Mrs. Conception

Our wedding ceremony was raved about by many of our guests, mostly because it was so personalized. Much of that is thanks to our officiant, Unitarian Universalist minister Reverend Robin L. Zucker out of Concord, Massachusetts. My mom saw her at another wedding in September 2006, and recommended that we check her out. She fit the bill for “spiritual but not religious” ceremony well (plus, like me, she used to be a television producer – random, yet somehow comforting).

Rev. Zucker required two pre-marital counseling sessions, so it was a little more of a commitment than just booking a Justice of the Peace. We had to take a multiple choice survey about our relationship, and do the standard communication exercises. This ended up not only being potentially helpful in our marriage, but also in the ceremony as she got to know us a lot before she married us. One funny thing is that she would not allow our dog to be in the wedding because it was “undignified” (luckily, we weren’t going to anyway – Sonny is not quite that well trained). She was a bit no-nonsense for my taste (it was a wedding, not a military coup), but she ended up doing a beautiful job that we were very happy with. Here is an excerpt:

No one can say you’ve rushed into marriage. Quite the contrary –You met around 6 years ago as graduate students at the University of South Carolina, and quickly discovered that you “get” each other; that you shared mutual values, and a desire to buck the status quo in order to craft lives of engagement and meaning.

In one another, you have found a generous companion, dedicated to growing and exploring, and to creating a life of balance, fun, open communication, resilience, trust, achievement, and family, and then there is your zeal for travelling with your pup Sonny and snapping souvenir pictures, renting movies and attending sporting events, urban rambling, film festivals, and spontaneous explorations near and far.

For (the bride), (the groom) is smart, fun, caring, generous and adventurous; a loving and creative partner with whom she feels confident.

For (the groom) , (the bride) is also adventurous, enthusiastic, genuine, caring and open-hearted, an inspiring and supportive partner with whom he feels anything is possible.

You bring yourselves here today to take part in a ceremony says that you will bring all of who you are , all you will be, and all you CAN be to this union, a ritual that affirms that you are not afraid, that whatever may come, you believe in each other , you are secure in your bond, and you’ve already learned there is nothing you cannot face with the other one at your side.

Nice, right?

This description of us and our relationship was especially welcome because we chose to recite simple, tradition vows rather than write our own. It was less complicated, and it ensured we didn’t forget anything that we wanted to promise to one another. I am glad we did it that way, because I even got choked up on the “in joy and in sorrow” part – never mind if I had to say anything more personal than that.

We also chose two readings for the ceremony.  I had a hard time picking these, because it seemed that many of the poems or stories I came across were of the “I love you even though you have so many flaws” variety. While this may be true for both of us, it was not something I wanted to highlight on our wedding day! I wanted to say something like “I love you because you are the best person ever to exist on earth” instead. After a long while, we finally settled on No I’ll not take the half by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Love by Roy Croft. These described our relationship best. Each was read by a good friend of Mr. Andrews.

As for music, we went a little quirky with that. This was something we wanted to use to express ourselves. We did have a harpist from Gilded Harps, which made everything a little more classy. And our musician was very good at learning our songs on short notice! The processional was Across The Stars by John Williams. This is the love theme for Anakin and Padme in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. Mr. Andrews is a huge Star Wars fan, and it is actually a beautiful song. I couldn’t hear it from where I was, but people said it sounded wonderful on the harp, like it was written for a wedding.

I walked down the aisle (with both of my parents, who are divorced) to Elton John’s Tiny Dancer. This is one of “our songs” – we sung it together while listening to the Almost Famous soundtrack on our very first roadtrip. It, too, sounded pretty good on the harp – just a little bit slower than normal.

For the recessional, we chose the chorus of another one of “our songs,” John Mayer’s No Such Thing. Honestly, not the best song on the harp, but it was an important song for us to incorporate in the whole thing.

One of the coolest parts of the ceremony in my opinion was the sand ceremony. I am a klutz and the thought of lighting a Unity Candle while shaking with nerves didn’t strike me as safe. The sand ceremony was a nice alternative, and it was pretty, too! At first we had planned to use real natural sand, with me getting mine from the beach in Quincy, MA and Mr. Andrews getting his from a beach in his hometown of Charleston, SC. But after buying a cute set of vases from Kensington Classics, we decided it might be prettier and more sanitary to buy colored sand from them. We picked Moss and Lavender, which were closest to our wedding colors.

A lot of our guests thought it was a neat idea. One guest, Mr. Barron, even decided to use it in his own wedding a few weeks later. See?:

After the sand, we exchanged rings, we kissed, and just like that, we were married!