Tag Archives: wedding planning

One of 1–10 The work of wedding vows

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As part of an article I was writing for Ezine Arti­cles recently, I real­ized that I believe that your wedding vows have at least ten jobs that they can do for you. Their work starts as you begin to shape them, is high­lighted at your wedding cere­mony and continues through your marriage. (If you decide to stay constant, that is!) And this vow is a promise that you will do just that!

Task Number One: Your vows signal to your­self, to your partner and to your commu­nity that your deepest desire and highest inten­tion is to join your life and your heart to your beloved. You are no longer inter­ested in being only an indi­vidual. You wish your life to grow with and into the life of this beloved partner.

Tip: This work requires some rather deli­cate balance. Because a good marriage really is about balancing the growth of the indi­vidual with the growth of the marriage. Before you get in the marriage car, you need to know that forever is your desti­na­tion. It’s hard enough to have a successful marriage. Without an explicit acknowl­edge­ment of this goal — and its funda­mental impor­tance in each of your lives — you’re far less likely to get to where you want to go. What’s the base­ball quote by someone famous whose name The Wedding Priestess can’t remember: If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re likely to get there!

Keep the focus of the Wedding on the Relationship

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Wedding Priestess doesn’t care what anyone says. Weddings are about marriages and not about brides. The star of the wedding cere­mony and the recep­tion is the loving rela­tion­ship, not the wedding décor or the bride’s dress. You want to look fabu­lous and feel fabu­lous, but you have hard work to do that day. You’re saying yes to sharing your life with this perfect partner.

If you keep your focus on the rela­tion­ship as the source of the wedding (rather than vice versa!), your wedding cere­mony will be deeply personal and mean­ingful and your cele­bra­tion will flow easily and natu­rally from your community’s excite­ment for you.

This can elim­i­nate a lot of nasty problems

  1. bridezilla and groomzilla — if you’re cele­brating your rela­tion­ship and looking forward to making your marriage makes, you don’t hear as much about the wail: “it’s all about me.”
  2. bizarre brides­maid behavior — it’s not about them either.
  3. fabu­lous parties that mean nothing — keeping the focus where it belongs keeps people cele­brating what is true and wonderful: your love.

Tip: As you plan your wedding keep your focus on your very sweet rela­tion­ship and your dreams for a successful marriage. The wedding cere­mony will be mean­ingful, the wedding recep­tion joyous, and the marriage successful. Keep it Simple, Sweet­heart! (yeah, and lots of kisses!)

Handfasting: why you absolutely don’t want to tie your hands together

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This was always my orig­inal posi­tion and it still makes more sense to me in a hand­fasting cere­mony: Don’t have someone tie your hands together.

Let your hands fasten on one another in a free-​​willed clasp, right hand to right hand and left to left. This is such a strong visual. Your arms and bodies form an infinity circle that is fluid and adjusts easily. That’s what you want from a wedding. That’s what you want for a marriage.

In this way you aren’t tied together, you’re joined in love and by love. At any point you could let go hands — but you don’t.

The ropes are the wrong image anyway. It seems that orig­i­nally, as the woman became a member of the family, she was brought “under the plaid” or under the protec­tion of the man’s family. The plaid was clothing and bed covering. All over the world there are cere­monies that cele­brate the couple’s joining in the marriage bed by enfolding them in a blanket. (previous cultures were a little lustier than ours and a little clearer about the marriage’s rela­tion­ship to estab­lishing a lineage!)

Tip: So you decide which way you want to go in your wedding cere­mony. But whether you join hands or not, this is a lovely cere­mony that will, if you let it, evoke memo­ries of your dreams for marriage, how much you loved each other as you stood, bound in love, promising one another tomorrow, on the day that you married. That image will live with you for years!

Money, financial intimacy, wedding planning and marriage. Wow!

