It never rains…

Remember how Rob and I are getting married next summer? Okay, I have a totally hilarious story to tell about that.

Rob has always joked that if he were to set foot in a church, he’d probably burst into flames or be hit by lightning or something. He was baptized in the United Church, but is more agnostic with leanings toward liking the eastern religions better than anything right now. All good. I’m Catholic, and it’s important to me (yeah, okay, so I’m Living In Sin and I say bad words sometimes and things) although I’m not like “Okay everyone who isn’t Catholic is going to BURN IN HELL because they’re crazy heathens!”Everyone should do what they wanna do and not hurt others, is what I think.

Anyway. The church where we planned to get married– it’s where I had my first communion lo these many moons ago, and after my parents finally retired from the military and we stopped moving around, it became the church that we have attended the most. It’s about 100 years old (not that old, in the grand scheme of things, but when you consider that it was all built by hand and took more than 20 years to complete, well, it’s pretty special). I never was a girl who imagined her wedding day and like, planned for it and such, wearing the paper-towel veil and everything, but I guess I kind of always took it for granted that if I did get married, that’s where it would be. Rob has been incredible about it– basically he’s like “Look, as long as I get to keep you, I’ll get married wherever you want”. He really is a sweet, sweet bean, in case anyone was wondering.

Well. When we moved back to PEI, we found out that the priest had been sent to a ‘rest home’ (uhm, ‘rest home’ means ‘psychiatric hospital’ for those playing along at home). No, not because of us moving back home! It’s just that it’s very stressful, being a priest, and he’s been working hard at a lot of things for a lot of years (among many other huge accomplishments, he has been petitioning the Vatican for EVER to allow Catholic priests the right to be married. Trying to get the Vatican to change its mind about something is bound to make you mental). So that meant we didn’t have a priest at our church– they’ve been having visiting priests but since this is a french community, the priests need to be able to speak french, and there is only one other priest who speaks french well enough to conduct Mass and he’s busy at his OWN church so this has been pretty sucky. Rob and I (okay mostly I) had been hoping to have a bilingual ceremony because his family doesn’t speak french, and half of my family ne comprend pas l’anglais. Looks like that’s not gonna happen.

And then, to add more fun to the situation– the church building? Fell down.

Okay, not the whole building. Some of it. Here, I have a link to a picture of the outside of it (actually it’s the only photo I could find online). See the two bell towers? Yeah, they fell apart. They’re crumbling. Just one day everyone went to Mass and all was well, and the next morning, the church is falling apart (I shall try to go take a picture of it later for anyone who’s interested). Rob swears that God heard he was planning on going in there and struck the building down.

So. There’s no money to FIX the church, of course. Which is a shame because as I said, it’s an absolutely beautiful building. The community has been holding meetings, trying to figure out what to do, and no one’s been able to come up with a solution. I hate the fact that the most likely thing that’s going to happen is that the building’s going to be condemned and torn down, and not rebuilt because there’s no money and no priest anyway, and our area is going to be left without what has been basically the ‘hub’ of the community since time immemorial. Yes, I realize that’s very old-fashioned and probably archaic but it is how it is. For the time being, services are being held in the Legion. A friend of mine said to his wife the other day (I’m translating here), “Leonie, if I drop dead this winter you’d sure as hell better not have my funeral in the basement of the Wellington Legion”. I laughed my head off but at the same time– I refuse to get married in the basement of the legion! Damnit!

So. It’s a funny old life, huh? We’ll see where this all leads. I’m not too worried — after all, as long as I get to keep Rob, who cares where we get married? As long as it’s not the frickin basement of the Legion.