Vows...

I don't have time this morning to give the vows-n-vittles play-by-play, but it was a dreamy day all around. Folks keep asking for copies of our vows, so I'm posting the ceremony here. It's a hodgepodge of a couple options provided by our JP, Christine E. Speight, a Unitarian service I found online, and our own words.

Jessica & Michael’s Vows-n-Vittles

August 28, 2010

CONVOCATION:

We gather together today not to mark the start of a relationship, but to recognize a partnership and a family that already exists. We are grateful for this miraculous day, for the fulfillment of love we see before us in each of you, Jessica and Michael, and for the joy of sharing this happy occasion.

We’ll now have a moment of silent reflection, to include in spirit the family and friends who couldn’t be here today or are no longer with us.

Each of you here present has been invited because you are a special person in the lives of Jessica and Michael. You have come to rejoice with them; to hear their vows, their hopes, their plans... to extend good wishes as they continue their journey together and to be reminded of the loves and commitments that are a part of your own lives. Will you, therefore, do all in your power to uphold these two in the marriage they are about to undertake?

All gathered:  We will.

Michael and Stellina, you are a part of this marriage. We hope that together all of you will find ways to comfort, understand, help and challenge one another, and that you will make your home a place where all are safe, happy and encouraged to grow. Will you do your best?

Children reply: I/We will.

MEDITATION ON MARRIAGE:

Ultimately, two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage is itself something which has to be created. To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling.

We’ll now have a few moments of quiet reflection, during which, as you feel inspired, you may say aloud your own advice, well-wishes and thoughts to the couple.

Thank you.

EXPRESSION OF INTENT TO MARRY:

Jessica and Michael, you have carefully considered the beauty of the obligations assumed when lives are wed. You come before me today to be joined in marriage. Are you both ready to declare your commitment to one another?

Reply: We are.

EXCHANGE OF VOWS:

Please face each other and share the vows you have written together.

I, Jessica, take you, Michael, as my partner in life, love and law. I promise to be quick to love you and slow to judge you; to express kindness more, and criticism less; to turn first to humor and last to anger; to support you in being the man you aspire to be; and to do all I can to bring my best self to our marriage and our family, every day, for the rest of our lives.

I, Michael, take you, Jessica, as my partner in life, love and law. I promise to be quick to love you and slow to judge you; to express understanding more, and impatience less; to turn first to humor and last to anger; to support you in being the woman you aspire to be; and to do all I can to bring my best self to our marriage and our family, every day, for the rest of our lives.

EXCHANGE OF RINGS:

May I have ____________’s ring, please? [officiant holds ring in hand] This ring is a symbol of unity, in which your two lives are now joined in one unbroken circle of love. May your ring(s) always call to mind the freedom and the power of this love.

Bride places ring on Groom’s finger as she repeats the Justice’s of the Peace words:

As the sign from my heart that I desire to live with you from this day forward, and that you may remember forever that I have chosen you above all others, I give you this ring as a symbol of my love. Michael, with this ring I thee wed!

Groom places ring on Bride’s finger as he repeats the Justice’s of the Peace words:

As the sign from my heart that I desire to live with you from this day forward, and that you may remember forever that I have chosen you above all others, I give you this ring as a symbol of my love. Jessica, with this ring I thee wed!

(The parties are now directed to join hands.)

By the act of joining hands you take to yourself the relation of spouses for life and solemnly promise to love, honor, comfort and cherish each other so long as you both shall live. Therefore, in accordance with the law of Connecticut and by virtue of the authority vested in me by the law of Connecticut I do pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss to seal your vows.

CLOSING:

May these two find happiness in their union. May they live faithfully together, performing the vow and covenant they have made between them and to their children; and may they ever remain in sympathy and understanding: that their years may be rich in the joys of life, and their days good, and long upon the earth. 

happy endings

We are foregoing a wedding cake and its $5/per slice price tag and spending that $$ on an ice cream truck. That was actually the first thing I booked when we set a date -- before the JP, before the caterer. Dave and his flamingo-pink ice cream truck will park in the driveway for an hour or two, our version of a free bar.


