Ceremony ideas linkfest

One of my wedding tasks this weekend is to finally fill out the questionnaire for our officiant to be able to start putting together the first draft for our ceremony. I've gone through the archives on stuff related to the ceremony, but here are some more links that I've been saving up.

Logistics

• Getting there: Angie and Josh planned to walk in together, hand-in-hand, just following their celebrant to the designated open area near the pavilion where their reception was hosted. Originally they weren't going to have an aisle, either, but then they decided to have an aisle and have their parents walk them down it instead.
• Afterwards: 2000 Dollar Wedding had a post on post-ceremony transition instructions they had their officiants announce, to explain to people what would happen next. This makes so much sense to me, in order to set everyone's expectations, since I don't think we'll be having programs but I think people like to know what's next.

Guides to writing ceremonies

• Meg of A Practical Wedding's post on how she and David wrote their modern Jewish ceremony, with always helpful self-reflection. She says, "I think that the fundamental question to ask yourselves when you tackle your ceremony (and to continually ask yourself at various points during the process) is, 'what is the relationship we want to have with tradition?' What push/pull do we want to create with what is traditional for us and/or our families?"
• APW post on writing a secular ceremony
• More resources at APW on writing a secular ceremony: "First, figure out what you believe about marriage fundamentally. This has to be your foundation, and then when you wade through the insane amount of books/suggestions/google results, you will at least know what to use when/if you see it."
• I think I've seen recommendations for Judith Johnsons' The Wedding Ceremony Planner: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Part of Your Wedding Day in a few different places, but the first place was probably this wedding graduate post by Wendy and Darin

Rituals

I need to talk to Dan about this because I think he's probably pretty skeptical on the general idea of rituals that involve audience participation, like a ring warming or a group declaration of support (officiant asks the audience to respond with "we do!" in response to a question about having the community support the marriage), but I think I would really like to have some of that. We'd have to hammer out what wouldn't feel too New Age-y or intrusive to him, but still give me the sense of community involvement that I'd like.

• Wedding for Two posted about a friend of hers that had a moment in the ceremony where people were encouraged to introduce themselves to people around them. I've only been to a few church services, so I can't remember if this happens at every one, but I remember some where you shake hands with people around you that you don't know, which I always thought was a really nice thing to have especially for an introvert like me that doesn't generally go around introducing myself to people I don't know. However, she mentions it made the attendants feel awkward and they just did group hugs all around instead. Also, with ~100 at our wedding, with most people attending as part of a larger group of friends or family, people probably will mostly be sitting with people that they know and this would only happen at the fringes where different groups are touching.
• I feel pretty strongly that I want to have an acknowledgement of our gratitude and respect for our parents in the ceremony itself, beyond the having them walk us down an aisle possibility. Sharon's inclusion of bowing to their parents in the ceremony feels to me like something we could do that wouldn't feel silly or too awkward like I think a flower ceremony might. Actually, just looking at the photos of this moment in their ceremonies makes me tear up a bit.
• An Ask Team Practical post on having bilingual weddings. I think the Chinese contingent will be fine without bilingual signs, but I feel like it might be nice to have a Chinese poem or something read by...someone? Maybe my dad? 

People have asked me about what Chinese traditions I'd like to incorporate, but actually, somewhat like Chinese swear words, this was not a part of my Chinese cultural education at all. My parents don't have much to offer here either, as they got married in the U.S. It's a bit strange, as with the long history of Chinese culture, you'd think they would have developed a tradition or two related to marriage, but I've only really seen "traditional" Chinese weddings as portrayed on TV dramas set in the days of the emperors. Probably not too authentic. I'll ask our officiant to do some research here, I suppose.

Readings

• Not having been to any weddings as an adult, I'm finding it helpful to read through other people's ceremony texts, like Lyn of Another Damn Wedding's beautiful ceremony.
• Posts on APW with suggestions for readings: "Olives, Leaves" and "Water, Wine"
• Jessie of Eclectic Unions' blog post on her wedding readings repository, my favorites of which I've grabbed and posted below.

From "Union" by Robert Fulghum, which is apparently out of his book, From Beginning to to End - The Rituals of Our Live. He's also the author of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. At some point, you decided to marry. From that moment of yes, to this moment of yes, indeed, you have been making commitments in an informal way. All of those conversations that were held in a car, or over a meal, or during long walks – all those conversations that began with, “When we’re married”, and continued with “I will” and “you will” and “we will” – all those late night talks that included “someday” and “somehow” and “maybe” – and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart. All these common things, and more, are the real process of a wedding. The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another, “You know all those things that we’ve promised, and hoped, and dreamed – well, I meant it all, every word.”

Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another – acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, even teacher, for you have learned much from one another these past few years. Shortly you shall say a few words that will take you across a threshold of life, and things between you will never quite be the same.

