Temple Marriage Activity
by Heidi in Oregon


 

On Sunday each girl will get an invitation that looks very much like a wedding announcement. It will indicate that she's marrying Peter Perfect, and that she's invited to a reception on Wednesday night. We'll just have one big round table set up in a classroom (our group has five girls), with a table cloth and some sort of centerpiece. On the walls will be pictures from the library of various temples. There will also be another small table with basic refreshments like cake and punch. We may do a little more for ambience, but probably not.

Each girl will take a seat around the table and receive a manila envelope with four sheets of paper where they can record their thoughts about their future husbands, wedding plans, and life aspirations. I came up with dozens of questions and prompts to get them going. I'll also provide some wedding magazines (my sister-in-law is mailing me some from Provo, Utah, hopefully with modest dress options), jewelry flyers, and Ensigns so they can cut out temples, dresses, rings, and other wedding-related stuff they like.

As this is going on, I anticipate the focus could easily shift to the importance of the wedding day/reception, so to bring a more spiritual tone to the night, I typed up some questions that will hopefully start conversations about important qualities in an eternal companion or in their marriage, getting ready for the temple, etc. I'm going to label mini candy bars with #1-15 and put them in a bowl. The girls can choose a piece of candy to eat, but they have to read the question aloud and talk about the answer first.

Hopefully this will be a fun and memorable activity for the girls.  They can keep all of their papers as sort of a time capsule to open when they get engaged. I did something similar as a youth and really enjoyed finding what I wrote down just before I got married!