We put our ceremony together ourselves and it was probably the biggest challenge of the planning. My dad is a minister, and we wanted him to do the ceremony, so the decision about an officiant was easy. Our challenge was figuring out what our ceremony was supposed to be about – we were already married, and we didn’t want to do a ceremony that pretended as if this was the moment of us getting married. We wanted instead to create a ceremony that celebrated our existing marriage, created a new community by bringing together our two families, and asked for the blessings, respect, and support of our marriage by our family and friends. We wanted those intentions to be really clear, and my dad made it so easy to work with him to put together something that was right for the occasion.
The forecast all day called for thunderstorms, but there was not a drop of rain and the weather was perfect. Couldn’t have asked for a more perfect sunset for our ceremony!
We didn't walk down any aisle, we just walked out together.
So amazing to have my dad do the ceremony!
We started with a ring warming, with a bit of a twist – we were keeping the wedding bands we exchanged when we first got married, so we began this ceremony by taking our rings off to pass them around. Then at the end of the ceremony we put them back on while repeating the ring vows from our first wedding.
Ring, being "warmed"...
We had three readings: The first was “To My Friend”, read by Bek’s mom (this was the reading used by the officiant in our legal ceremony in Toronto) . The second reading was from the Massachusetts court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, read by a friend of Bek’s. And we asked a friend of mine to do her own interpretation of a part of Plato’s symposium – it was fun to trust a part of the ceremony to a creative friend so there could be an element of surprise for us.
We wrote our own Declarations (instead of Vows)...
...and this was the first time we heard what the other had written.
So much crying. Happy, happy crying. Especially from the moms…
But there was lots of laughing too!
And kissing!
And then that was it!
It’s all a bit of a blur, to be honest, but I remember it being the greatest thing in the entire world.
Just Beautiful!!!
Tom and I have been planning to use parts of Aristphones speech from Platos Symposium in our wedding ceremony too! :) It’s a good one.
Gorgeous! I’ve totally gone all smushy reading this…
and “It’s all a bit of a blur, to be honest, but I remember it being the greatest thing in the entire world.” YEP.
[...] a sparsely signed guestbook is a sign that people were too busy having a really good time!See the ceremony post.See the couple portraits post.See the first look postSee the getting ready post. Share and Enjoy: [...]
would love to know what portion of the court ruling you used as a reading. any way you might be convinced to post it?