ruth@sun.acs.udel.edu (Ruth H Glazer) (01/17/90)
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? Also, I need to think of something for a ring inscription other than our names and the wedding date. I find that an odd inscription, since we both know who we are and when the wedding date is. I'm a pretty liberal, romantic type, so _any_ advice/suggestions/ideas of any type will be helpful! thanx much! ruth
fad@leander.think.com (Franklin A Davis) (01/17/90)
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 <fad@think.com> {ames, harvard, mit-eddie, uunet}!think!fad Let the four winds blow you safely home!
pa1412@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (pa1412) (01/18/90)
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. The one Quaker wedding I attended had a lot of silence. Of the weddings I've been to I like this one the best. My wife use to do wedding photography and as her assistant I saw a lot of the usual soppy drivel and also saw a number of the parties break up before the wedding album had been completed. May be it's like being a doctor and seing sickness and death all around till finally one gets use to it. But somehow I think the silence is better than the sop. -- John Clark jclark@ucsd.edu pa1412@iugrad2.ucsd.edu
cthulhu@claris.com (Paul T.S. Lee) (01/18/90)
From article <6848@sun.acs.udel.edu>, by ruth@sun.acs.udel.edu (Ruth H Glazer): > 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? I don't remember the words offhand, but I've always liked the wedding vows from West Side Story. You can get them from the lyric book which comes with the Bernstein/Operatic version. Of course, you can always go to the source and check out Romeo & Juliet. I have a friend whose cousins got married last year. Being musicians, they co-composed a song for the wedding. (Something of a classical nature for a small wind ensemble.) They also wrote their own wedding vows (husband's family are Church of Christ from rural Texas, wife's family are Candian Jews. Not the most compatible of backgrounds.) > Also, I need to think of something for a ring inscription other than our > names and the wedding date. I find that an odd inscription, since we > both know who we are and when the wedding date is. I would go through Shakespear's sonnets. If you can work your way through the more cloying ones, there are some real gems. > ruth **************************************************************************** Paul Tien-Shih Lee |cthulhu@claris.com Claris Corporation, SQA Division|{ames,apple,sun,portal,voder}claris!cthulhu Disclaimer: Dis is my claimer. |AppleLink: CLARIS.SQA If Claris wants one, it can get |America Online (ALPE):Paul Lee its own. All hail Discordia! |(coming soon to a network near you) ****************************************************************************