Wedding: The Ceremony

Our ceremony was extremely non-traditional.

I'm having a hard time remembering what everyone walked down the aisle to because we made some last minute changes at the rehearsal. Don't you love the photo of my sisters holding hands before I reached the pergola with my parents? I think it is the sweetest photo I've seen of those two together.

Though I don't remember the song my wedding party walked down the aisle to, I remember that my parents walked me down to Cold Play's, "Reign of Love." In the ninth photo I have this pained smile on my face because I had just tripped over my dress skirt at the sight of Matt's Grandfather who I care for so very deeply. Matt's Grandfather is very old and I was worried that he might not be around for the wedding and I was so grateful that he was. I let out this yelp at that moment which is why my dad is looking at me worried and my mom is laughing. 

Matt and I are not religious and we didn't want to use a judge to officiate our wedding so we asked our friend Brandy to be our officiant. For those of you who know Brandy she was the perfect person to stand up in front of one hundred friends and family members to marry us. She made the witnesses laugh with a comment about how she has known Matt since middle school when he was the only boy able to grow a beard. The humor calmed us both down. She also forgot to tell the witnesses to sit after I had reached the pergola, which made me laugh. We asked her to read this quite lengthy excerpt from Plato's Symposium:

Humans have never understood the power of Love, for if they had they would surely have built noble temples and altars and offered solemn sacrifices; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done, since Love is our best friend, our helper, and the healer of the ills which prevent us from being happy. 

To understand the power of Love, we must understand that our original human nature was not like it is now, but different. Human beings each had two sets of arms, two sets of legs, and two faces looking in opposite directions. There were three sexes then: one comprised of two men called the children of the Sun, one made of two women called the children of the Earth, and a third made of a man and a woman, called the children of the Moon. Due to the power and might of these original humans, the Gods began to fear that their reign might be threatened. They sought for a way to end the humans’ insolence without destroying them. 

It was at this point that Zeus divided the humans in half. After the division the two parts of each desiring their other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one. So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of humankind. 

Each of us when separated, having one side only, is but the indenture of a person, and we are always looking for our other half. Those whose original nature lies with the children of the Sun are men who are drawn to other men, those from the children of the Earth are women who love other women, and those from the children of the Moon are men and women drawn to one another. And when one of us meets our other half, we are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other’s sight even for a moment. We pass our whole lives together, desiring that we should be melted into one, to spend our lives as one person instead of two, and so that after our death there will be one departed soul instead of two; this is the very expression of our ancient need. And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called Love.

We received some very strange looks from our guests and Matt thought it was a little weird, but I found the reading so beautiful and important that he respected my wishes to include it in the ceremony.

Matt and I wrote our own vows. Matt spoke so eloquently while I held back tears and used a croaky voice to get mine said. So many of our friends and family came up to us and said those were the sweetest vows they had ever heard. Some of my family, including my oldest brother, hadn't had a chance to get to know Matt. The vows, my brother said, assured him that I would be well taken care of.

We exchanged our rings wile announcing, "With this ring I thee wed." Matt slid his Great Grandmother's tiny gold wedding band on my finger. I wrote about the ring in a post about our engagement here. This ring acted as my engagement ring as well. Friends thought it weird that I didn't have an engagement ring, I'm just not a fan of jewelry and I'm glad Matt knew this about me. I ordered Matt's silver ring from PraxisJewelry on Etsy. His ring has the texture of tree bark. Look at the header of my blog for a picture of both rings!

After our kiss we jumped the broom. A tradition Matt wanted in the wedding. It was a very fun moment to jump just after we had been pronounced man and wife. Matt and I walked back down the aisle to Thelonious Monk's version of, "I'm Confessin'."

I am so happy with how the ceremony turned out, it was definitely an experience I will cherish.

What did your wedding ceremony look like? Or what might you want your wedding ceremony to look like?

Tomorrow I'll tell you about our reception!