With almost forty days to the wedding it was time to begin planning the finer details of the actual wedding ceremony. Not that we had left the wedding to the end. You might recall one of my earlier columns on the big discussions Jane and I had about whether to marry in the Melkite Catholic Church or the Latin Catholic Church. Having discerned to marry in the Latin Church we asked Bishop Julian Porteous, the auxiliary bishop of Sydney, to be the main celebrant. While we both know different priests, we know Bishop Porteous in common and we both work closely with him in our respective jobs. We were honoured when he agreed to marry us.
As I had also written about earlier there had been the hope to include some elements from the wedding ceremony (more correctly called the crowning ceremony) of the Byzantine rite. Jane and I met with Bishop Robert Rabbat of the Melkite Eparchy to discuss this and he recently came back to us with permission to incorporate some parts of that rite. Bishop Rabbat also accepted our invitation to be present at the ceremony which is a double blessing. Read the rest of this entry
Proposal to Marriage 