A Non-Religious Wedding Ceremony

by Megan

A year ago when Jason and I were starting to think about planning our wedding we realized that we were going to have to write a ceremony ourselves if we wanted something that was non-religious and not philosophically objectionable in some other way. For us, writing our ceremony was a meaningful experience that prepared us for our marriage. For others, however, writing a ceremony may be an unwanted burden, and trying to plan a wedding without religion may be a frustrating process. So, I thought I would post something about our ceremony to help people who might be planning a wedding without religion (and for anyone else who might be interested in hearing about our wedding).

We ended up following the outline of a typical Christian wedding ceremony. My father, who is a Christian minister, was the officiant at our wedding, so we decided to stick with the general format that he was comfortable with since we were completely changing the content. We began with the typical entrance of the wedding party (although I decided to enter with both of my parents instead of just my father), followed by a welcome from the officiant. We included several musical interludes throughout the ceremony (of course we used non-religious music). We also had two readings, one written by me, and one by Jason. Originally we thought we would have readings from philosophical texts, but we were unable to find anything that we completely agreed with and thought was fully appropriate. So, we decided that we would each write something. Jason's essay was about the necessity of romantic love for happiness, and mine was about the meaning of marriage. We chose to have other people read them instead of reading them ourselves, which I thought was the best way to do it since we both ended up feeling so nervous during the ceremony. After the readings, we exchanged the following vows:

Because of the joy that you bring to my life,

I take you, (Megan/Jason)

To be my (wife/husband).

I promise to value you above all others,

To remain faithful to you,

To support, challenge and encourage you,

To hold sacred my love for you,

And to share with you

All the joys and sorrows that life may bring

As long as we both shall live.

Our vows were very meaningful to us because they expressed exactly what we wanted to promise to each other, and because they were spoken in a context in which our essays about what our marriage will mean had just been read. We thought it was very important to emphasize that the reason we were making these promises was the joy that we each bring to the other's life, which is something that is not usually emphasized in marriage vows. After the vows, we exchanged rings, my father presented us as a couple, and we recessed. The whole thing only lasted about twenty minutes, which seems pretty long when you are standing in front of a room full of people with your heart pounding in your chest.

Our wedding was actually the first non-religious wedding I have ever been to, so I have no idea what other people have done. But I really loved the explicit emphasis that we were being joined together solely by our promises to each other and not by any bond from a supernatural being. It just seemed so much more real; no mystical talk about two souls being joined into one by some deity, but simply two people making promises to each other in the presence of people who care about them and wanted to support them. The process of writing our own ceremony may have been challenging, but it was definitely worth it for the end result.

Note: I haven't been blogging for a while because I was focusing on school (I just started an MA/PhD program in philosophy this fall), but hopefully I'll be able to blog a bit more frequently now that I'm somewhat adjusted. Also, if anyone is planning a non-religious wedding and would like to see the complete outline of our ceremony, leave your email address in the comments.