choosing
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to start sharing excerpts or adaptations of the book I’m working on. If you’re reading this newsletter or following my blog or Substack, first, thanks for reading! And second, I’d love your feedback! Please let me know if anything grabs you, whether with a smile or a raised eyebrow, or if you have any gut responses to the ideas I’m putting forward.
“If people do not challenge the style, they are effectively accepting the content.” from Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions
I’m writing a book about weddings. More specifically, it’s a guide to design a wedding. Even more specifically, it’s a guide for you to design a wedding that reflects your experiences, identities, and values.
Who are you?
You’re getting married or you’re otherwise involved in a wedding, and you want tools to make it reflect the experiences, identities, and values of the people at the center. Perhaps you’re a to-be-wed but you don’t have a tradition to draw on because you didn’t grow up with a cultural or religious practice that is meaningful to you. Or maybe you’re excluded from that tradition. Or maybe you want to create an interfaith or intercultural wedding that thoughtfully and appropriately blends old or creates new traditions. Or maybe you want to step off the path of the cisheteronormative patriarchy. Or maybe you just want to innovate and do something really cool.
Who am I?
I’m a lifelong student of ritual and how we use it to impact relationships, build communities, and shape culture. As an educator, I served as a teacher, campus minister, program leader, and administrator in independent schools, and now I’m a ritual designer, wedding officiant, and author, but whatever work I do, whatever role I’m in, I always rely on the critical lens I’ve developed as a ritualist. I believe very strongly in the power of rituals as both vehicles for inducing joy and building community and as tools to create culture. Weddings provide couples an opportunity to create their ideal worlds, and even the subtlest choice can provoke new perspectives on the purpose of weddings and the nature of marriage.
What are we doing here?
I’m capturing an approach to weddings that is rooted in my practice as a ritual designer. This approach begins with reflection to identify what’s important to you before focusing on your vows, the heart of your wedding. When you’ve identified the values and the core promises that will shape your marriage, you can build the ceremony and adjacent celebrations that will constitute your ideal world. Along the way, you will create an experience that is truly, authentically, and uniquely you without perpetuating outdated values.
But let me be clear: this approach isn’t for everyone. I’m not picking a fight. I’m not out to critique religious or cultural traditions, but if any of these ideas help you discern how to adopt, adapt, reframe, reject, replace, or deepen practices from your own tradition, cool. Traditions thrive when practitioners continually reflect on what, why, and how they’re doing what they’re doing. If you’re taking this reflection seriously, whatever your tradition and however your idea of a wedding evolves, I heartily applaud you.
On the other hand, I am picking a fight, but I’m an ant facing an elephant. I’m picking a fight with the Wedding Industrial Complex. It’s an extraordinary industry made up of talented and dedicated professionals and small businesses that serve their clients very well. However, the WIC is complicit in perpetuating and prioritizing misogynistic, heteronormative, classist and racist practices and values. I know, I know, that’s what the market demands…but I’m hopeful that my friends in the WIC can see the ways to sustain their work in a way that directly contributes to broader social change. I don’t claim to have a solution to all of the problems of the world, but I offer a starting point for building the world you want to live in. This approach begins with some core assumptions.
The person is infinitely more important than the institution.
Our actions are meaningful and impactful; through them, we create our reality.
We are capable of imagination and ethical discernment. We can imagine the world we want to live in and identify the ways to create that world.
Reflection is essential for understanding, making meaning, and creating.
Ritual is a tool we can use to impact relationships, build communities, and create culture.
Ritual actions are not isolated; they give tangible form to, idealize, and promote particular values. To repeat or imitate an action is to perpetuate the values baked into it.
A wedding isn’t a marriage. But preparing for a wedding should begin by making space to prepare for your marriage.
The Wedding Industrial Complex (WIC) isn’t evil, but…it requires profitability and relies on nostalgia. This has a negative impact on relationships, communities, and culture.
The function and understanding of marriage has evolved significantly; wedding practices have not. The contemporary “American Wedding” is a fantasy projection akin to “Manifest Destiny.” In its current form it is a peculiar anthology of 19th century Protestant theology, medieval European royal court customs, and practices originating in the most extreme forms of patriarchy.
The only action required to make a ritual a wedding is the public declaration of commitment before requisite witnesses. Everything else is the experience you want to create.
So…where do we go from here?
In the coming weeks, we’ll move through…
Vows | We’ll reflect on the purpose of vows, identify the specific promises and values that will shape your marriage, and explore formatting options.
Building the ceremony | We’ll reflect on the world you want to create and identify the people, places, and ritual actions that will make up your ceremony.
Adjacent celebrations | We’ll consider how to extend the ideal world of your ceremony into other celebrations before, during, and after your wedding.
How to | I’ll offer brief guides for Offiicants, Wedding party members, Guests, and Vendors.
