My mother is not a fan of Unity candles. "You're having a wedding," she is fond of saying. "You're exchanging rings. You're saying vows. You're doing it in front of all your friends and families. How much more unity do you need to get the point across?"

I'll admit I tend to agree with her. I've never been all that into the Unity candle thing myself, and have been known to point and snicker when faced with those gaudy frufru wax concoctions sold at bridal shops for ungodly amounts of money.

Richard, however, likes Unity candles. And, well, since it is his wedding too, I figured there had to be some way I could work in the concept of the Unity candle, without either subsiding into gagging giggles, or being subjected to the rolling eyes of my mother. So while writing up our ceremony (which is actually bits and pieces from oodles of other ceremonies and a few extra parts we made up), I hit upon a wonderful idea to use that Unity candle thing and expand it a little. Not only will we light our own candle, but we'll then 'send it out', using this as the method by which everyone else gets their candles lit (yep, the ceremony will be exclusively by candlelight).

Tonight we met with the minister to go over the ceremony and hash out all the nit picky little details (like who stands where and who says what and where they go to say / do it),. When we got to the one section where the parents are to read something, she and I looked at each other and murmured 'candles', and nodded, while Richard looked on a bit befuddled until the two of us managed to babble out our idea. Once he caught on, of course, he was offering suggestions too.

We're talking Unity candle to the max, baby! If we can figure out the logistics of hiding all the extra candles we'll need for the bridal party up front, and manage not to set either the church or ourselves on fire while we're at it, this is going to be really, really cool.