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Sacred and formal
More and more of us who get married have
a spiritual practice, or some
inkling of
a world that is not quite visible
to us,
and wish to recognise it in our
weddings.
Traditionally, the official religion
of the
culture in which we lived was
the only means
to have a sacred ceremony that
legally recognised
the vows of marriage; but nowadays
we can
design the ceremony we want.
The majority of Australians prefer
to have
civil ceremonies instead of religious
ones.
Part of my role is to help to
create the
sacredness of a wedding, without
needing
to resort to religion.
For example, one couple chose to have their
wedding in a forest in Spring.
The bride
rode on horseback to the venue
followed by
all her female guests, while
the men arrived
by a different route, carrying
the elderly
grandmother in a sedan chair.
Neither the
bride nor groom had seen the
beautiful spiral
of flowers that friends had prepared.
The women circled the area 3
times in one
direction, the men going in the
opposite
direction, so that each made
eye contact
with the others before they even
spoke, and
the group's bond was strengthened.
Each guest was given a crystal
by the couple
as a memory of the day. Each
guest offered
a gift to an altar - perhaps
a stone, a poem,
or a shell.
Then the couple spiralled into
the centre
separately where their vows were
exchanged
intimately within the heart of
the ceremony.
They fired arrows out to the
forest, symbolically
giving new direction to their
union.
Now married, their joined hands
were tied
loosely with vines, and they
left the spiral
together, back out into the world.
With the
couple at the head of the procession,
the
men and women sang and danced
together all
the way back to a feast and a
party in a
barn.
In your unique way, I can help
you to design
your wedding.
Click here to contact me back to home
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