How this happened

 

Greeting (after we all line up and people settle down)

Good afternoon, everyone.  My name is Ben Devalve and I will be officiating for James and Liz today.  Remember, this is a casual and fun observance of my friends’ marriage, so relax and enjoy yourselves!  The ceremony will also be fairly brief, so you will have plenty of time to enjoy the Geology museum’s exhibits.  We would like to extend our gratitude to the Museum for letting us hold the ceremony here.  This celebration is as unique as the couple, so please allow me to briefly outline the ceremony for you:

1. We will have two brief readings that speak to the celebration here today
2. Liz and James will exchange vows
3. they will perform a small unity ceremony
4. and they will make a visit to the memorial table as their first act as a married couple.

Let us begin!

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For simplicity's sake, I patterned the ceremony on the standard Catholic liturgy, at least the first half.  That means (pretty much) and introduction, 2 readings, meditations on those readings, then a highly symbolic rite.  Ben D____, our friend and officiant began with the following:

Good afternoon, everyone.  My name is Ben Devalve and I will be officiating for James and Liz today.  Remember, this is a casual and fun observance of my friends’ marriage, so relax and enjoy yourselves!  The ceremony will also be fairly brief, so you will have plenty of time to enjoy the Geology museum’s exhibits.  We would like to extend our gratitude to the Museum for letting us hold the ceremony here.  This celebration is as unique as the couple, so please allow me to briefly outline the ceremony for you:

1. We will have two brief readings that speak to the celebration here today
2. Liz and James will exchange vows
3. they will perform a small unity ceremony
4. and they will make a visit to the memorial table as their first act as a married couple.

Let us begin!

Next, he jumped into an excerpt from "A Pale Blue Dot" - not the most weddingy of readings, but we're both Sagan nuts, and I think I was able to make a firm enough connection between text and event :)

As we join Liz and James on the beginning of their new life together, it seems fitting to call to mind the eternal, the cosmic, and the beautiful.  So, I would like to begin by reading selections from Carl Sagan’s “A Pale Blue Dot”, to remind the couple and all of us here today that we are part of the same planet, connected intimately to each other and the planet we reside on.  Sagan wrote this after observing an image of the planet Earth captured by Voyager 1 in the early 1990s.  He had our environment in mind when he wrote this, but his meditations can apply to human relationships equally well.  When we gather to connect with our loved ones for a life event, we place ourselves not only in one specific moment, but in a larger context as Sagan reminded us years ago.  I invite you to consider not only the physical history behind our planet and its cultures, but the emotional history that binds us here today, as we join these two families.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

           

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. . . Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. . . .

           

It has been said that astronomy [and marriage] is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Sagan’s plea to our species to “deal more kindly with one another” and “cherish the pale blue dot” may also be applied to us here today.  We have come here in joy to cherish the bonds of family and friendship, as we honor Liz and James’ love.  Let’s kindly wish them the patience, wisdom, and passion necessary to grow this garden for the rest of their lives.

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Then Ben got into reading #2, a more traditionally romantic piece from Donne:

The next reading is the final two stanzas from John Donne’s poem “Love’s Growth”, written in the 17th century.  Donne and his wife Anne Donne are still famous for their  passionate marriage almost four hundred years after their passing.  It is fitting to mark this occasion with one of Donne’s tenderest meditations on love:

           

And yet no greater, but more eminent,

             Love by the spring is grown ;
             As in the firmament
            Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
            Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
            From love's awakened root do bud out now.

Donne draws our attention to the complementary nature of love.  The Sun does not overpower the stars, but shares the heavens with them in a complementary union.  Love does not come from superficial things, nor does it cease in hardship; instead it is deeply rooted, as Donne’s trees blooming in spring after weathering the storms of winter.
           

If, as in water stirr'd more circles be

             Produced by one, love such additions take,
             Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,
            For they are all concentric unto thee ;
            And though each spring do add to love new heat...

Donne completes his poem by observing the additive nature of love.  The many dimensions of two people add more to their lives together like Donne’s spheres of heaven, multiplying year by year, strengthening so that, as he concludes:

“No winter shall abate this spring’s increase.”

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Then Mr. D_____ brought it on home with our "highly symbolic rite", consisting of our vows and the unity geode:

Finally, I would like to invite you to witness as Liz and James read their vows to each other.  They have both selected unique vows to illustrate the depth of their love for one another.

Liz to James:

                                        

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                     i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

               

James to Liz: *still need to post*

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Friends and loved ones, at this time, Liz and James would like to proclaim their unity as a couple by breaking a geode (hold that up for everyone) Geodes appear to be unassuming specimens from the outside, but a world of beauty is contained within.  By breaking this geode open, Liz and James are beginning a lifetime of love, trust, and happiness.

As their first act as a married couple, they will place a shard from their geode on the memorial table, in remembrance of all our loved ones that couldn’t be with us today, such as Liz’s mother Ann Marie and her Grandfather Frank, and James’ Grandmother Lois and his Grandfather Monroe, as well as all our other loved ones that we would like to remember at this moment.

And now, we have concluded the ceremony!  Please enjoy the Museum’s exhibits.  At _______pm, we will be repairing to the Gardens for the reception.  Directions are at the front table, and the Museum staff will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

And there we were!  The geode, luckily enough, was a beautiful white color inside, so it was accidentally a little traditional :)