Even though it was pretty late in the day, the air was very humid and still very hot.

As we entered the church about 6:45 all my nervousness was suddenly gone! I cheerfully exclaimed that "Hey, let's get married" when I saw the minister. 
We had a quick summary of the wedding ceremony again. Them there were some paperwork to be done before the ceremony, so Pierre and Åke sat down by a table, and I again found a big cooling fan to place myself in front of, to prevent myself from getting a shiny face. Pierre sneaked up on me a took a really funny picture of this.
There was only Åke and his assistant Lisbeth present in the church, and I asked who would take our pictures and run the video camera for us. No one else was going to join us, so we decided that Lisbeth should videotape the ceremony, and we would have some pictures taken afterwards.
Åke then told us that the Norwegian cantor had flewn back to Norway, so we were going to have the wedding music from a CD player instead. They actually had a CD full of various wedding songs, and Åke told me that they usually played Mendelssohn for the processional and some Swedish song for the recessional. Mendelssohn was what I had wanted too, but I felt we wanted something else for the recessional. I looked at the CD, and there was a tune I really really love -Adagio, by Albinoni- but since I want that one for my funeral (!) we decided to go for something else. Then I saw the CD had this beautiful "Jesu, joy of man's desiring" by Bach, that I'd recently gotten aquainted with, and that I really loved, so we decided to go for that. Meanwhile, Pierre was teaching Lisbeth how to manouvre the video camera.

The time was getting closer and closer to 7 p.m. so we all started to get ready for the ceremony. Åke moved the fan up to a corner by ther altar, lighted the candles and got dressed for the ceremony. Pierre finally had to put on his suit's jacket, and found a mirror to make sure I attached the veil alright.  Grab the bouquet, check rings in Pierre's pocket.... yes, we were ready to get married! 

The Wedding Ceremony

We placed ourselves by the doorway, Åke rang the bell and headed towards the altar. Just seconds before everything started, a young boy passed the window we were standing by, knocked on the glass, and gave us a huge smile and mouthed "congratulations" or something, in Greek. That moment I will remember forever, because it felt really special. Lisbeth pushed the play button on the CD player and instead of Mendelssohn, we hear the music we had chosen for the recessional -Bach. OK we had had a misunderstanding when we were choosing the music, but what the heck...
Pierre and I start walking down the aisle, towards Åke and the altar. Small church, short aisle, long tune.... We were standing by the altar, staring at Åke's back, waiting for the music to end. It never did! After a while it started to feel funny, just standing there, so I turned to Pierre and smilingly hissed "-Is this song never going to end?" He smiled, shushed me, and we waited some more. It's during this silent waiting period, listening to the music, holding my darling's hand and looking at Åke's back, that it suddenly struck me: WHOA -here I'm standing, getting married!!! What a great moment that was. It all came clear, and my dreams and thoughts caught up on reality.
The music finally ended.

I don't remember the exact order in which things were done, but there were some words from Åke, some readings from the Bible, the "...do you, xx, take this xx..." part, blessing of the rings, our wovs, putting the rings on each other's fingers (only fumbling happened here, from my part) the KISS, the blessing of our marriage, more readings and a prayer, and then the Swedish song that we had discarded, began to play. We walked down the aisle, back to the doorway, looked at each other and kissed some more, and we were now husband and wife. What a joy, and how fun it had been! I glanced at the clock on the wall; the ceremony had taken about 12 minutes.... How about that!

I'm so happy we have all this on videotape, because even if Pierre and I both were feeling quite relaxed, it still was a very soecial moment, with so many feelings, thoughts and impressions, it actually does feel a bit unreal at times. 
And the camera also caught some memorable moments... The happiness in our faces, the concentration, and most of all, my spontaneous happy giggle after our kiss, that made everyone smile.

Lisbeth took a couple of pictures (I wish we had taken more) and we received our marriage certificate.
 

After the ceremony

Åke and Lisbeth had prepared a small "reception" after the ceremony. A beautiful table was set with Swedish china, cute pastries and Swedish coffee. The four of us sat there for a long time, relaxing, talking about the ceremony and other stuff, Pierre and I signed the church's guestbook (and I of course had to browse through every single entry) and actually found our friends Tina and Anders there, who had gotten married in the church back in 1995. 
Åke asked us if we were planning on going out for dinner, but at that point we were just thinking of sitting up on the apartment's balcony, enjoying the moment, and drinking the champagne we had bought earlier that day. 

And that we did. It was getting dark, but there was a soothing, embracing warmth in the air. The small bay in front of the church was lit up with a soft yellow light from the streetlamps. It was sooo beautiful.
Pierre and I put our flowers in a vase, brought the champagne out to the balcony, and ended up sitting there for hours. We talked about the wedding, our life together, our families... It was the perfect ending to that day, and I wouldn't have wanted to celebrate our wedding in any other way. So relaxing and filled with love.

We decided to send SMS messages from our cellular phone that night, to our clueless family members. All the others would have to wait until they saw the ad in the local newspaper the next day. The SMS sending was actually my most nervous moment. I was literally trembling when I wrote the message, and sent it to my mother, my sister, my dad, Pierre's sister, brother, father (his mum doesn't own a cellular phone, so we thought Katarina would call her). Then I quickly shut off the phone so that we could have that night to ourselves, and deal with the message's after effects next day.

Then we headed to bed...