Then last week Michael said he wanted a cake after all. Our magical and nomadic friend Laura, whom I see rarely but always right when I need an infusion of enthusiasm, happened to be passing through on her way from Florida to Venus, and offered to not only procure a last-minute cake but also stage-manage our festivities. She is wicked bossy, in the best possible way, a Taurus with bullseye focus, and a fantastic dancer, which has nothing to do with her organizational skills but is something you ought to know.


We ordered a vintage cake topper from Etsy.com. The homeliest couple to ever grace a pastry, they look like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in 50s wedding garb. 

Psych! Don't want to spoil the surprise...

something borrowed

Our wedding seating will be courtesy of St. Emery's, the Catholic Church around the corner from our house. Once a thriving congregation comprised of the neighborhood's Hungarian immigrants, home to a parochial school and convent, St. Emery's now rents its classrooms to the Fairfield Board of Ed for the town's alternative high school and to AA meetings. Its income is also augmented by "Bingo! Every Thursday night! Air Conditioned! $$!" I've never attended, but it seems to draw a larger crowd than Mass, which gave me the notion that where there's a social hall there's seating, and I tracked down Father Louie.

Whereas a rental company would charge a minimum $154+tax for 8 banquet-length tables and 60 wimpy Samsonite plastic chairs, he's letting us borrow the equivalent (and the chairs are those hardy, if homely,  metal ones) for a donation of our discretion (I offered $50), and we can pick them up Friday and keep them if need be til the following week's game night. Having to transport them is certainly worth the $100 savings. My groom has a pick-up truck, as does his brother, but I bet I could get a couple of the juvie students who throw Yoo-hoo bottles on our front lawn on their way to school to help lug them up the street in exchange for a pack of smokes.

Vows-n-Vittles

I'm fairly lousy at this blog business, or anything that requires taking notes on life while in the midst of living it. I haven't consistently kept a journal for years, ever since an ex (who was in the midst of becoming an ex, which neither of us were handling very nobly) read through and wrote commentaries in the margins. 

I don't have a baby book for my kid; I have a huge plastic storage bin in the basement into which I've thrown particularly cute outfits, her hospital discharge papers, a corsage from her father for my baby shower and the scabby remnant of her umbilical cord. It's terrible -- I know she started walking and talking in the past 2-1/2 years, and that I've been there, live and in person, for all her "firsts" (smile, word, firefly, french fry, tantrum, toilet foray) thus far, but I couldn't say on what date particular things transpired. 

But we're getting hitched in a few weeks and it's pretty all-consuming a process, no matter how casual a manner in which we're doing the hitching, so I figured I'd try to write about the planning while we're planning. 

Like, I'm at the library alternately doing editorial work and Googling compostable paper goods for our backyard shindig, and I don't want to forget the phone message Michael just left me. "You are the girl for me," he said, laughing. "I think that's your dress. I didn't look at it, but that's got to be where it is. In that tiny box!" He guffawed, and hung up, and yes, the Priority Mail package he'd spotted in the closet does indeed store my bridal attire, which is a vintage party dress of a hue other than white, was purchased for $180 from Etsy and arrived in said packaging, wrapped for protection in a plastic Wal-Mart bag. Bridezilla, I ain't, which is fortunate both us both, considering I'm marrying a man who regards the sweatpants without holes his "dress-up pair."

clean slate

Note to self: When everything else mechanical you've laid eyes and hands on malfunctions, don't write a pithy title line about your computer crashing. I didn't back up my laptop, and the hard drive imploded a week after that last post. My Apple tech, bless his heart, didn't scold me for neglecting this chore, and delivered with sensitivity and a Kleenex the news that my hard drive's condition was fatal. He quietly loaded my new hard drive (at least I had the sense to purchase that three-year extended warranty, if not an external HD-as-automatic backup) and wished me luck retrieving data off the old one. The good news is he knows someone with the same error as mine who got nearly everything back. The bad news: It cost her $2,000.

So please back your computer up. And wear a seatbelt, helmet and condom while you're at it.