A lovely couple, Judith and Trevor, whose Humanist wedding I recently conducted at Mount Druid near Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, have given us permission to add this link to their wedding video. Enjoy!
Photos courtesy of Fiona Jamieson Photography Belfast.
I confess I’d never heard of OneFabDay.com when they emailed me to say that a Humanist wedding I had conducted had been featured. I checked out the site and the article and pics are rather nice…Fancy a gander? Click here.
Humanist weddings are very personal. They are relaxed. They are all about the couple and celebrating their loving commitment to each other.
A little appeal then if you are trying to get a celebrant for your wedding: please don’t send out an impersonal, global email to lots of celebrants that starts: ‘Hi there,’ or the equally impersonal ‘Hi,’
When you are on the receiving end of that you reasonably assume that this is a generic email sent to oodles of celebrants at the same time. And so, as a professional human being hard pressed for time, the temptation is to put that email to the end of the pile since the suspicion persists that it wasn’t really sent to you at all, but to everyone. And what’s sent to everyone isn’t really sent to anyone. And therefore as it wasn’t really sent to you, and others may already have replied, you might decide not to reply at all to what wasn’t sent to you in the first place!
So, tip number one: as Humanist weddings are very personal ceremonies which are all about you as a couple, it’s a basic courtesy to use the celebrant’s name instead of the generic and impersonal ‘Hi,’ or ‘Hi there’ in your first approach.
(Please note: some lovely people have first approached me with the ‘Hi’ or ‘Hi there’ and I’m glad I persisted beyond the initial iffy first impression.)
Tip number two: please put the date of your wedding and the venue and address of the venue in the subject line of your email. That way a celebrant can immediately see if he or she is available on that date, and they can see if the venue is too far away or within the area that they travel. For instance, almost all my weddings are in Meath, Dublin, Kildare, Westmeath, Cavan, Monaghan, Louth or Wicklow.
Also please don’t assume that the celebrant knows the location of your venue by its name alone. You may think everyone knows where Such-and-Such a country house or hotel is but the celebrant might not. So at least include its name and county. It’s also helpful to celebrants if you continue to use the date of your wedding in the subject line of subsequent emails to the celebrant. You are getting married on one date but the celebrant is conducting weddings on lots of dates and your wedding date is the key to opening the relevant file and, probably, getting a quicker response. It will save your celebrant – and you – time.
Tip number three: please do not change the name of the Word file of your wedding draft. When I send out your bespoke, customized first draft, the name of the file has the names of the couple, the venue, and the date of the wedding. All too often when it comes back it has been renamed ‘My wedding’. Just add your readings and music and your decisions about rituals etc to the file I send you but please do not rename that file.
Tip number four: please understand that, especially in high wedding season like the summertime and Christmas that your celebrant can be inundated with phone calls and emails. None of us can afford secretaries so, especially if one is conducting several consecutive ceremonies, it gets really difficult to keep on top of emails. So please be patient. Your celebrant will reply eventually but it may take longer than you’d like. (Unless you’ve sent out that global email ‘Hi there,’ to all and sundry and so he might not reply at all…)
Tip number five: read a bit about the celebrant, especially the most basic things like the areas of the country that they cover. If, in their profile, they say they only cover Dublin, you are probably wasting yours and the celebrant’s time asking them to conduct a wedding in Donegal or Kerry. Please understand too that it can be risky for a celebrant to commit to doing a distant wedding. Hours of travelling that might be better spent tackling that backlog of emails and the risk of the car breaking down. I have to ask myself: how much would it cost me if I had to hire or hail a taxi to get there…and back!
Tip number six: let the celebrant be the celebrant. Sometimes a bride or groom finds it hard to let go and let the celebrant do his or her thing. But once the planning has been done, that’s the very best thing that the bride and groom can do. Accept that no ceremony is ever perfect. Realize that it’s often the mistakes that make a ceremony. Let go. Enjoy the ceremony. Be happy to giggle or cry or laugh or clap. Or do all of these things! Be you. Forget what anyone else thinks. It’s your wedding – not theirs. Once the bride and groom enjoys the day, everyone else will too.
