Love: A Wedding Ceremony
Welcome everyone. I’d like to begin today’s ceremony, which I am so honored to officiate, with a word: love.
You might encounter this word if you ever happen to be driving on the border of Massachusetts and Southern Vermont at night. Perched midway up a steep mountain slope, embraced by sky and land and home, there is an unmissable white that towers like a relic of all religions. One giant letter after the other: L O V E. At night, it glows and guides drivers, wanderers, the aimless and purposeful through dark mountain curves with bulb-yellow light: LOVE in all capital letters. LOVE it calls. LOVE it whispers like a sanctuary, like peace, like a holy quiet. LOVE— authorless, dim star suspended, like a lettered moonlight, a gathering ground. LOVE seaming two states, connecting, whose reach extends over borders and lands.
We are gathered here today from the far off of California and Las Vegas, to the close of backyards of old friends and long ago memories, from the cities and the business and busyness of our every days to celebrate the love that Erica and Damon have found in each other, that they have grown, sculpted and lit in themselves for the whole world to see, a signature sign bridging their worlds—bringing all of us from wherever we usually are to here. We gather around this religion they have made in the making of their own love and family. A religion I am humbled by and so honored to be given their authority to recognize.
While I am here to officiate the marriage of Erica and Damon, marriage is not what we are here to celebrate. Marriage can happen in City Halls, alone, with a stranger as your witness. Marriages happen on television shows, as season finales, in dares next door to Vegas chapels. Marriage can be arranged, legal business, an exchange of one last name for another. Perhaps this is why so many people so often say that marriage is work.
Let’s not call this a marriage ceremony; let us call this the most sacred of all things, a ceremony of love. If marriage is putting on your hard hat in the morning, love is getting up and eating breakfast; it is the most important meal of the day. Love will be your sustenance, your nourishment. If marriage is compromise, love is the total embrace—a holding of not just some, but all. If marriage is in good times and bad, love is the good. It is the time that will make your life worth living. If marriage is in sickness and health, love is your health; it is the full force of your life. If marriage is till death do you part, love is eternal—living beyond our bodies. It is the holy, the sum of our parts, the bright light in darkness, the quiet in noise, the peace in turbulence. If marriage is strictly defined by the state, love is shaped only by you both—a most holy evolution of your own making that states could not possibly know.
And what a shape Erica and Damon have made of their love. I imagine the sign of their love to be much bigger than a mountain slope, letters that hug each other and repeat. I imagine they spell love, “Skinner and Haas,” “Ataya, Kristian, and Michaela.” It goes all around them, through them, beyond them. They gather us all to their sign today, to raise this love as their home, letter by letter. Let us honor this incredible love; let us bow to a life crowded with love, one that nourishes more than just Erica and Damon, but all of those with whom they share this most abundant love. Today, we celebrate this timeless embrace that begins with the promises exchanged by Erica and Damon, which we will witness.
Erica and Damon please exchange the vows that you have scripted and invited us to witness.
Damon, turn to Erica and make your most sacred promises to her as a declaration of your love:
Erica, I promise to participate in our relationship even when it might be hard
To make laughter an integral part of our family
I promise to open myself to you completely
To respect and support you
To nurture your dreams and ideas
I promise that I will not take you for granted
I choose you, Erica.
Erica, turn to Damon and make your most sacred promises to him as a declaration of your love:
Damon, I promise to participate in our relationship even when it might be hard
To make laughter an integral part of our family
I promise to open myself to you completely
To respect and support you
To nurture your dreams and ideas
I promise that I will not take you for granted
I choose you, Damon.
Thank you. Erica, Damon, are you prepared to exchange your rings and commit yourselves to this love we now celebrate?
(***WE ARE***)
Damon, do you take Erica to be your wife?
(I DO)
Erica, do you take Damon to be your husband?
(I DO)
Will the ring bearer please present the rings for the exchange of vows?
Erica, please repeat after me. “As a symbol of my love and devotion to you Damon, with this ring, I thee wed.”
Damon, please repeat after me. “As a symbol of my love and devotion to you Erica, with this ring, I thee wed.”
Before I ask you to kiss your bride and jump the broom, please break this glass before you.
May your love be as difficult to break as it would be to assemble these shards of shattered glass.
It is with all the authority given to me by Erica and Damon that I pronounce Erica and Damon husband and wife. Please kiss your bride, jump the broom, and celebrate your life together as one!
