Pagan wedding brainstorming needed!

[ladymalen]

My guy and I are getting married (insert random 'OMGIMFREAKINGOUT' spazz here). We're doing the civil veremony thing in a few weeks, mostly for the benefits we'll get from the Navy. We're planning a handfasting for later this year (the 'real' wedding in our eyes). Now I need non fluffy help in the form of links to communities (my searchs just came

Comments

[chaos_current]

Maybe you should include, yanno, like.. what y'all believe? I'm not terribly familar with handfasting / wedding ceremonies, but I just imagine it'd be a bit different for, say, a Celtic reconstructionist and a Hellenic or a.. Asatru or ... someone who follows an Egyptian style belief system. I cannot remember what those folk are called.

[dolmena]

Definitely. My partner has bad knees, and we renew our handfasting every year, often at dawn. We ceremoniously step over the broom, with our hands tied together with a special/blessed cord tied in a special knot.

[ragnvaeig]

I draw the line at shamrocks and green beer!

Anyone who has lived in Ireland for any serious length of time thanks you profusely for not falling for the crap Plastic Paddy stereotypes.

Some of my friends from around the island have gotten married in variously pagan ways. I remember that instead of exchanging rings immediately, one bride gave her groom a sword, and he gave her some really nice jewellery. I don't think the others did much out of the ordinary besides have their hands tied with ribbons and garlands of flowers, exchange vows and jump a broom.

[chaos_current]

I'm not sure why shamrocks are included in crap Plastic Paddy stereotypes. My girlfriend's family is Irish, from county Kerry, and when we went to one of her cousins weddings last November, the bride had shamrocks in her bouquet.

[chaos_current]

*I should say -- one of her cousins, who lives there in Ireland, wedding.

[ragnvaeig]

When they're overdone, they're actually one of the worst Plastic Paddy offenders. I'm sure she had a small, tasteful sprinkling of recently-clipped growing shamrocks where vegetative matter is appropriate, not embroidered half a metre high on her back, or painted on her face, or as a motif into which the her hair had been plaited. There's a definite line between tasteful use and the crap you won't see on any of the locals.

[ladymalen]

Yeah, both me and my guy are of Irish heritage. He's younger than I am (go team me! *g*) so he still thinks some of that stuff applies. Of course, after we get married i have the rest of our lives to straighten him out on that one! *weg*

[teal_cuttlefish]

There's a ritual in Rites from the Crystal Well (Sorry, I don't have the author) that contains that tradition of the sword and the jewel.

[ladymalen]

Ed Fitch is the author. I used to have a copy of it. Very good book for rituals. Which reminds me I need to track down another copy for general reasons.