Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think!leander.think.com!fad
From: fad@leander.think.com (Franklin A Davis)
Newsgroups: alt.romance
Subject: Re: vows/inscriptions
Keywords: wedding
Message-ID: <32932@news.Think.COM>
Date: 17 Jan 90 15:40:36 GMT
References: <6848@sun.acs.udel.edu>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Reply-To: fad@think.com (Franklin A Davis)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation
Lines: 55

In article <6848@sun.acs.udel.edu> ruth@sun.acs.udel.edu (Ruth H Glazer) writes:
>Greetings!  My fiance' and I are planning a June wedding.  We are
>planning (because of religious difference, and no wish to upset either
>family) to write our own ceremony.  I have never done this type of thing
>before.  I am a writer/poet, and have written many words for Keith
>(my fiance') that express my deep love for him, but I just can't seem
>to get down anything appropriate for a wedding ceremony.  Do any of
>you have any ideas as to how to go about this?  Have you ever come
>across any sayings/blurbs in books/movies/etc. that would be 
>appropriate?

The fairly dated book "Your Wedding, Your Way" was funny (because of
it's mid-70s alternative tone) but had some useful kernels.  I got it
on inter-library loan.

We had very similar needs to yours.  But, we didn't want to invent a
ceremony from whole cloth, because we felt tradition is a big part of
what a ceremony is.  On the other hand, we didn't want religion in it,
nor anything long or stuffy. 

The ex-minister we found to do our cermony had a lot of copies of
other ceremonies, which gave us some ideas.  We also looked at
traditional ceremonies from as many books as we could find. 

Finally, we surprised ourselves by adapting old Lutheran vows!  They
were very beautifully written, and we simply took out the couple of
religious lines.  The remainder expressed our feelings beautifully. 

The rest of the ceremony itself included a friend reading a verse from
a song we loved about love, and the ex-minister (who had spent quite a
bit of time with us) talking about us, love, family, borrowing
metaphorically from the song.  We had asked him to write part of the
ceremony himself because we wanted some feeling of newness -- not have
the whole thing be our own words, and we hoped to learn something from
his wisdom.  I think we did. 

We adapted one other nice custom, from Quaker weddings: had the vows
calligraphed on a big sheet, and had everyone present sign it.

Have fun!

--Franklin


P.S.  I found planning a wedding a fascinating (and difficult)
process, because of all the pre-programmed expectations *everyone* has
(including yourself).  Sometimes I'd catch myself feeling that
something just *had* to be a certain way, but on closer examination I
didn't know why I thought that... sometimes I could even let go :-)
Someone else once described it as a tape recorder that's built into
everyone's head.

  franklin a davis  Thinking Machines Corp. Cambridge, MA 02142   617-876-1111
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