Our Father

Unlike some couples, we’re not particularly close to any priest, so we didn’t have any idea on whom to get to officiate our wedding ceremony. We asked one of our sponsors, Tita Clemence to ask any of the three priests that officiated the wedding of her son and my good friend, Lennard. Unfortunately, all three were already booked on March 29 and Tita Clemence had mentioned that she had booked them 8 months in advance of Lennard’s wedding. With some panic, we asked some people on both sides to help find us a willing priest for our church ceremony. Tita Clemence agreed to keep on looking for us also.

A few days later, Tita Clemence called back to say that she had found a priest through Tita Ollie, a good friend of hers. The priest’s name was Father Steven Tynan, an Australian priest based out of Don Antonio Heights in Quezon City. On the same day, Mench’s officemate Nori told her that she had found a priest for us. But the priest could not be sure about agreeing to our wedding, because he had another wedding in Subic on March 29 at 2:30pm.

Of course, what are the chances of that happening?! We did a little digging and found out that the priest being recommended by someone on my side and Mench’s side were the same person! So we figured it was meant to be, and happily met up with Fr. Steven in Don Antonio for a short chat. He’s really a cool, non-traditional priest, which really fits the whole theme of our wedding. And because he’s Australian, he really doesn’t mind having some Pinoy traditions absent in the mass, including *gasp* all the duties of the primary sponsors. Yep, there’s no veil, cord, or that “traditional Filipino hoo-ha”, as Fr. Steven told us.

He told us that as long as we didn’t mess with his liturgies, took our wedding vows seriously, and didn’t use any swear words, we’d be fine. And with that, he just gave us the license to pull off the kind of church wedding that we wanted.

What exactly will be in the church ceremony? You’ll find out on March 29!