When teacher Marielle Slagel was about to get married, she had a pretty good idea on who she wanted to have as her flower girl and her ring bearer. The only problem was that she had several candidates that were perfect for the job. Marielle is a kindergarten and first grade teacher and she wanted to have most of her students in her wedding.
Keller teaches at the IPS Butler Lab School in Indianapolis, Indiana. She recently tied the knot with Mike Keller in June. But back in December, when she was just deciding on she who would invite to her big day, she could not decide which little boy or little girl among her favorite students she wanted to be there. So she invited them all. Marielle invited 20 of her students to her celebration, and each girl was a flower girl and each boy was a ring bearer.
“My sister does calligraphy, so I had her make a personal invitation for each child. It said their name and then below it said, ‘Will you join me in wearing white?’” said Marielle, “I put an invitation in each child’s [school] mailbox and told them to wait to open it until they got home with their family. They mean the world to me. The kids and their families were part of the whole wedding planning process with me and gave me so much support along the way. They are a huge part of who I am and it would not have felt right to not have them there.”