Greetings, fellow ULC'ers.
FRom time to time, members ask for advice on how to counsel aspiring brides/grooms, or for advice on how to perform the ceremony. I sometimes chime in, but of course every situation is unique and the minister asking the question is far better prepared to answer that question for her/himself than any of us who don't know the couple, so i recognize that MY imput may be non-applicable to that case.
Having said that, i wanted to share something that occurred to my wife and i when we were writing our own wedding ceremony.
Our wedding was unique, just like every other wedding. In OUR case, we wanted to explicitly express the LARGE differences between us in our fundamental life beliefs, since i'm an apatheist and Melissa is a full on fundamentalist Xtian. WE had a Unitarian Universalist minister perform the ceremony, but we wrote it ourselves. There was certianly nothing in his "archive of previous ceremonies" that came even close!
WE had our guests read assorted passages at times to time during the ceremony, and we tried to match the person doing the reading to the item read. So, her father, also a Xtian, read the standard passage from Corinthians, we had our Iranian friend read the standard Khalil Ghibran quote, our 1/8 native friend read thr Apache wedding quote, my literary friend read the Shakespeare quote about the eaning of love, etc.
BUt the REAL innovation, or so according to the officiant, was our take on the "Unity Candle". According to him, he had never heard of why i 'objected' to the standard custom there, but once he heard my reason he decided that he would suggest this difference from then on to ANY couple who opted to use that custom in their ceremony.
In the standard implementation, the ceremony starts with a separate candle for eah of the bride and groom already lit, or they each light their own during the ceremony. At some point, the tow of them take their candles, and together use them to light the 'unity candle'. The unity candle represents different things for each person. In our case, we explicitly see ourselves as 'one person' since our marriage, and something similar probably applies to others who use this custom. After lighting the unity candle, the bride and groom blow out their individual candles and return them to the candle holders.
That last part bothered me when i heard of it. Melissa and i DO face the world as a unified entity, but we are still each our own person as well. In our view, after much discussion, we decided to do the custom, except for that last part. We let our individual candles burning after lighting the unity candle, and the minister explained that this signified that, while a NEW entity was created this day in the joining of our lives, each of us was still the individual person we had been before as well.
IMO, a marriage should ADD new opportunities for happiness, self-expression, social interaction, fun, and adventure but WITHOUT removing any such opportunities that either person would have if they were not married. Though Melissa was now my wife, she was STILL the daughter of her parents, the niece of her aunt, etc., and our marriage did NOT lessen or negate those roles for her in which i am NOT a direct participant, and vice versa.
For consideration, and thanks for reading.