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Nothing is harder to deal with in marriage than money. Giving it your full atten­tion at the begin­ning, figuring out what is real for both of you and then how you’re going to deal with it is impor­tant. This can be a hard place for honesty, if money was never talked about where you grew up, you’re going to have to learn new skills. And if there’s debt or bank­ruptcy, it may feel excru­ci­ating to reveal what may feel like fail­ures. But you’re getting married and getting inti­mate. So, get going!

  1. How much money do you make a pay period?
  2. Does the money taken out of your check cover your taxes at the end of the year?
  3. How much money do you spend a pay period. Yep, keep one of those little books for at least 2 weeks.
  4. How often do you look honestly at your money?
  5. Do you have a budget and do you keep to it?
  6. What did you learn at home about money? What was said, what was unsaid but implied? Was it talked about easily and openly? Was there enough? Was it hoarded or squan­dered? Was there panic, or calm about money?
  7. What has been your reac­tion to what you learned at home? Do you do it the same way?
  8. Are you an impulse shopper? What’s the last thing you bought on impulse? Do you use it? What’s the last BIG thing you bought on impulse? Do you use it?
  9. Do you buy on credit or do you wait until you have the cash?
  10. What’s your debt level? Credit Card, Student Loan, Mortgage?
  11. How much of your paycheck goes to finance debt?
  12. What’s your saving level?
  13. Do you have money if you become unemployed?
  14. Do you have a lot of things you don’t need?
  15. Do you have a lot of things you don’t use?
  16. How were you plan­ning to pay for your wedding?

Tip: Compare them with your beloved’s. Is this too hard? Find a coun­selor or a finan­cial planner to work with. Then once you’ve got your personal stuff laid out, you need to look at what you’re taking on with the marriage. It’s now one rela­tion­ship. No more his or her debt; it’s your debt. You want to get it cleared up and out of the way. You want to clarify your finan­cial goals. You want to design a budget that works. You want to put someone in charge of it. You both want to agree to how it will be admin­is­tered, and by whom and what the excep­tions are. You want to be trust­worthy about your money stuff. Knowing and trusting one another in this area will cement your marriage together. The rewards are extraordinary.

How do you define moral intimacy as you’re planning your wedding?

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What we value is an outgrowth of where we find meaning. Each of us must do the work to under­stand our belief system and our family and communal heritage. Then we must commu­ni­cate that to our part­ners. There is still more work to be accom­plished, however. You want to get it done before plan­ning your wedding cere­mony (or maybe, more real­is­ti­cally begin this work, because this is a work in progress!). That way your wedding cere­mony and your wedding vows will be able to speak to who you are and what you value. It will cele­brate the deep value have for one another. That’s a marriage your commu­nity is going to support. If you don’t look at those things, you are likely to commu­ni­cate other things to your commu­nity: such as how you’ve not really thought very deeply about this impor­tant step you’re taking.

There’s not a lot of discus­sion about Moral Inti­macy. While the two of you may be deeply moral people (and most people are), you may not have taken the time to clarify your own code of ethics, let alone heard your partner artic­u­late his or hers. Think of your ethics as how you express your belief system in the world.

  1. What are your deepest values?
  2. How do you act upon them?
  3. How do you act against them?
  4. What are your values and char­ac­ter­is­tics of which you are most proud?
  5. What are your partner’s values and char­ac­ter­is­tics which you most admire?
  6. Where are your values most compatible?
  7. Where do you think you might need some clar­i­fi­ca­tion of values so that you can deepen your compatibility?
  8. How are your values supported by your community?
  9. Where do your values conflict with your community?
  10. How do you want to resolve those conflicts?

Tip: People with wildly diver­gent reli­gious and spir­i­tual beliefs can have very similar values. Family upbringing and commu­nity nurturing instill values in all of us. You want your values to work for you. You want to live in close align­ment with your values. When your partner’s and your values are both known and inte­gral to your life, you will be living as you want to live, together. You’ll want to commu­ni­cate that in your wedding cere­mony and in your wedding vows. Even more impor­tantly, you’ll want to live it out in your marriage. Knowing who you are and who your partner is will lessen the struggle in your marriage and heighten the plea­sure. Get clear and get going!