The countdown is on, at least in my head it is. March 1 made it officially 6 months until my and my partner’s wedding date. As I have written is previous blogs, my partner proposed to me on Sweetest Day 2012. Since then, we have been planning the “perfect” wedding.

As I also mentioned in previous blogs, my partner Darren and I live in Michigan. Not only is there no marriage equality in Michigan, it is written in the State’s Constitution that marriage, legally, is between 1 man and 1 woman.

Darren and I haven’t had too many issues so far in planning our wedding. Most of the vendors have been great. President Tuxedo has been more then helpful in assisting us in picking out the tuxes, Macy’s has been wonderful in assisting us with registering and Andiamo’s has been wonderful in the reception aspect of the wedding.

The one aspect of the ceremony that I was having reservations with was the person officiating there ceremony. Darren and I are both Christians and it is important to us to have a religious ceremony. My concern was finding a minister, reverend of a priest who would be willing to officiate a same-sex wedding.

So 2 weeks ago I decided that I was going to sit down and search the web and see what I could find. To my surprise, I actually found 3 reverends in the Metro Detroit area who said they preformed LGBT wedding ceremonies. I thought, wow this was actually a lot easier then I thought it would be.

I emailed one of them, who’s website stated that she checked her email daily. I emailed her 2 weeks ago and to date, still have not heard back from her. 3 days after emailing her and not hearing anything, I went back to the web and took another look. I found a woman named Reverend Craft fairly close to Darren and I. I emailed her and within minutes I had a response. After a few emails, Darren and I had an appointment set up to meet her.

The following day, Darren and I met the Reverend at a Caribou Coffee house. I was blown away at not only how excited she was at the thought of officiating our wedding, at how passionate she was about LGBT equality in Michigan. The more we talked, the more she opened up about what she became a Reverend and why LGBT equality is so important to her.

I wont lie, I thought I was going to feel a little awkward speaking to a reverend about my ceremony. I was very uncertain how receptive they would be. I was so happy to see how receptive and excited she was.

The 3 of us spoke for about an hour alone about LGBT equality in Michigan, then we spoke for another hour about what we wanted in our wedding. I have never felt more excited then the moment I told the reverend that I wanted to write my own vows. For the first time, the wedding turned from an abstract thought to a reality.

I ended the meeting with the Reverend with telling her how incredibly excited I was now that we met with her. Mine and Darren’s faith is something that is really important to us. It is something that we bonded over in the begging of our relationship and we wanted this to be reflected in our ceremony.

I finally feel like we are in the final stretch of this difficult and at times, stressful planning.