A Humanist Wedding
February 21, 2007 @ 5:37 pm
Make sure you head over to read the article I wrote about my sister-in-law’s humanist wedding! What a cool experience that was! Come back and share any thoughts you have by leaving a comment. I’m really curious to know if any of you have ever attended one.
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February 21st, 2007 @ 8:53 pm
Back in the ’60’s we attended many “Flower Child” weddings usually officiated by a Justice of the Peace. I don’t recall religion playing a role in any of them. These took place in meadows, on the beach and in JP offices. Some were quite pretty with bouquets of wild flowers picked from the fields we were in, some included self prepared vows spoken by the brides and grooms to each other and some were quite elaborate with fully catered receptions right on the beach. That one was great fun and somehow extended into the night because it was the time of the annual “Grunnion Run” and we were catching fish (small sardine-sized fish that swim onto the beach to spawn) under the full moon until the wee hours. Liberally spiked watermellons may have been involved. One involved a rather elaborate display of the “Black Watch” from Scotland with bagpipes and all. In fact, we will attend a surprise 70th birthday party for the father of that bride on the Queen Mary next month. All this was a serious cultural adjustment for two rather conservative New Englanders who had just moved to California.
February 22nd, 2007 @ 2:22 am
I really enjoyed reading that article. We’ll be having a Humanist weddding whenever we do get married (officiants are legally recognised in Scotland) and I suspect other members of my family will too. So far the only family members to get married have been the evangelical Christian ones and whilst I appreciated that the ceremonies were very personal too them I didn’t like a lot of the content (and indeed found some of it offensive).
I love the idea of involving the family in the ceremony.
February 22nd, 2007 @ 10:37 am
Noell,
I’m so glad you wrote an article about this. I’ve been wondering about wedding ceremonies, as getting married is a strong possibility in my not-too-distant future.
My brother lived in a polyamorous relationship for awhile and they held a hand-fasting, which was very interesting. Instead of saying, “’til death do us part” they said something along the lines of “as long as love shall last.” While some people may see that as defeatist or pessimistic, I found it refreshingly pragmatic. I certainly love the idea that my boyfriend and I will be together forever and ever, but the reality of that is not a given, in my opinion. I think relationships take a lot of work and perhaps sometimes weren’t meant to last, so taking a more realistic look on things and promising something you have a much better chance and intention of living up to makes sense to me.
When my current boyfriend and I got together, I told him the one prerequisite for me was that we would NOT be married in a church. He’s of Cuban/Spanish descent and I’m of German descent and I thought it would be neat to try to honor our heritage by cherry picking some of the old traditions for each of us. I’m amazed by how different they are than what I’ve been raised with.
Anyway, I’m glad to know there’s ideas out there for us to choose from.
February 22nd, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
Your article couldn’t have come at a better time - a friend of mine had just asked me to direct her to resources about having a non-religious wedding!
The ceremony sounded perfect.
I attended a really nice on a few years back - the couple had written every element of it and it couldn’t have been more special for them.
R
February 22nd, 2007 @ 8:05 pm
One idea from the Quakers that I really love is a handmade marriage certificate that is signed by all of the guests present. The wording is usually very personal. It is written in calligraphy and decorated with drawn flowers, vines or scroll-work. These are beautiful keepsakes. I wish that I had known about them 11 years ago when we said our vows. Maybe I’ll use a similar idea for a special event in the future.
February 23rd, 2007 @ 7:49 am
My wedding I suppose would fall into the humanist category. My husband and I put together the ceremony ourselves, using pieces from all over the place–including some bits from a handfasting ceremony I found online (without the actual handfasting–that would have been a bit much for my fairly religious family to handle!). My uncle, a Christian minister, performed the ceremony, but since we wrote it ourselves, there was no mention of God at all. It was a nature-centered ceremony that toed the line at being kind of pagan, but it was exactly what we wanted. My uncle never said whether he felt uncomfortable performing our ceremony, but we decided that what everything said during our wedding should be entirely truthful to ourselves, and including God (in the traditional sense) would not have felt honest to us.
February 24th, 2007 @ 6:08 am
My husband and I are humanists and so we had a humanist wedding several years ago. We were lucky enough to have a humanist minister in our area. By the way, this website has a listing of humanist celebrants listed by state:
http://www.humanist-society.org/celebrants/celebrant.html
February 24th, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
One suggestion for anyone going for an ‘alternative’ styled wedding (humanist, eastern religion, pagan, whatever) is to look for a Unitarian Universalist minister. They would be likely to be already licensed in the state to perform ceremonies and, I would imagine, be willing to perform any kind of ceremony desired.
