There’s nothing worse than a long, boring wedding ceremony. The most boring wedding ceremony I had to attend was over three hours long and had way too many meaningless readings done that meant absolutely nothing. It was clear it was like a template that brides and grooms were blindly following. We agreed on thirty minutes max, twenty if we could possibly pull that off, and tried to abide by that and squeeze in a solo by my bridesmaid, a reading from a bridesmaid and a reading from a groomsman, our own personalized vows, and a unity ceremony in the form of a poured cocktail. I think we made it work.

During Chris’s vows, he surprised me with a quote that I did not recognize but did sound vaguely familiar. Who said this quote? He pulled out a Pooh bear from under the unity ceremony table. I love Pooh and was so excited. I knew he’d do something to surprise me at some point during the wedding, and this was it.

We wanted some visual for a unity ceremony toward the end of the ceremony, and we knew a candle would be too boring and trite, and a sand ceremony just seemed pointless because we’d need to carry that back to New York or give it away, which would defeat the purpose of having it. We both like cocktails, Chris said. So why don’t we just get some drinking vessels, pour our own into a single glass, and drink out of it to symbolize our union? It was an idea that amused so many of our guests, and some complained that they didn’t get a taste of it afterwards to see what we decided to mix. Of course, I chose tequila as the liquor of choice.

The readings were done really well — the one by my bridesmaid was chosen by herself, Sonnet XVII of Pablo Neruda, to reflect our bond and love, and the one by Chris’s cousin and groomsman, “If” by Rudyard Kipling, was to mark the next stage of our lives as adults. “If” is Chris’s favorite poem, and I’ve always loved the writings of Pablo Neruda both for his poetry as well as his novels. And the song that Crista sang, “Your Song,” was so beautifully delivered that it made me tear up when she was singing. She definitely put her own spin on the song that is unique from Elton John’s.