It’s a struggle because we’re not religious. I mean - really - not religious. So I don’t want a weekend minister who follows a pretty standard, ‘We’re gathered before God’ kind-of ceremony. And yet, I want our vows to be meaningful and heartfelt and symbolic of our relationship. I’m not sure a clerk of the court brings that sentiment to the table.
In a recent e-mail conversation with a potential celebrant I was asked to elaborate a little on what we’re looking for in the service and our feelings about the ceremony. This is an excerpt of what I said:
We’re not religious, or quite honestly even particularly spiritual people - just the kind of people who believe that when presented with the opportunity to behave admirably or poorly, the choice should be clear. Don is more or less a Buddhist and I’m basically agnostic.
We don’t see our marriage as “two souls becoming one”. We’re getting married because we make each other better, stronger individual people and that’s what we want reflected in the service. We’re very excited to marry one another, but we don’t think of this as the most important day in our lives, or even the most important day in our relationship - there will be days ahead that are equally important (sometimes for happy reasons, sometimes for sad reasons) and we’re looking forward to facing those days together.
We picked Ocean City for several reasons. One is that we both grew up in beach towns and feel connected to the water (Don’s from Miami). But the other big reason is that we wanted someplace meaningful to which we had a connection. We looked at probably 60 places (yay! Internet), but kept coming back to Ocean City.
So, what do you think? Does it sound like us? Is that what you would expect from our ceremony?