By personalizing your ceremony you create a ceremony that is unique. Whether it’s a wedding ceremony, a commitment or gay marriage ceremony, a namegiving or naming ceremony or any other rite of passage or milestone ceremony for that matter.
To add personal touches to your ceremony will require you, the couple to open up and share the details of your lives you’d like to share with your family and friends. Not only details of your relationship, your journey together, but the journey with your family and friends, the music or songs you both love and readings or poetry that you both deem special or meaningful.
You may feel a little vulnerable, awkward or exposed by the ’sharing of yourselves’ process. That’s normal you’ll be pleased to know.
One of the best ways to personalize a marriage or gay commitment ceremony is to ask yourselves certain questions. Something like this……..
How did you first meet?
When did you first become aware that you were in love with one another?
Why are you marrying?
Do you share the same expectations of marriage?
What were the good things that helped you decide?
Were there any difficulties?
What do you like/love most about each other?
What are each others strengths and weaknesses?
What special reason, if any, did you have for deciding on the place for the ceremony?
What does your family mean to you?
What do your friends mean to you?
What are your hopes for the future, individually and for both of you?
By compiling the answers to questions such as these you will begin to see a narrative of your journey, your unique story happening, snippets of the important areas of your lives, the backbone of your values and beliefs, what you view as important and worthwhile in your life as a result of your life’s experiences.
The introduction or the beginning paragraphs of your marriage, commitment or namegiving or naming ceremony is a great place to narrate your ‘journey’. Add to that an acknowledgement of your family and friends – alive and deceased, a place where you can give heartfelt thanks for unconditional love, nurturing and guidance to parents, extended family – perhaps throw in a few anecdotes to shed light on special times, times of great joy or deep sorrow.
Now it’s time to turn the spotlight on your friends. Next to your parents your very best friends are the most influencial, not only in, but also on your life. In the absence of your own mother, best friends act as ‘mother confessor’, the shoulder to lean on or cry on, someone you can brag to, someone who can give you a jolly good telling off but still be there in the morning to pick up the pieces – be good for a hug, someone who says you look absolutely fantastic in that new dress or suit when you know you probably look like Whistlers mother!
The inclusion of anecdotes involving friends can be a fun, light-hearted way of sharing your journey with them, revealing the lesser-known and possibly deeper side of your relationship with your friends to all the guests attending your ceremony.By doing this it further personalizes and creates the uniqueness of the ceremony.
Really good friends can be just as important as mums and dads and in the overall scheme of things deserve to be acknowledged and thanked for their role in your life thus far.
Music enhances all ceremoniesand if the music is chosen by the both of you it personalizes your ceremony because it is a reflection of your personal tastes, style, thoughts and feelings. Music not only has the ability to create an emotive backdrop to a ceremony but can continue a theme, provide words and pictures that are not necessarily said. Thoughts and feelings of the couple to one another and to others can be expressed in music and song. Have a friend or relative sing or play an instrument. Maybe one of them would write a song especially for the occasion?
Choice of readings or poetry in a ceremony reveals a little more of the nature of a person. In a rite of passage ceremony, poetry and prose may punctuate, add light and dark, continue a theme, convey thoughts and feelings of the couple to each other or to the guests. Again, what a fantastic opportunity for a friend or brother or sister to write a poem for you…..maybe even about you? Have them read it for you, again, your unique stamp is being placed on your ceremony.
In a personalized wedding or commitment ceremony, to put the cherry on top of the cake, so to speak, write your own vows. Ask each other exactly what is it that they consider important enough to them, to promise to you at this time. Write it down!! Use it. Let it be in your words. It doesn’t have to be Pulitzer Prize winning prose! It is a simple, humble, promise from your heart to the heart of another.
The very nature of a personalized ceremony allows friends and family not only to share a very special moment in time with the couple but for the couple to share their lives thus far and their thoughts and feelings but to do this they need to allow themselves to open up and expose their lives a little to those who matter most in their lives.
Create personal ownership of your unique ceremony now – for more ideas and guidance check out these sites:
www.thevowsbook.com – a compilation of 25 marriage ceremonies
www.renewalofvows.net – renewal of vows ceremonies
www.spiritualceremonies.info – spiritually inspired ceremonies
www.weddingvows101.net – 101 marriage or commitment vows
www.2ndmarriageceremonies.com – second marriage ceremonies
www.gaycommitmentceremony.net – gay commitment/marriage ceremonies
www.namegivingceremonies.com – name giving/naming ceremonies
www.wedding-ceremonies.net – more marriage ceremonies
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