Best Ceremony Ever: How to Make the Serious Wedding Stuff Unique

202 Pages·2016·2.4 MB·English

by  Christopher Shelley

To my wife, King . . . at last.
CONTENTS
Introduction
ACT I
Chapter 1. Setting the Atmosphere
Chapter 2. Introduction by Wedding Officiant
Chapter 3. Designing an Unforgettable Processional
ACT II
Chapter 4. Words of Welcome
Chapter 5. Special Thanks
ACT III
Chapter 6. The Love Story
Chapter 7. Performing the Ceremony
ACT IV
Chapter 8. The Serious Stuff: Stating Intentions and
Exchanging Vows
Chapter 9. Exchange of Jewelry and Other Rituals
ACT V
Chapter 10. Wedding Zen
Chapter 11. Pronouncement and Kiss
Chapter 12. Recessional
Sample Ceremonies
The (Fictional) Ceremony of Kathryn and Iggy
The (Fictional) Ceremony of Ben and Natalya
Questions for Couples
Wedding Vow Workshop
Wedopedia
Acknowledgments
Index

INTRODUCTION
H
ello newly engaged person, someday-engaged person, smart wedding
professional, parent of a bride or groom, friend of somebody getting married,
relative of someone getting married, neighbor of somebody getting married,
literate person who enjoys learning, romantic, entertainer, fan of wordplay, lover
of love, realist, pragmatist, idea enthusiast, bookstore browser, or other. I’m so
glad you picked up this book; it was written especially for you.
In the past several years, I’ve officiated hundreds of weddings. I keep getting
hired because I keep making couples and wedding professionals happy. I make
these people happy because of my unique approach to wedding ceremonies.
Here’s a sampling of what people say to me at cocktail hours after they see
me officiate a wedding:
“How are you friends with the couple?”
“Oh my God, that was totally the Best. Ceremony. EVER.’
“Would you like an organic tomato burger?”
Mothers hug me. Fathers grip my hand and slap my shoulder, relieved and
delighted that I’ve set everyone into a buzzing-good mood. Brides and grooms
express their thanks. Bridesmaids and groomsmen who ignored me before the
ceremony slap me on the back. Other wedding vendors ask for my card. Guests
ask if I’m free for their niece’s wedding. All these people just saw me officiate a
wedding ceremony in a way they’d never seen before, and they are so happy.
This book is about how I make those people so happy, and how you can make
them happy too. Well, not those people specifically; my point is that you too can
make wedding guests happy.
Wedding ceremonies get a bad rap—for good reason. We’ve all attended
dreadful ceremonies. We’ve all found ourselves sitting in a church, catering hall,
or humid, sun-drenched field looking at our watch, longing for it to end. The
stigma about wedding ceremonies is that they are the heavy things people must
sit through to earn the cocktail hour. Somehow, something joyful has become
penance. Wedding ceremonies are the vegetables before the cake. They are the
work week before the weekend. They are whoever opens for U2.
Ceremonies have long borne the burden of being the final test for couples
before they make their bond official, one last reminder of the seriousness of the
undertaking, and an opportunity to strike fear into the couple’s hearts. I
understand why this is the case. To say that marriage is a big deal is an
understatement; marriage asks couples to care for each other through good times
and bad. Marriage asks them to make excruciating life and death decisions
together. Engagement periods are romantic, optimistic, positive junctures for
couples, when the road in front of them appears full of promise and sunshine. It
may be easy during this time to forget how heavy life can be down the road. And
yet I see no reason that families, friends, and counselors can’t remind couples of
all these things before the wedding day. In fact, I think it is downright
irresponsible for people to wait until the wedding day to try to make couples
think about what they’re doing by getting married. If the couple makes it all the
way to the wedding day without their convictions being changed, then that day
should be a day of pure celebration.
I’ve always believed that ceremonies can be meaningful and entertaining. By
“meaningful,” I mean respectful of the seriousness of the undertaking and
cognizant of the joy therein. I’ve been using years of theatrical training,
extensive study and experimentation in creative writing, a DNA-transmitted wit,
and a comedian’s sense of timing to surprise hundreds of couples and thousands
of wedding guests with entertaining yet meaningful ceremonies all over New
York, New Jersey, Ohio, Kentucky, Arizona—really, anywhere people will pay
me to go. I’ve been on The Rachael Ray Show. I’ve spoken at the UN. I’ve
written and performed a memorial service for Joan Rivers’ dog, on the late
comedienne’s show Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best.
I became a certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®, with a focus on weddings,
through the Celebrant Foundation & Institute. This is a program that prepares
people to create personal ceremonies for couples in a way that honors and
celebrates all varieties of cultural beliefs, spiritual beliefs, and worldviews. I
learned the art of storytelling, ritual, and cultural diplomacy. Celebrants are
trained to bring people of the world together through marriage. The program
takes seven months to complete and is one of the most rewarding things I’ve
ever done.
Not every couple is lucky enough to have a trained celebrant officiate their
wedding, so I encourage you to let this book get you thinking like a celebrant
and working with the person performing your wedding ceremony with a
celebrant’s eye for opportunity. This book will help couples and wedding
professionals identify the often-overlooked theatrical potential in every aspect of
