Your wedding cere­mony is one of your best chances to create the marriage that you want. Are you willing to sit down and do the work to create a cere­mony that will flow into the cele­bra­tion you’re longing for and will layout your blue­print for your successful life?

So many people think wedding cere­monies are simply wild cele­bra­tions of a moment in time. And you can use them that way, but why waste the energy and the oppor­tu­nity? Your wedding cere­mony offers you a perhaps once in a life­time chance to take stock of the past, revel in the present and look forward to the future.

If you create ritual time to look back and to look forward, people will listen. And it needs to be ritual time. You can’t do this at dinner. You won’t take it seri­ously and they won’t take it seri­ously. (How many announce­ments have you made at dinner that have been met with “that’s nice, dear?”) It is very easy to blast past this at your wedding. You want to have a great party. The wedding busi­ness is geared to help you do that.

But more than you want a great wedding, you want your marriage to succeed. That means that you want to take the time to examine:

• How you got here? What’s the story of your romance? When did you know and what makes this person right for happily ever after?
• Where here is, exactly? This can be as simple a state­ment as “standing here with the person with whom I am committed to journey with through life, in the midst of my friends in the heart of (the forest, the city, the small town) that I love so well.” Talk about the impor­tant elements being incor­po­rated into your marriage.
• Where are you going? What are your inten­tions for this marriage? You can do this during your wedding vows, but funda­men­tally, this is an oppor­tu­nity for each of you to acknowl­edge the life you envi­sion and hope for.

Tip: A public wedding cere­mony is your oppor­tu­nity to say to your entire commu­nity what is impor­tant to you and what you intend to do with the rest of your life. If you are open and honest during the cere­mony, your community’s support will be over­whelming. People want you to have what you want. But you need to tell them what that is, or they’ll be hoping for the wrong things for you.