Making the Ceremony Your Own

We all know how it goes: Do you (blank) take (blank) to be your lawfully wedded husband? To have and to hold from this day forward? Blah Blah Blah. No offense to anyone who goes the traditional route. Traditional works, obviously because it's still used the majority of the time. But it doesn't work for Mr. J and I. We are not the average bride and groom. And as major literary lovers, we've got to throw in some of our favorites.

Because our ceremony is going to be officiated by one of our friends, who is an ultracool and eclectic kinda guy--we want it to be all us. I've been looking at a number of different authors and poets, I want to throw in some of The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

"if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips."

Aaaah, I love that. There's also something I read, from Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, I don't necessarily want to use his exact words, but I think it would be cool to have our officiant talk about love and then ask this question and we can use this as a template to fill in our own quirky things from our relationship as a way of making love stay:

"Who knows how to make love stay?

1. Tell love you are going to Junior’s Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay.

2. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.

3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning."

Yes, love will be there in the morning. So, we are going to have our officiant open the ceremony by welcoming everyone and really thanking them for being there. He's going to talk a little about love and marriage (go together like a horse and carriage) and we'll have three readings. Two from Mr. J's side and one from mine. We'll do our vows, which we write personally, and our ring ceremony which we also write with our officiant, we also want community vows to ask of the guests, we kiss, and then we jump the broom.

As a poet, my vows will most likely be poetic, although this is a lot of pressure! But we are both great writers and I'm sure we'll come up with something that makes the other cry. (He better cry!)