeks before the wedding. The week before the wedding, we still hadn’t received anything back. I called Thunder Bay and they really weren’t able to tell me much except that they had the application and they knew that our wedding date was 2 August. We met with Greg Currie, our officiate on Thursday evening and we discussed the fact that we didn’t have a marriage license. Luckily he was quite nonchalant about it – said that we could do the legal stuff at the kitchen table later on. Friday morning we received a call from Thunder Bay stating that our paperwork was done and asking if we wanted it faxed to our local clerk’s office. They did indeed fax it and we were able to go and get our license. Close call!!

Our wedding day dawned warm and sunny and the weather forecast was good. Krista, Jamie, Deb and I left the house at 8:30 to go to the hairdresser’s. We took food and drink and turned it into a party. We each had our hair and our make-up done. We did have a bit of a crisis – the girl who did our headpieces used Krista’s head as her guide. Unfortunately, Krista’s head is a lot bigger than most peoples. Jamie’s headpiece fit “okay”, but for Deb and I they kept dropping down around our necks. We ended up going to a florist shop down the road where a very kind young lady cut pieces out of the headpieces and then put them back together again. Disaster averted!!!!!!

About 2:00 we all started to head for the Elmhurst Inn. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the temperature was perfect – a beautiful summer day for an outdoor wedding ----------NOT!!!!!!! About half way to Ingersoll the sky became very dark and it started to rain – just a few sprinkles to start and then an absolute downpour. Many cars pulled off to the side of the road because visibility was so bad. The downpour lasted for about 10 minutes and then stopped. Shortly after we arrived at the Inn, it poured again so Graham and Ryan checked the weather radar on the Inn’s computer – it showed thunderstorm after thunderstorm hitting the Ingersoll area. With regret we made the decision to move the wedding indoors and were delighted to discover that the Inn always has a Plan B. They had a lovely room all set up for us – we just had to add the handfasting touches. One wall of the room was all windows so there was a feeling of being partly in the outdoors. As it turned out, it poured with about 10 minutes left in the ceremony.

Graham had his own issues on the big day - the company that they rented the kilts from sent the wrong size kilt for the groom. Poor guy was held together with pins and his sporran. As a matter of fact, when he took his sporran off that night, his kilt fell to the floor. His shoes were also too small -

during dinner, he had to take one off as his foot had become totally numb.

Our ceremony was wonderful – everything that we had hoped for. Our priestess, Apryl and our officiate, Greg were an awesome team. They made our day absolutely wonderful and memorable.

The best thing about the ceremony was the chalice. Apryl put it outside to fill it with rainwater. Unfortunately, prior to starting the ceremony, she forgot to bring it back in.I'm not sure how many people were able to see her face when she realized what she'd done, however Apryl is a true priestess and improvised impressively, turning the bell upside down and creating a chalice. All we heard were rave reviews about the ceremony – we hope everyone was moved by it.

Needless to say, my 2 year old grandson, Austin stole the show in his kilt outfit - he was

absolutely adorable.

Here he is "walking Nana
down the aisle"

Two year olds have very little patience for standing around having pictures taken. Austin found this old tree stump close by the gazebo where we were having our pictures taken and had a ball playing in it.

Here are some pictures taken on our wedding day.