Commentary About Our Wedding Ceremony
A question on a message board I read was posed, asking about what unique ceremony ideas we had included in our wedding. Normally I might have responded by offering a link to the Illustrated Transcript of Our Wedding Ceremony, but I felt moved to write my thoughts about many aspects of our ceremony instead (unique and otherwise). I tried to respond and got carried away with an almost 3000 word description of our wedding ceremony and what the various aspects meant to me, written in small pieces over the course of the past week or so. I'm not sure I did a very good job of answering her question, but I'm pleased to have put these words to paper 'puter for my own sake. And hence the decision to post what I have written here in my own journal, for my own reference, and only leave a link on the message board... and apologies for not using those filters I've made. [This entry subject to editing as I think of more I wish to write on the included topics... particularly I know I have more to say about the rose ceremony at some point.]
For starts, I tried to do as much myself, or with the help of friends, as possible. In fact, to say I went over the top in this regard would be an understatement. I made my dress, my husband's outfit, the groomsmen's outfits, the bridesmaids skirts and jewelry (I had to buy their blouses because I ran out of time!). I made my husband's and my wedding rings ( which is a whole story unto itself). I made our unity candle, programs, and invitations. A friend from high school played the piano for our ceremony. The best man from my parent's wedding was our photographer. My mom and her friends made our decorations (which were mostly just like the ones they made for my sister's wedding 10 years and 1 day earlier). The roses and rose petals we used in the ceremony came from the rose garden of neighbors who were the parents of my best friend growing up and like a second set of parents to me. The baskets that held the rose petals were made by my mother-in-law. Even the stage on which we got married was the same stage I had done community theater on in my youth and helped remodel when I was in high school. The backdrop was a curtain with a painting of Mt. Hood (and important icon for an Oregonian), dating back to a time when there were 4 digit phone numbers, which we had discovered up in the attic during that remodeling ( Here’s an interesting article on similar historic backdrops). Probably there are more things I could mention in this list that are not presently coming to mind.
We compiled our vows together and I compiled our ceremony. I'd say that we wrote them, but there's a bit too copied from else where for that to be the truth. Our ceremony was pretty much symbolic act after symbolic act, with a few words tossed in for good measure.
We arranged the hall such that we had three aisles. My husband walked down the aisle on one side with both of his parents, and I walked down the aisle on the other side with both of mine, at the same time. We liked this because the traditional processional is so much "all about the bride", while we preferred to arrange it so we'd come together from two different directions and meet as equals. The idea for this actually came from one of my Aunts. She and her (ex-)husband were married in a garden and walked in from opposite directions to meet one another. The processional bled into the unity candle ceremony as each parent carried a lit taper and we had our unlit tapers. They lit our tapers and we each hugged our respective parents "goodbye", then lit the unity candle.
Our unity candle wasn't like most unity candles you see. It was essentially two tapers twisted around one another. We liked the symbolism of two individuals revolving around one another rather than "being one" (my mother- and father-in-law had a unity candle like this too, but we didn’t know it until after we had made ours! Like father, like son? Like mother-in-law, like daughter-in-law?!). It was surrounded by 12 tapers-the two we carried, the four our parents carried, and six our attendants carried.
After the unity candle, the Officiant gave a brief introduction, then we had the Best Man and Matron of Honor come up and make a circle of rose petals around us, while the Officiant talked about a wedding being about creating and recreating boundaries and how marriage made a new boundary around both of us. One of the books I read about writing non-traditional wedding ceremonies talked extensively about "creating the ritual space" and about how a wedding should take place "on hallowed ground". Figuring out what this meant to us was a challenge since my husband and I aren't religious... if you are Jewish, you get married under a chupah (wedding canopy), if you are Catholic, you get married at an alter in a church, and so forth. But what does “hallowed ground” mean to an agnostic? That depends on the agnostic in question, of course, but to me it means nature and things that grow and to my husband, as far as I can tell, it means things that are pretty and romantic. We chose against an outdoor wedding due to concerns about rain, so I felt the circle of rose petals created a good ritual space for us... a little bit of the outdoors indoors for our wedding, plus pretty and romantic. Also, it ended up looking really cool in the photos. While I don't recall ever having heard of a ceremony involving a circle of rose petals like this before choosing to do so in our wedding, a little searching on Google reveals many references to it in modern Pagan/Wiccan wedding ceremonies. Not that I'm surprised by this--standing in a symbolic circle for an important ceremony or to cast a spell isn't exactly a new idea.
