Ann Keeler Evans, M.Div. » Weddings with meaning

Plan the Wedding Ceremony To Deliver the Marriage You Want

akevans — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:58:13 +0000

Last night I sat at dinner next to a bride who has actually planned out her wedding ceremony (and her wedding is still months away! Go, grrl!) Her minister was pleased but taken aback. Who plans ahead for this? Who has input to offer their celebrant?

Well, You! or at least I’m hoping.

The two of you want to be working on the wedding ceremony. Planning your ceremony is (or should be) planning your marriage. What do you want to say to one another? How would you like your community to support you in your marriage?

Tip: Your wedding ceremony isn’t something you want to be leaving to chance. It’s going to shape your marriage for a long time to come. So why not have some input into that?

Relax! You Can Get Married, Even if You Can’t Dance!

akevans — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:42:52 +0000

Youtube is great. But it’s not necessarily what weddings should be about.

You’ve got work to do at your wedding. You’re getting married. That’s actually where you want your focus to be on your wedding day, not on whether or not you’re going to nail the over-the-shoulder-flip (in your poofy dress!) during the reception.

Learn a lovely fox trot. If you’re already dancers, you can spice it up a skootch. But really, what you want to be focused on while you’re dancing is how much you love one another, rather than remembering a routine.

Tip: Just be your lovely, wonderful, in-love selves. That will be a marvelous thing to see!

What Does It Mean to Be Engaged?

akevans — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:28:03 +0000

Once you get engaged, it seems all the focus goes on the wedding. Brides and grooms bustle about getting this and that in order for the big party.

What they don’t do enough of is be engaged in the relationship. This is a time period best used to work out issues, establish patterns and deepen your relationship.

Planning a party is fun. Planning your wedding ceremony is important. But planning a path for your love to grow? It’s essential. And it’s the goal.

Tip: What were the most important moments of your engagement period? How did your relationship deepen over this time? (other than the financial ties you built when you took out a second mortgage to pay for your wedding?)

Working Partnership

akevans — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:49:45 +0000

Patty Potter Fichett, wise woman, wrote these words from Stephen Sondheim on her FB page yesterday:

It’s hobbies you pursue together, savings you accrue together, looks you misconstrue together that make marriage a joy.…

It struck me as useful advice — advice you don’t want to postpone following. These things don’t only make marriage a joy, they make it a marriage. Togetherness is the goal of your marriage.

That’s why it’s really dangerous to have only one person doing all the wedding planning. Plan your wedding and your marriage together. Wedding planning is a great crucible for forging a working partnership. A wedding isn’t the “bride’s special day,” it’s the event that moves you from engaged to married and celebrates that transition with your friends.

Tip: Want to build the best marriage possible? Start working together at the very beginning… and then share the laughter and the tears that accrue through a lifetime of living into that sharing!

Creating your Community Statement of Support: Needing the binding

akevans — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:33:05 +0000

If you’re going to get support from your community, it’s really helpful to acknowledge that you understand that marriage is challenging as well as wonderful. Too many weddings focus only on the pleasure and not on the work of marriage. Too many people split up because they underestimate the work involved in making a live with someone else. And making it look magical and wonderful — that’s an exponential increase in effort. Most people will tell you it’s well worth your while, but it is hard work.

Tip: You want to let your community know that you admire the ways in which they have made their relationships flourish and that you will be needing their support so that you can thrive. You’re going to need them to listen to you and turn you around and shove you back towards home when times are tough. They’ve always supported you and that’s why you’re going to keep looking to them for guidance.

Creating A Statement of Support: Importance of Community

akevans — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:17:46 +0000

The first part of a Statement of Support includes 2 pieces

An acknowledgment that marriage is difficult, particularly now when so much mitigates against it. It takes a lot of dedication to make marriage work. Everyone enters marriage expecting it to work. But for all the fa-der-ol about the “sanctity” of marriage, it doesn’t have a lot of importance or support in the real world.
An acknowledgment of the importance of community to a wedding couple.The facts are in. Couples do better when their community supports them and this important relationship. The more specific a couple can be about why their relationship is important to them in the wedding, the better able a community is to support that marriage in the future.

Tip: Explain the important role that communities make in keep marriages sound. You’re going to ask people for support. Let them know why it matters. They’re more likely to step up to the task. End result? Closer friends and a better marriage!

Creating a Community Statement of Support at Your Wedding

akevans — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:38:04 +0000

This is a piece of the wedding that every ceremony ought to have but few do. Bottom line, marriages that are grounded in community do better. If you tell your community you want their support, they’re going to be more conscious about giving it to you.It’s a fairly simple process that turns the question (left over from when our nuptials were property transactions, pure and simple) “Does anyone object?” to the more important question (because objections should have been raised a long time ago if there were problems!) “Who supports this marriage?” Over the next couple days, we’ll look at the important points:

An acknowledgment of the importance of community to a wedding couple.
An acknowledgment of how important this particular community is to you.
An acknowledgment that your marriage will thrive more strongly with your community’s support.
An invitation to your community to support the two of you, your promises and your marriage.

Tip: Taking these simple steps can radically strengthen your ties to your community and your marriage.

Fall Wedding Ritual: Sip a Complex Red Wine

akevans — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:31:58 +0000

Even though red wines can be fatal to a white dress, if you take care, you can avoid mishaps. (Because you really don’t want to add a Tide Pen† to your wedding ritual!)

Talk about your differences and your similarities and how in this marriage they are blending together as they have in this fabulous wine you have chosen for today’s ritual. You might want to talk about the tastes and what each represents and the role it plays in making the relationship (and the wine!) great. (Check out the video for some pointers on finding the right red wine!)

Red Wines

Tip: Choose a wine that pleases you, design your ceremony around it and invite your community to toast your long life at the reception with this wonderful wine.

Fabulous: And Did They Work This Hard on Their Wedding Vows?

akevans — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:33:43 +0000

Along with everyone else, I loved this video. 12 million people or so have loved it on YouTube. It says a lot about who this couple is and what a good time they have together.

So does it make Wedding Priestess a bad sport when the first thing she thought was “what were their wedding vows like?” Did they work as hard on the vows that will make and keep them married as they did on their entrance? I hope so. ‘Cause you have to admit they’re a fun couple! They deserve to create a marriage that works!

" class="broken_link">JK Wedding Entrance

(OK, it does make me a technical idjit that I can’t figure out how to put a video in, doesn’t it… I’ll try and get help. Until then, if you’re one of the ten people in the world who hasn’t seen this video, click on the link and go watch! Enjoy it, it’s fun!)

Tip: Want to spend the rest of your life making great entrances? Get to work on the wedding vows. They’re the blueprint for the rest of your life. Find support here. It’s worth dancing through the pages of the Wedding Vow Workbook. I’ll live in hope that you’ll write spectacular vows and get yourself on the Today Show!

Make Your Wedding Photos Sparkle

akevans — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:13:28 +0000

I think too many wedding photos focus on the joy (and joy’s not a bad thing!) but somehow miss the other astonishing feelings that run through the brides and grooms on their wedding days.

But what about the disbelief? the desire, the awe, the trepidation, the commitment? All those things you feel on your wedding day, you want represented in your album. If you did that, those photos would remind you every time you looked at them, not only how incredibly happy you were to be married, but what you felt for one another as you made your wedding vows. Those reminders can keep you actively involved in your wedding vows and your marriage.

Tip: Go read my article on what to whisper to one another during your photos and make your photos a true reflection of your wedding day.