There are so many reasons to have a summer wedding.
Certainly the weather is one of them.
The odds of a great day increase dramatically.
The flowers are another.
Stick mounds of garden flowers in vases or carry them down the aisle to celebrate the abundance of love in your marriage.
Standing outside on a beautiful day before a flower garden creates a wonderful backdrop and a lot of great metaphors for your wedding ceremony and your wedding vows.
But the part of summer that rarely gets mentioned at weddings is the slow, seductive nature of warm summer evenings.
Which is silly, since the Wedding Priestess is pretty sure that you've spent at least one such evening courting.
But why not do something unheard of at a wedding? Take a moment, outside of time, and enjoy life.
That's what your wedding ceremony does.
That's what your wedding vows hope to do for your marriage - give you time apart from the world.
So why not, just for a moment, stop the wild celebration and have a quiet, but very magical time? If you live in the right area of the country and are celebrating your wedding close to a meadow at the right time of year, why not let the fireflies light up your life? It's easiest to pull this off if you're actually eating outside.
But if you're inside, after dinner, arrange a time for everyone to grab a drink and wander quietly outside to sit and watch the display.
Some fireflies flit around the meadows and others flutter around the trees at the edges of the field.
How do you pull this off?

• Do your research: No sense going out to look if the fireflies aren't going to be there.
  Check out their arrival on the 'Net.
  If the time is right for your wedding, consider this.
  
• Set it up: At your wedding ceremony talk about the importance of spending quiet, reflective time with your community to renew your spirits.
  In your wedding vows, commit to quiet and to wonder.
  
• Decorate: Hang tiny fairy lights on the inside of umbrellas or in your indoor space.
  At a certain time in the evening (the right time) dim the lights and let the fairy lights take over.
  You also want to stop the music.
  
• Make a little speech: Tell people you wanted as part of your wedding to celebrate the wonder that love and life provide.
  Invite them to be with you and sit quietly as nature slowly blinks to summer evening glory.
  Invite them to hold hands and consider the way love provides such beauty in our lives.
  
• Provide comfortable seating: Lead people outside and sit in silence as the lightning bugs start their display.
  It's going to take 20 minutes or so, for the bugs to get to full glory.
  As the wedding couple, your job is to enjoy the pleasure of being in love, and now married, in the company of your friends on this fabulous day.
  Exhale and wrap yourselves up in one another's arms and watch the show!
• Afterwards: Invite people back in for cake and raucous dancing!

Not everything you do at a wedding needs to be expensive.
Some things nature is only too happy to provide you.
Why spend money on sparklers when Mother Nature is offering you bounty for free? Live in a part of the world where there aren't fireflies.
Some of the atmosphere you can manufacture with the fairy lights.
But better to celebrate what's native to your area.
For those of you who live where the fireflies live: take the time to enjoy them.
Every year from then on, a night full of fireflies will make you remember your love and the night you married your beloved.
That will keep your marriage sparkling with delight!