Following this, we had a reading. Just something we found on the internet that spoke to us. We really liked it at the time, and still like it, but in the 14 months since our wedding, I have run across several passages in books I've read that I might have preferred... such as a passage from Bill Clinton's memoirs about visiting an Uncle whose wife had an advanced case of Alzheimer’s, and a passage from one of Robert Jordan's books where a newlywed husband tries to promise his wife that he will never be angry with her, and she responds by telling him that he will be angry at her many times and she'd rather he promise that he'd never hide it from her when he is. I also recently ran across another apparently common wedding reading which was more or less what I had been seeking in a reading when compiling our wedding ceremony, but had not found before. Oh well... maybe when we renew our vows someday... I did like the reading we chose too.
Next came our vows, which we compiled from several sources. First there was a “statement of intent”, which came more or less part and parcel from one of our books because it spoke strongly to my husband… I think largely because I have in the past had so much trouble communicating openly with him and taking care of myself emotionally. “Do you now commit to each other to love, honor, respect each other, to communicate openly with each other, to look to your own emotional health so that you can relate in a healthy way, and provide a healthy home for children if you choose to have them; to be a support and comfort for your partner in times of hardship and of ease?” (We did.)
Then there were the vows we repeated line by line:
I join my life to yours, [Mary/Joshua], nor merely as your [husband/wife],
but as your friend, your lover, and your confidant.
Let me be the shoulder you lean on,
The rock on which you rest,
The companion of your life. [The first 5 lines are straight from another source, but we thought they were a good description of the roles we wanted to fill for each other, which we feel go far beyond "husband and wife"]
I choose you [the only place I had ever seen the word “choose” in a wedding vow was in Jean Auel's "Clan of the Cave Bear" series, but we liked it because we believe marriage is about a conscious choice rather than something pre-ordained or "known", and because the more traditional "take" kind of rubbed us the wrong way because it feels like it kind of implies ownership.]
for richer or for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
in joy and in sorrow, [Some grand old traditions deserve to be included.]
and when we are together or apart, [A nod to our long distance days]
to love and to cherish,
for today and all of our tomorrows. [We debated the last line for a time... how do you say something that means "Forever, unless you do something truly horrific and unimaginable, such as becoming abusive to me or our children", without totally killing the mood? We eventually decided you just don't, and left it at that.]
At this point everybody sang "Morning has Broken", which is a traditional piece in my family... well, not a long tradition, but my parents and sister both had it in their weddings. I don't think I ever heard the song all the way through before we started rehearsing it with the wedding party and pianist a week before the wedding... my parents would always interrupt it half way through to ask me if I knew that this was the song they sang in their wedding. They chose it because it is about beginnings and about nature. My sister chose it I think because she had a Catholic wedding (Catholic husband), and as an agnostic it was one of the few songs she could choose that had meaning to her, but she might have chosen it anyway because it was from our parents wedding. I chose it because of family.
During the singing, we had intended to sign our marriage license, since we consider the legal aspect to be one of the important parts of the wedding, even if it isn’t all that romantic. However, the woman at the courthouse when we picked up our marriage license told us we needed to sign it while we were there. So instead we signed our “guest book scroll” during the ceremony, which we had made up to look reminiscent of a marriage license, only much more artistic, with wildflowers along both sides and surrounding the words (my mom’s work). At the top it read, “We, Joshua George Middendorf and Mary Elizabeth Peter, join our lives together not merely as husband and wife, but as friends, lovers, and confidants. \ Wed the last Saturday of Spring \ Two Thousand et Five”. Immediately below this we signed our new married names, then there was a spot labeled “Celebrant” where our Officiant signed, and finally a label for “Witnesses” where our Best Man and Matron of Honor signed it during the ceremony. After the ceremony the other attendants and our parents signed, and then we opened it up to the rest of our guests. The scroll now hangs prominently in our home.
Next we had our ring exchange. As I said above, we made our own rings, and not only did I want to acknowledge that in the ceremony, I also felt that my struggles with creating our rings made a good metaphor for our struggles in creating our relationship and getting to the alter (or should I say circle?)... and then on top of that, all the traditional (and non-traditional) ring ceremonies we could find either didn't fit us, or didn't fit our rings. I wrote a few paragraphs which my husband read allowed, first nodding to the traditional wedding ring as being an unbroken circle without beginning, middle, or end to symbolize love without beginning middle or end, and talked about how that didn't really apply to our rings. He talked about the compromise, care, and frustration that went into the rings, about support and encouragement, and sometimes needing to seek outside help. He mentioned how the rings were woven together and are not always symmetric and contain imperfections, just like our lives do. He also acknowledged that they are not an unbroken circle and said that love is not an unbroken circle either--it must always be renewed. We closed with him entreating us to always remember that “love sometimes requires much patience and perseverance, but the results are beautiful and well worth the effort.” My entreating us to always remember that, “the only way to achieve a truly unending love will be through the constant renewal of our love for each other.” And finally by saying together, in unison to each other, "Let us always work on our love for each other so it may grow ever stronger for as long as we both shall live," and then we slipped the rings onto each other's fingers.