Tip number seven: your wedding is just one day in your marriage. Marriage is something you work at every day. Something that is never static. Sure, your wedding day is important. It is a milestone, a turning point. But it remains just one day in your life, a day when you publicly express your committed love to one another. Prepare for your wedding, sure. But better still to prepare for your lives together. A life of growth. A life of truth. A life of intimacy. A life of mutual challenge. A life of mutual and loving self-acceptance.
Once you accept that you wedding doesn’t have to be perfect, you are far more likely to accept that neither you nor your spouse has to be perfect either – and so you’ll enjoy a far happier and wholesome relationship that is far more likely to last!
I still love conducting Humanist wedding ceremonies. Each one is different. Each couple is different. Every gathering of relatives and friends is different.
Ironically, it’s great when something goes wrong! Everyone relaxes and realizes the burden of it having to be ‘perfect’ is a myth. It’s always great once that first thing happens that puts people at their ease. A baby cries. A song goes wrong. A little ring bearer runs off with the rings. The parents can’t light a candle because the air conditioning keeps blowing the candles out. Someone has a fit of the giggles.
Once, at the very end of a ceremony, the bride was trying to say something to me but the music was loud and she was on the far side of a table and it was hard to catch what she was saying.
Eventually I heard her, ‘He didn’t kiss me!’
‘Stop the music!’ I cried. ‘The groom didn’t kiss the bride!’
And the music stopped and the audience watched and the groom kissed his bride and everyone cheered and clapped and roared with glee and the music resumed and the couple processed down the aisle and there was great merriment, excitement and fun.
And yes there was a little lad who blew out the candles and ran off with the wedding rings just before the exchange of rings. He was rugby tackled by his dad – well, OK, not rugby tackled – but brought back into the ceremony room, and the rings restored to the Best Man just in time.
And yes once a guest dropped the wedding rings early in a ceremony and they were a hair’s breadth from dropping down a gap between floor boards in an ancient stately home.
It’s great when the couple, especially the bride, relaxes and enjoys every moment; realizing that it isn’t about external things at all. It’s about living the moment, cherishing the important things, celebrating the love the couple share for each other and the commitment that they are making publicly to their partner. I think of the bride who decided, when I met her outside the chapel, that she’d be far more comfortable in her boots than her wedding shoes and decided to go up the aisle in the boots instead. She asked my view. I suggested comfort first. ‘I like your style,’ she said.
And once the bride is chilled out and relaxed and living the moment it’s much more likely that everyone else will enjoy themselves too.
Happily, I’ve encountered very, very, very few bridezillas! But, unlike the deities, they do exist – perhaps just one per hundred brides. You can spot them by the state of panic of the unfortunate groom, who might remove something beautiful a florist or decorator did because ‘she’ would see red. Or I’m told confidentially by the venue manager that they’re all on tenterhooks because of the unreasonable demands of the bride. Or the musicians might agree with a small last minute amendment I propose but they wouldn’t make the change because they’re terrified of Zilla, lest the improvement incur her displeasure. Or I spot something that I know won’t work for the ceremony, fix it and come back moments later only to see that someone playing watchman for the bride has changed it back to the way that I know won’t work.
The exceptions might make the good stories but the greatest stories are the ordinary, lovely, gorgeous, hopeful, committed couples who just want a personal ceremony that is about them and who want to show their families and friends their loving commitment to one another. They want to feel relaxed and they want their guests to enjoy their wedding. I think of all the couples that I have met, wonderful people, who have found love and hope and joy, and whose lives have joined together in a union of trust and encouraging mutual acceptance. And they want to celebrate that love by getting married.
Often they may have their children there and we include the children in the ceremony. Often the kids make the ceremony. We might have planned to stand for the vows but junior decides he’s crawling up on his mother’s lap and we adjust and do the vows sitting down. Or up come the kids to pour sand or tie ribbons or have candles lit for them.
I love my work – being with people at such important turning points in their lives.
I’m very happy with the outcome of the marriage equality referendum!
I watched a wonderful documentary last night on BBC2 Television on Metamorphosis: The Science of Change. Metamorphosis: the Science of Change Filmmaker David Malone explores the science behind metamorphosis – the astonishing transformation of one creature into a totally different being. The programme asks how metamorphosis happens and why?
And I reflected on my own metamorphosis from religious belief to the intellectual freedom and the lifestyle liberation that comes from breaking out of the cage of religious belief. And it occurs to me that Ireland too is undergoing a similar metamorphosis.
