On Our Search for the Church

I guess I haven't written very much about our ceremony or church. Don't worry, I fully understand that the most important part of "the day" is what happens in the church! But because we've been planning for quite some time, a lot of the details for the ceremony just simply have not been decided on.

When we started looking to have our wedding in Oak Park and found our reception site, the 19th Century Club, we had no clue where the actual ceremony would take place. While there is space at the reception site should be choose to take advantage of it, we had definitely envisioned being at a church. Mr. S and I don't have a church that we regularly attend right now and even if we did, it would be in Chicago and we'd really like to keep everything in Oak Park.

But don't worry! Oak Park has a lot of churches...but when we started to narrow the search, only a handful of them were either Methodist (my denomination) or Lutheran (Mr. S's). As we started contacting those, we encountered incredibly expensive ceremony fees (I had expected a church to be a few hundred dollars, not $1,000+!) as well as some uneasiness on the part of many churches about the fact that we weren't members and most likely would not become members (as it doesn't make sense for us to join a church so far from our home).

We had already booked our reception last May on faith that we'd find a church and get the date that we wanted. One of the last churches we contacted - last July - was or last hope, and turned out to be the best fit all around! Euclid Avenue United Methodist in Oak Park was perfect on paper: great location, very reasonable fee, historic church and, of course...Methodist!

Source: Euclid Avenue United Methodist

But, of course, we needed to visit the church and meet with the minister to check out one final piece of the puzzle. While the church could be pretty on paper and beautiful in person, we didn't want to pick a place just for those reasons alone...a reasonable fee or beautiful stained glass tell us nothing about the minister and if he or she is the best person to marry us.

We first visited last summer, attending a service and then sitting down with the minister. She was incredibly warm, welcoming and we knew that this was the perfect decision. I appreciated that she told us that she would never tell us that we shouldn't be married - that's not her job - but if we thought it was a good fit to have her marry us, then we'd all get to know one another over the coming months.

Along with offering a great congregation and minister, the sanctuary is pretty easy on the eyes!

I love the beautiful pale yellow walls and all of the dark wood. The sanctuary is the perfect size for our 120 person wedding!

The stained glass windows are simply gorgeous, and this balcony will be perfect for our photographer to shoot from during the ceremony! The only downside is that the sanctuary isn't air conditioned, so I'm hoping to still be cool, calm and collected on the big day.

Over the weekend we visited the church with Mama Stiletto (she hadn't seen it yet) and Mr. S and I practiced walking up the aisle! We timed it and it only seemed to be around a 20 second walk...now if only we could finish our song choices...

Did you struggle to find a ceremony location that was the perfect fit?