A UU minister married my husband and me, using a script we wrote completely ourselves. I know not all UU churches are as flexible and open minded but many are.
February 24th, 2007 @ 4:49 pm
My husband and I were married in a humanist ceremony last year. Actually we wrote the ceremony ourselves and the celebrant was a humanist (he is on the list linked above). The ceremony was outdoors on a beautiful early fall day. We incorporated various traditions that were meaningful to us - we were married under a chuppah as his family is Jewish, we did a handfasting ceremony and a sharing of the water ceremony (he is a teetotaler so we used water from our spring). Everyone thought it was a wonderful ceremony and no one commented on the fact that “god” was not mentioned. The only thing they were shocked about was that I was keeping my “maiden” name!
My husband and I are actually licensed to perform weddings and do it quite often - unfortunately in California you cannot perform your own wedding.
February 24th, 2007 @ 11:13 pm
That sounds absolutely amazing! I got married in a Mormon temple when I was young, and while that experience was exactly what I wanted then, I feel a sense of loss. My husband and I have discussed renewing our vows for an upcoming anniversary, and we would plan everything just how we wanted it–much like your sister-in-law did. Family connections, relationships, community, joy, love, beauty. Our vows would, I think, emphasize our commitment to each other and love for each other, unlike our original wedding ceremony that made no mention of love, and was a covenant between us and God. It’s beautiful that your SIL felt such freedom to do it her own way.
March 6th, 2007 @ 8:47 pm
Beautiful, simply beautiful.
March 25th, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
I would also consider that my husband and I had a humanist wedding. As Mandie recommended, we were married by a UU minister who respected the religious beliefs of our family while keeping the ceremony very secular. My mother read the Apache Wedding Blessing, my mother-in-law read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, and the minister read poems by e.e. cummings and Whitman. Instead of “until death do us part” we said, “to have and to hold from this day forward” and emphasis was on our marriage before our community of friends and family, not “before God”. The one tradition that I wanted was “kiss the bride” at the end… but instead the minister said, “you can now kiss the groom”
It was perfectly non-traditional!
April 17th, 2007 @ 5:27 am
We are planning a humanist ceremony for our wedding next year. Unfortunately as we are in the UK it will not be a legally binding service and therefore will need to also attend a registry office. I am jealous of countries where you can get married anywhere, over here it has to be in a registered venue with a registrar.
May 18th, 2007 @ 9:36 am
I appreciate everyone’s posts above. We have numerous wedding ceremonies and readings for Humanist couples on Interfaith Officiants.com. Congratulations to all of the couples!
October 4th, 2007 @ 7:55 am
You atheists will all be subjected to eternal hellfire, unending burning and torturous pain until the end of time for not showing your love and faith to my God. I will pray so that God may choose to have mercy over your damned soul, may He not leave you to roast alive in the fiery bowels of hell. I will also pray that my post will scare you enough so that you will change your mind about accepting Jesus Christ into your heart and accepting him as your Lord and savoir and begging him to forgive you of all your wicked, atheistic sins. You need to come to teh realization that Jesus is the son of God, and that He died on the cross for your sins. God sent his only son to wash away your evil deeds. Blessed be our Father, my (and now yours too) Lord and Savior.
January 5th, 2008 @ 7:04 pm
I had a humanist wedding — we hired a Humanist minister. I put together our ceremony from the American Humanist website (I believe, it was over 6 years ago) and it was wonderful — it represented us. God was never invoked and while I am sure many of those in attendance are religious they really had positive feedback and I doubt they even realized it (other than it wasn’t the traditional church ceremony). We married in a rose garden, I had a white dress, brides maids and the Groom and groomsmen were in tuxes. It was very tradition in some ways but the ceremony was about us and that was important to me. It was a legal ceremony in California. It was great to be able to have a special ceremony that spoke to us that was not in church and not as ho hum as a justice of the peace.
September 13th, 2008 @ 4:48 pm
I stumbled across this at a perfect time in my life. My sister has just asked me to officiate her wedding. With a very wide variey of religions in our family and the Bride and Groom being agnostic, I have found this very supportive. Thank you for your blog!