Will You Marry Us?

My last highlight of wedding planning for the night, while we may have a lot of things pending, we have found an officiant!  Yes, we found someone who would be willing to perform the ceremony.

A few names came up, but our officiant will be my former Youth Minister from Sunny Hills Church of Christ, Donnie Goodwin.

Oddly enough, the first person to know about this other than Dana and I was Donnie's seven year old daughter, Abigail.  Abbie has been a really good friend to me since she was two, and one day while waiting for church to start, she said she was excited that I was going to get married.

I offered to let her in on a secret, but did the usual "promise not to tell" thing.  I figured she would probably spill the beans anyway, but it would at least make her feel special that she was in on a secret.  I told her that I was going to ask her dad to do the ceremony.

She did spill the beans, but not to Donnie.  She told her mom because she was way to excited.  You can imagine my surprise when I heard from her mom one evening at rehearsal, "I know your secret!"

I told her, "Abbie wasn't supposed to tell!"

Abbie did tell though.  She was way too excited.

Thankfully, Michelle (Donnie's wife) assured me that Abbie just told her, and had not broken her promise not to tell Donnie.

I told Michelle that Dana and I were planning to ask Donnie to do the ceremony sometime soon, but we were going to wait until we had set a date.  I also went ahead and told Michelle that I was intending to ask Abbie and her older sister, Ellie to be my flower girls.  In the meantime, Michelle promised she would keep it a secret.  I'm almost sure she will keep that a secret until I ask them.

Donnie has officiated five of my cousins weddings (four of which, I've attended).  And everytime he has officiated, he seems to have a way to make his message fit with the couple's personalities and quirks.

So when I finally made up my mind that we ought to go ahead and approach Donnie, I tried to come up with a way to ask him that didn't make it sound brother husband esque.  And when we both approached him, I said exactly what I had intended not to say.

"Donnie, will you marry us?"

Donnie's response?  "I'm sorry, I'm already married.  Thanks though."

After Dana and I had a good laugh, I asked him if he would perform the ceremony for our wedding in a year.  To which Donnie said, "Oh sure!  Of course!"

We're going to be meeting a couple times with Donnie as the date draws closer so we can discuss what we want, but for now, I'm just glad to check that off my list!