For after today you shall say to the world –
This is my husband. This is my wife.

From The Irrational Season by Madeleine L’Engle [edit: I checked out a copy of this book from the library, as Dan wanted to learn the context, but then we found out that this isn't actually one straight passage in the book, so I'm correcting this to show the parts that were taken out. It's from pages 46-48]

But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. . . . It is indeed a fearful gamble. . . . Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature. . . . To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. . . . If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. . . . It takes a lifetime to learn another person. . . . When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.

Ribbon wands

For a quick hit of pretty, these ribbon wands seem easy to make and a nice way to inject color into the ceremony setup:

Princeton Township officiant info

Figuring out the officiant situation has been on my list of next big things to do in wedding planning for awhile now, but I finally got to it last week. I'm recording what I found there just for posterity's sake, since I don't think we'll end up going with this government official route after all.

I talked to Linda McDermott, the Princeton Township clerk (the Mountain Lakes House is in Princeton Township, which surrounds the smaller Princeton Borough--that's basically the downtown area of Princeton, as far as I can tell), and she sent over this document about what the deal is with getting married by the mayor of Princeton. I admired that she was very straightforward with me, though she said this information was available on their website and I couldn't find it, so I've uploaded it into my Google Docs if other people are interested in taking a look. I also thought it was rather funny that she caveated all her statements with the fact that there may be a new mayor of Princeton by the time our wedding rolls around. I couldn't quite judge what her feelings on this potential state of affairs was.

Anyway, basically, New Jersey doesn't have justices of the peace, and if you don't want to be married by a religious figure, your options in terms of government figures are the mayor of any town or municipal judges. The current mayor of Princeton evidently will do weddings on weekends, but doesn't like to book civil ceremonies more than 2 weeks in advance. These ceremonies generally just follow the standard format outline in the document she sent over and don't last more than 10 minutes. Most mayors will also only marry residents of their township, which makes sense to me but isn't particularly helpful in our situation.

The Princeton municipal court judge is Judge Goldman, who also requires that the couple be Princeton Township residents. She only performs weddings on Tuesdays or Mondays (her court day), but there isn't a fee on top of the marriage license ($28 in NJ, I think) so that's basically like a city hall/courthouse wedding.

Marriage licenses are issued by the Department of Health (609 497 7608 for Princeton Township).

So basically, what Dan and I concluded is that since we don't have any connections through family or friends to local judges or mayors, we'll probably end up going with the hiring a celebrant method instead. We'd thrown around the idea of having a friend do one of those being ordained for a day thing, but decided that we wanted someone who pretty much knows us equally well, rather than trying to do something of one friend from each side and then also be able to have someone a bit older, rather than a peer. We're in the midst of talking to a few different officiants, and I'll report back when a decision has been made on that front as well. Choosing an officiant is pretty much the last Big Decision, I think.

Rilke and Rumi quotes

I just finished reading This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness and found it  pretty thought provoking. Sure, I spent of lot of thinking what the author was keeping inside her own head ("you're being such a pushover!" etc.) but it was interesting for it. It is a rather powerful idea that you can choose to responsible for your own happiness by not making it dependent on things that are outside your control.

And it's almost inspiring, in a way, that she valued her relationship with her husband (or at least, who he was truly when he wasn't depressed about his lack of career success) and their children to work in the way she chose to hold it together. She's not some passive woman who just couldn't bear the thought of being alone or anything. You can read her initial essay, "Those Aren't Fighting Words, Dear" for a primer.

Anyway, she mentions some quotes from Rilke and Rumi that they included in their ceremony, that resonated with me:

Rilke, translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.

Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all out tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far into life, is solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.

Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake. It is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. Only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), might young people use the love that is given them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for along, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.

From Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

Circle of love

I quite like this circular setup of chairs for the ceremony:

(Dave Robbins Photography, via SMP)

I think it would help decrease the 'this is a show for your teary entertainment' feeling and ramp up the sense of 'we want to be surrounded and supported by our loved ones' instead. I've written previously about my hesitation for the whole big reveal and walking down an aisle thing, but it's a little hard to picture the logistics of ending up at the center without an aisle. I can't quite tell how they did it here--did they have to walk all the way around in a spiral? That would go in the parade territory that we want to be avoiding here.

Ooo, maybe two semi-circles of chairs with an aisle going through the entire thing, and each of us walking towards the center and meeting in the middle?

Some recommended reading

[edited to clarify] Links from my friend Amy.

Holly of Nothing but Bonfires on 'Things I Remember About My Wedding':

The number one thing I heard in the weeks leading up to my wedding was how fast the day would fly by. Because I like to be prepared and know what I'm getting into, I made a mental note of this. The day will fly by, I told myself. And then I thought: but wait, how can I stop it from flying by? Which leads me to the number two thing I heard in the weeks leading up to my wedding, which was that I should try---should really, really try---to be present in the moment. Okay, I thought, got it. The day will fly by, but I should try to be present in the moment. I am prepared. I have done my homework. As god is my witness, I will stop this day from flying by!