As soon as the rings were on our fingers, the Officiant pronounced us husband and wife, and then we did a rose exchange ceremony, another gem we found online. The gist of it is that for our first gift as husband and wife, we exchanged single red roses, which mean the words, "I love you." She explained that it didn't look like anything had happened at all--before we were each holding one small rose, and after we were each holding one small rose. She said that a marriage ceremony is like this also. In many ways the day after will appear no different than the day before, but in fact something we had just exchanged one of the most valuable and precious gifts of life, "the gift of love within the devotion of marriage." I really liked this ceremony because I felt it did a good job of acknowledging at the same time that our lives would not be significantly different outwardly now that we were married (not in a way anyone could see with their eyes), we were still doing something monumentus and deeply meaningful by getting married (a big change, even if it can only be seen with the heart). While I didn’t want to “politicize” our wedding, this felt extremely important to me because I felt like so many people don't recognize that being married meant anything to a couple who had already cohabitated for almost two years. Most people I talked with seemed to think that either we were "already the same as married" because we lived together, or our marriage wouldn't mean anything because we'd already screwed up our relationship by living together out of wedlock, or some variation on one or both of those themes. Anyway, the Officiant went on to tell us that there would be times in our marriage where we were so hurt or angry we would have a hard time finding the words we needed to express to each other, and told us that when this happens to one of us, we should bring the other a rose, "and that rose then says what matters most of all and should overpower all other things and all other words, it says the words, I still love you."
Following that, we all sang, "The Rainbow Connection," which is "our song" (the story behind this is long and I have not yet written it down). And finally there were closing words and the kiss. Our recessional music was the song from the end of the original Star Wars moving where Han and Luke get metals for destroying the first Death Star. For the most part, I didn't plan my wedding as a little girl, but I remember being a bridesmaid in my sister's wedding when I was 12 years old, and traditional wedding music she had started with a very similar dramatic chord progression, and I thought it was going to be that song... and I thought that would have been awesome. I remember the boy from across the street (my best friend throughout childhood) was sitting in the back row and we were just staring at each other grinning because we both thought it was going to be that song. We were disappointed and agreed afterward that it would have been better with the music from Star Wars. So, that's why I wanted that particular piece... but 10 years later with a different man in my life, I didn't want to force the issue if he wasn't into it. We ended up spending an entire evening listening to snippets of possible recessional songs, traditional and untraditional, everything we could think of, and he kept rejecting them because "it sounds like a graduation" or "it doesn't sound proud enough." He was completely fed up by the time I pulled out the Star Wars music, but when it started playing and he just looked at me and said, "That's what I want. That's exactly how I'm going to feel. That's how proud I'm going to feel when I've married you." It might sound silly to someone else (being as proud as if I'd destroyed a huge evil space station), but you've got to realize how much that means to the kind of girl who would have decided at 12 years old that she wanted to have Star Wars music at her wedding.
However, we discovered at the rehearsal that the piece of music is longer than we realized. There's the first dramatic chord progression (which we kissed during), and then there is an entire page of music in a minor key, followed by another dramatic chord progression, and then the music breaks into something similar but in a major key. The thing is, it takes a good deal less than one page of sheet music for a recessional... at least for ours. So at the last minute we added one more thing (at the suggestion of our parents): we went around as a couple and hugged each set of parents and all our attendants. I had not thought about doing something like this, but in hindsight, I think it worked really well: First, it worked out just perfect with the music as we recomposed ourselves to the second chord progression and then walked out to the happy upbeat music, and then there was the symbolism. At the beginning of our ceremony we separately hugged our parents "goodbye", but, with this addition, at the end of the ceremony we came back to them and greeted them together as a couple. There is a separation inherent in getting married, which we had planned to take into account at the beginning, but that's only half the story because there is also a coming back together in a new context... we really hadn't given much thought to that part before (we weren’t frightened of or grieving about it), but I'm so glad we acknowledged that half in the end.