Our wedding ceremony took place at the Baltimore Basilica, America’s first Cathedral, located in Downtown Baltimore.
From the outside, the church is massive in stature, occupying an entire city block.
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And from the inside, the church is even more breathtaking with high ceilings, stained glass, rotundas and high domes.
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Unfortunately, at the time of our ceremony, the church was undergoing reconstructive work from damage done to the roof and high ceilings during the earthquake that hit Baltimore in 2011. As a result, scaffolding was set throughout the church, and in order to hide that eye-sore, draping was hung. The draping made for an elegant atmosphere but definitely dwarfed the church and its beauty.
Regardless of the condition of the interior of the church, our ceremony was still, in our opinion, beautiful!
We had two young family friends and their older sister at the church early to greet the rest of the guests and to hand out our ceremony programs.
Once all of our guests were seated, it was go time! We started the procession out with Brian’s mother, escorted by his brother and his father.
Followed by my mom, escorted by my brother-in-law. Both mom’s were escorted to the front of the church to light the individual candles, representing each family, with the Unity Candle, prior to taking their seats.
Once the families were in place, the bridal party procession was led off by our Junior Bridesmaids who were followed by the Bridesmaids.
After the final Bridesmaid made her way down the aisle, our flower girl had her turn! Instead of a traditional basket of flowers, Amanda carried a baseball glove with a nest of flowers inside and a baseball.
On the baseball I wrote a message to Brian and Amanda was instructed to hand the ball to Brian and to tell him to read it – a total surprise for him!
Once Brian had read the baseball and handed it to his Best Man, my Matron of Honor, Katie, walked down the aisle (and cried for the first of 1,000 times).
My dad and I were anxiously waiting behind the doors at the back of the church where I kept telling him to “talk to me” and “make me laugh” as we walked down the aisle, to take away from the awkward moment of everyone’s eyes on us!
And finally it was our turn!
We reached the front of the church and my dad peeled back my blusher, kissed my cheek, shook Brian’s hand and then gave him mine.
It was time to get married!!
We each picked a friend that we wanted to include in our special day to do the readings during our ceremony.
And I couldn’t stop smiling while we were listening to them reading the scripture verses!
The presiding priest read the Gospel and gave a wonderful homily, incorporating both Brian and my love for athletics with comparisons from the Bible.
Before long, it was time to exchange vows and rings and say, “I do!”
Once we were officially husband and wife, we lit the Unity Candle together, dedicated flowers to the Virgin Mary and had our first kiss!!
The entire ceremony seemed to fly by and with what seemed like the blink of an eye we were walking back down the aisle as a married couple!
We wanted to get more group photos taken in the church, so we opted out of a receiving line and just gathered the entire wedding party in the back of the church while our guests exited.
There were plenty of hugs and congratulations exchanged before we prettied our smiles for our next round of photos!
Next up in the wedding day recaps: Post-Ceremony Photo Shoots
*All photos in this post (unless captioned below and the baseball picture) were shot by Richard Veytsman Photography
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Not show a good look even though your husband is in Korea, but I would like to congratulate you wedding! Best wishes for a Happy New Year!