Wedding Party: The Obviously Official Officiant

Our officiant is clearly too tall to be a hobbit. She is a wizard.

After Steven and I got engaged we had some tough questions to answer. One of our toughest choices was who would marry us. I had originally planned a wedding based around riding on a boat so we could have a sea captain marry us since neither of us are religious. This plan was abandoned when we realized that A) it was too expensive and B) the sea captain was optional and an extra cost. So, who would marry us then? Well, our dear friend Brooke is an officiant. She married Bry and David. 

"In Sonny and in Cher" is the best thing ever said in a wedding ceremony.

I had already had my heart set on having Brooke as one of my bridesmaids, though, and two bridal roles was probably too much to ask. My mom is an officiant, but Steven and I agreed that we didn't want to test our theory that she wouldn't make it through the ceremony without crying. We decided that we should pick someone who wasn't already an officiant and ask them very nicely to become one just for us. This led us to picking a mutual friend. Steven met Suzie through me, but she is, in his words, his favorite friend of mine. So who is she? Well, my friendship with Suzie goes back a long ways.

An embarrassingly long ways... 

That picture was from 2010. Like with Brooke and Kat, I became friends with Suzie back when digital cameras were just becoming big and we didn't have one yet: 2006. Bry and I met Suzie when we joined the Marching Lumberjacks (hence the yellow uniforms). Suzie plays the flute so Bry was always next to her. I didn't play anything yet so I tagged along before learning the clarinet and took to hovering near Brooke. 

Also 2010. Can you tell how cool we are? We were given per diem money on a band trip and we
 mutually spent it on this picture to commemorate how awesome we are.

We had the pleasure of living near each other for a while and that was amazing. We had random movie nights and it was a great way to end college. By our last summer together, we were all just working and hanging out waiting for our next great adventure.

This is one of only two pictures of the three of us. 2013!

When Bry and I went off to China to teach English in 2013, Suzie went off to New Zealand for her own adventure. And when I came back from China she moved to Australia! While she was in Australia, I got to ask her to be our officiant via Facebook chat because I'm a chicken. Luckily, she said yes. 

The only other picture of us. 2015!

Suzie is going to marry us and luckily that calls for all kinds of new pictures to be taken. In under three months now (I'm not panicking) we get to stand up next to our friend Suzie and get married. I'm glad we'll have a familiar face smiling back at us while we make this giant commitment together.