ceremonies. These pages also offer tips and advice for the person performing the
ceremony—particularly in the aptly titled “Performing the Ceremony” chapter.
Good ceremonies are always a result of a couple working closely with their
officiant, so I will remind you of this often. Ceremonies are a team effort.
This book is a guide to all the usual wedding ceremony tropes and how to
exploit the magical, unique opportunities they hold in order to create an
unforgettable guest experience that still honors the couple and marriage in
general, all while minimizing the use of snooty SAT words like “tropes.”
Since I began doing this work, I’ve been finding inspired ways to utilize all
available resources: the bridal party, the family, the scenery, the music, the
staging, and, most of all, the love story itself. From processional choreography to
Greek chorus bridal parties to harp solos to hidden choirs to “unity pretzels”
from Fifth Avenue cart guys, I’ve made the most of every opportunity. I’ve
married people on swank rooftops, in hipster back patios, grand ballrooms,
catering halls, a baseball stadium, riverboats, gardens, hotel suites, parks,
wineries, libraries, a library hotel, a train station, rustic warehouses, repurposed
churches, barns, historical societies, one old retired cop’s living room, and TV
studios. All of these places contain opportunities to turn wedding ceremonies
into unique laugh-and-cry fests of celebration.
One of the most frequent clichés included in clients’ inquiries is “short and
sweet.” It is possible to have a unique wedding that is still short and sweet. A
ceremony can be contained, spare, haiku-like in its simplicity, yet unique and
inspiring. A Broadway singer with skill does not need a stage, a set, a dozen
dancers, and fabulous lighting to knock your socks off with her singing. All she
needs is a few minutes of your time, that special fire within her, and the bravery
to let it burn your face off.
Best. Ceremony. Ever. details the inspiration found in every aspect of the
wedding ceremony and shows how to incorporate loads of humor into it while
still respecting the tux-and-gown gravity of this important transitional life event.
The ideas in this book offer opportunities for a range of sensibilities and budgets.
Not everyone can afford to have their wedding in a mansion, fill the space with
couches, light it all with candelabras, and have the cast of Stomp! provide
percussion music. To those people who can, I say: buy lots of copies of this book
for friends who are like you. Not everyone wants their bridal party to enter while
dancing and shaking maracas. But for those that do, I encourage you to buy
enough maracas for all the guests, too. Not everyone wants to take the huge
transitional step of marriage in front of all their guests in an interesting way. To
those people, I say: buy lots of copies of this book for friends who are not like
you.
This book is not intended to supplant any advice from the hundreds of
wedding pros who distribute it; it is intended to add the ceremony to the
conversation, to validate this part of the evening, and to show how a ceremony
can be a springboard that makes guests appreciate the hard work of every other
wedding vendor.
“Guest experience” is a phrase I will use frequently, and one you may have
seen while browsing through the latest Twitter posts from wedding pros. Going
to a wedding is a big commitment of money and time. If you’ve ever been a
wedding guest, you know this, and you also know that it is totally worth it when
a couple is right for each other. The event is an undeniable celebration of these
two people you know so well, or whom you just met through your boyfriend.
We’ve all been guests at bad, impersonal, haphazard, slap-dash weddings. The
instinct to improve the guest experience is a good one. Ceremonies can set the
tone for a positive guest experience for everything that follows.
I recognize that there is a generation of people out there with a passion for
bespoke life-tailoring. Some would call this book a collection of life-hacks for
their wedding. To those people, I would say: call it whatever you want—I’m just
happy that you bought the book.
This is not about attaining the perfect wedding by providing exactly what is
expected; this is about heightening the guest experience at your wedding by
providing the unexpected.
Entertainment is predicated on the unexpected, and at this point I need to
explain something very clearly: you don’t need to make the entire ceremony
some completely weird modern art meets vaudeville meets Cirque de Soleil
meets stand-up comedy meets Broadway production for it to be unique (although
that would be amazing. I would totally RSVP for that wedding right away). You
can make a ceremony memorable by altering one or two small things here and
there.
I use the example of a horrified grandma to show opportunities to be creative
in a wedding ceremony. Grandma, in the context of this book, is a strict,
humorless, by-the-books, imagination-free, know-it-all, terrified guest. I’m not
sure what she’s terrified of. Invisible social things are hard to explain. Maybe
she’s afraid of what people will say . . . maybe she’s afraid of how your wedding
choices will reflect on her or her family’s good name. Believe what you will,
most of these concerns are ridiculous. The only thing anyone should be
concerned with is whether the two people getting married are right for each
other. This is not Grandma’s wedding. Grandma had her chance. So, in this
book, you’ll need to ask yourself about your own tolerance for horrifying
Grandma. Grandma represents what everyone blindly expects of a wedding
ceremony. Other people can be grandmas too: your parents; your godmother;
your best friend Joan from accounting; Geoff, your least interesting frat brother;