The challenge of writing our own wedding ceremony our way.
By Erika Lynde
First let me start by telling you we are having our Uncle Stevie officiate on our wedding day. Stevie is seriously one of the funniest and most affable members of the family and, lucky for us, he offered to do the deed. We knew immediately that this was the right fit for us and our unconventional wedding. To top it off, it was his idea in the first place that we get married sooner rather than later. With a little Wiki knowledge to guide him, Stevie will be ordained online (for a small fee), and we are all set to check “get officiant” off our list.
Here’s the tricky part: Having a family member as your officiant means you lose that, well, structured plan of having someone write your ceremony for you. I found a few people online who will write a ceremony for your offiant (for a fee), but as we all know, things like that are not in our budget. So, we figured that with the wedding only nine weeks away we should probably get started on this daunting task. Writing not only your own vows, but your whole ceremony can be a bit overwhelming. As a person who’s actually not been to many weddings, I’m not sure what’s even supposed to be said at these things.
Liam and I are not a religious couple, so finding an outline that spoke to us and presented our love in a unique and non-traditional way seemed impossible. We started by trying to find a ceremony to watch or to read that felt as though it suited us. We knew that we didn’t want a long ceremony, nor did we want a lot of sappiness. We were looking for a more humorous approach — something that would make us smile and laugh instead of cry because we love each other so much it hurts. We stumbled across an article on Offbeat Bride we both agreed was right up our alley. It was based on readings from children’s books. Having two little ones ourselves, a playful ceremony was how we wanted to roll. One book in particular stood out from the rest: “The Little Yellow Leaf.” We are using the basic message from this reading as a starting point for our ceremony. Once we had that and a ceremony template, the creative juices just started flowing. It was exactly what we needed to get started. Tweaking and reworking a few words here and there, we gave the message a playful tone. Liam and I are happy with the fifteen to twenty minutes our ceremony will last, and I can’t wait till the day all these words are read aloud!