Internet, you cannot stop your wedding day from flying by. You cannot even really be present in the moment, actually, because the moment just goes too damn fast. Honestly, it's like someone just presses fast forward on the day: the first half goes at a normal pace and then all of a sudden, it's one o'clock, and you're getting your hair done, and people are milling around you getting excited and then BOOM!, it's like someone slipped you a roofie and you wake up ten hours later and the wedding's over and you can hardly remember a thing.

On how it feels different after being married:

Before the wedding, I wondered if I would feel different after the wedding. I couldn't imagine feeling different. I mean, I could imagine feeling the SWEET SWEET RELIEF of not having a to-do list a mile long, don't get me wrong, but I couldn't imagine feeling.....well, married. How would that feel? Would it be weird? Would anything change?

I asked and you answered. I read through those answers the way you might read through an account of walking on the moon: fascinated but incapable of fully comprehending. The consensus was this: it just feels different. But different how, I wanted to know. Can't put my finger on it, you said. Cemented. Content. Calm. Permanent. Partnered.

Six months in, I want to tell you that it is different. How? Can't put my finger on it. I introduce Sean to someone as "my husband" and I think holy crap, I have a husband. It was a smooth transition---no new home, no new name, thirteen years of knowing each other behind us already---and yet somehow everything changed. Only in the faintest, most imperceptible way, though, like one of those tiny earthquakes that nobody ever feels, the ones that shift the landmass just everso slightly. On the surface everything looks the same. But somewhere, under layers and layers and layers of earth, the world has been altered.

And some more ceremony scripts to peruse, from 2000 Dollar Budget Wedding.

You're The One That I Want

I'm in California for the week for work, and on the Caltrain into San Francisco this morning, 'You're The One That I Want' came up on my iPod and I thought, wouldn't this make a freaking awesome first dance song?

Here is my conversation with Dan over text message:

me: hey if we do a first dance could we do 'you're the one that i want' from grease? it's upbeat and catchy and we won't have awkward minutes of people watching us sway to some slow romantic song
dan: we'll discuss it
me: is that your way of saying 'no this triggers my hassle-causing nontraditional monitor but i am trying to not spoil your fun and shoot down every idea'?
dan: that's one interpretation of my choice of words

Actually Dan was more skeptical of the whole dancing thing at our venue and with our timing/choice of food, but I've seen photos online of people using the lower patio area as a dance floor. I will find a way to make it happen, I want dancing! Perhaps I will appoint Emily and Caitlin to be dance captains in charge of getting people to dance. Maybe that level of responsibility will distract Emily from her nefarious plan to get all my girlfriends to wear dresses of the same color so people think they are all bridesmaids.

Also, as with most ideas, it turns out this isn't nearly as original as I thought it would be. I've also never felt quite right about Sandy's makeover at the end of the film and it all feeds into the 'women must use their sexuality [strike 1] to force men to change [strike 2: men have to be changed] into marriageable material' thing. But, it's still fun and catchy (I couldn't get it out of my head all day today, kept bopping as I walked around SF) and it'd be funny, I think.

The sentiment would be a little bit more solemn for the ceremony, of course, though I think it's probably good to keep some levity in there too. As a life philosophy I try not to take myself too seriously. I really loved this quote posted by A Cupcake Wedding the other day, by David Sarasohn in an article titled, 'A Joint Account That Underwrites Our Marriage':

Being married to someone you respect for being somehow better than you keeps affection alive. That this impressive person chooses you year after year makes you more pleased with yourself, fueling the kind of mutual self-esteem that can get you through decades.

Dan does, in fact, make me want to be a better person, and a good chunk of my love for him is that he loves me. He is a fundamentally good person, and he chooses me. So I must not be too bad, too. The sentiment of 'you're the one that I want' turns out to be quite romantic after all, I think.

A link for my own future reference: various sample ceremonies at A Cupcake Wedding to peruse.

Tree branch arbor

We'll have to visit the Mountain Lakes House again to figure out how we'd want the outdoor version of the ceremony to be set up on the lawn. There may be  a large tree that we could center it around, but I also like this tree branch arbor made from found wood:

(from Style Me Pretty)

The texture allows it to be dressed very simply with just some light fabric.

We wouldn't have a chuppah since we aren't Jewish, but I do like the birch poles:

(from A Practical Wedding)

On the other hand, when we visited Prallsville Mills, Brillman's Rental Barn showed us a book of sample setups of the venue. There was one photo of a pair of bright blue vintage doors that Sue said the couple's florist had hooked them up that I also quite liked for the color and the offbeat-ness.