Life as a frog is far more interesting than that of the limited tadpole. A butterfly’s life is far more exhilerating than that of a caterpiller. Transformation from religious dogmas and non-sensical beliefs lead to a life more interesting than the tadpole or caterpiller could ever have imagined!
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Also interesting, this Science Museum online exhibition on metamorphosis : http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/metamorphing/
This is great too: Metamorphosis: Animal Shape-Shifters by Prof Stuart Reynolds, University of Bath.
Lord have mercy,
For the times when I, as an Irish Catholic,
Imposed my morality on other people.
Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy,
For the times when I, in my self-righteousness and smug arrogance,
Campaigned and voted no in referendums that would have made Ireland a fairer and more honest society.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy,
For the times that I obeyed the bishops and voted as they wanted me to vote
Rather than thinking for myself and following my own honest judgement.
Lord have mercy.
Please vote Yes in the marriage equality referendum.
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My brother hanged himself this day last month, on 23 March 2015. He was 60.
He took his own life four weeks to the day after I buried my mother.
It’s a lot to take in. I haven’t had asthma for 15 years, but I have it again. Doubtless, stress-related. Grief-related. Struggling for breath as my brother did this day last month.
It’s hard to know what to say. And yet writing is therapy. A poultice. Get it out. Express. Like struggling breath.
David was gay. He had a miserable time at home. And a miserable time in Ireland.
He wanted no prayers at his funeral. He told me so 26 years ago, just after I had left my priestly path. And he told his life partner the very same thing within the last two years.
Ireland was a cold place for gay men. Let us hope that Irishmen and Irishwomen will declare to the world for once and for all in the forthcoming referendum that gay and lesbian people are equal citizens. Let us hope that the fairness and justice of the Irish conscience will triumph over those who seek to muddy the waters.
Those hideous posters that shift the debate from equality – which is what the referendum is about – to canards.
Why is it that people of religious faith so often seek to impose their rules on others who choose not to be of their faith? Who would have gay men and women believe that there is something sick with them. It is the religious mentality that seeks to impose itself on others that is sick.
Why do they not protest to their god whom they claim is in charge of the universe – omnipotent, omnipresent, all powerful – and yet he does nothing about the children who are left orphaned by parents who die. Why don’t religious folk raise their banners and posters against their god found so wanting in compassion for his creatures? And why, instead, take out their unjust ire on minorities like gay and lesbian human beings? Why don’t they protest to their gods and deities, and their priests, about the so-called all-loving god who supposedly wants the little children to come onto him ‘for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ when he inflicts cancers and illnesses upon those whom he supposedly created with love?
But rather than confront their manmade god, they seek to say onto their fellow human beings that equality is not for all. I beg you all: vote Yes for marriage equality.
And for those who seek to deny men like my brother the right to marry in Ireland I say: Shame on you! Be just to all. And be humble. Save your moralizing for your own conscience. Vote Yes!
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My mother died this day last month.
The finality of death. In her early nineties, she had not been well but hadn’t been dying. So her death was unexpected. I had been dreading her funeral for years and yet, when it came, it went better than I could have imagined. Like so many of our fears, I might have imagined something positive and avoided myself the wasted energy of fear.
My mother. What can I say? I’m lost for words in this public space. I was reminded of the story of the blind men and the elephant: one, perceiving only the tusk, thought that ivory was the total truth of the elephant. Another touching a leg, proclaimed that elephants were like the trunks of trees. A third blind man touched just the tail and thought that that was what an elephant was like, while another touched the ear and was confident that he alone knew the whole picture. All thought likewise, though each one perceived something entirely different, limited to the part of the whole that they touched. None saw the bigger picture.
I too am, metaphorically, a blind man. Yet, being her son, I’ve touched more than just the tusk or a leg or an ear or the tail. Yes I know that my mother was more than any one or two or three or four or more simple descriptions of her, and it’s nice that many retained a high regard and affection for her. She was complex, as are we all. I think of things my dad told me, and things close relatives of hers and mine told me. And I recall my own experience – not always a happy one.
One cousin said to me after her funeral that when your ma dies, it’s your whole life before you. And it’s true: I have been reflecting on my whole life, a life so influenced, for the good and bad, by my mother. Leo Tolstoy said it well in his opening line of Anna Karenina: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.‘
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