Meeting With Your Officiant

2009-02-15T09:11:00.000-08:00

One of the most important steps in planning your wedding is the meeting with your officiant. Get together for a cup of coffee and see if you feel comfortable talking with them. It is vitally important to feel free to express your ideas for your wedding. Once a structure for the ceremony is in place, elements may be added or subtracted with ease. Remember, it's YOUR big day.

Here are some questions which may help get you started thinking about how you'd like to celebrate your wedding. Also, I find it helpful to picture weddings you've been to in the past and try to remember things you really liked or didn't like about those ceremonies. Hit the internet for unique and creative ideas, and ask your officiant about their ideas.

+Would you like to write your own personal vows, or have the officiant write the vows and have the bride and groom repeat them?

*One note - a wedding is probably not the best place to have to recall a long reading from memory!

+Would you like to include any religious traditions or readings in your ceremony?

+Do you want family and friends involved in readings or rituals such as lighting a Unity candle?

2009-02-06T07:18:00.000-08:00

Spring bookings are coming in, so that's a nice thing to look forward to. I have lots of ideas for renewal ceremonies that dovetail well with the arrival of gentler weather.

I wish there were more outdoor winter weddings though, sometimes. I think really interesting things could be done with frost as a theme - frosted branches and icicles, pinecones and boughs with a blanket of snow. I did just get married myself (again) in Northern England, so I know how it is to walk around in a wedding dress in January.

Flowers done by Tiffany Fieldhouse, dress by UPCFashion.com.

Please email me tiffany.fieldhouse@gmail.com for wedding officiant information and bookings. I'd love to help you create a beautiful, meaningful ceremony.

A wedding in the Japanese gardens

2008-11-09T14:35:00.001-08:00

Here are some images and the vows we wrote from my own wedding, which took place on October 19, 2008. We did a Japanese tea ceremony, and I wore a red kimono. We were lucky in that the weather was perfect for our day. Click on the photo below for lots more!

LD – Welcome honored family and friends ! We’ve come here today to witness and celebrate the marriage of Chris and Tiffany. “Therefore, we celebrate with them their arrival at the portal of true and conscious loving. We are incredibly happy for them and with them that one of the landmarks in the vast landscape of their becoming is the love that has brought them, and us, to the joyous occasion of this marriage” . Today we are present in the energy of seeing two people radiant in love and so perfectly suited as partners for each other.

A Japanese garden is a place for inner reflection and tranquility. In this setting, we can listen to our breath and experience life. It is fitting, then, that Chris and Tiffany have chosen this garden to begin their lives together with reverence for and connection with nature. The Japanese tea ceremony is a ritual that connects the mind and body in the respectful act of sharing nourishment. It is a way to speak, through action, of the bride and groom’s commitment to care for each other, and to extend thoughtful compassion into the world.

Tiffany and Chris will spill a small amount of tea at the end of the tea ceremony to symbolize that they cannot fully celebrate until all loving relationships are accepted legally and equally.

[Tea Ceremony]

LD – Now we’ll move through the gate to the field, where Chris and Tiffany will exchange vows. Please stand or sit near the fence. While the vows are being taken, please pass around this bag containing Tiffany and Chris’ rings and give them your good karma and best wishes for their marriage.

Marriage can be an incubator, a safe harbor to grow and transform. “For it is the alchemy of the relationship itself that transforms us. That which we became in the presence of another person – the person we love most deeply, the person we choose to marry and spend our whole life with, the person in whose presence and as a result of whose actions causes us to change, ultimately to transform – brings us inescapably into the being of our highest selves. We become who we were meant to be”.

[Tiffany reads her personal Vows]

[Chris reads his personal Vows]

LD - In conscious living, in growing beyond our own ego, we begin to understand and experience transcendence. Following is a traditional Buddhist Marriage Homily.

Nothing happens without a cause. The union of this man and woman has not come about accidentally, but is the result of many past lives. This tie therefore, cannot be broken or resolved. In the future, happy occasions will come as surely as the morning. Difficult times will come as surely as night. When things go joyously, meditate according to the Buddhist tradition. When things go badly, meditate. Meditation in the manner of the Compassionate Buddha will guide your life. To say the words love and compassion is easy. But to accept that love and compassion are built upon patience and perseverance is not easy. Your marriage will be firm and lasting if you remember this.

[Statement of Intent]

LD- read to Tiffany, then Chris
In a path through life which has not always brought joy, in which your experiences have caused you to doubt yourself, to doubt your own wisdom and the essential self which led to that path, do you now choose to start anew? To begin again with a new love, a resurgent belief in yourself and your own potential for joy? Do you, _________, choose to marry
______________, truly in sickness and in health, for richer, or for poorer, for the long unfurling future?

[Ring Exchange]

LD- Read each sentence, then Tiffany/Chris will read back:

This ring is a symbol of my heart,
of my very best self
joining forever with you,
the promise of wholeness
and the promise to make the world a better place.

[Readings – Lau Tzu]
Tiffany - “See Clearly”

Your love is a great mystery
It is like and eternal lake
whose waters are always still and clear like glass.
Looking into it you can see
the truth about your life.

It is like a deep well
whose waters are cool and pure.
Drinking from it, you can be reborn.

You do not have to stir the waters
or dig the well.
Merely see yourself clearly
and drink deeply.

Chris - “Transforming Power”

Your love contains the power
of a thousand suns.
It unfolds as naturally and effortlessly
as does a flower.
and graces the world with it blooming.
Its beauty radiates a transforming energy
that enlivens all who see it.
Because of you, compassion and joy
are added to the world.
That is why the stars sing together
because of your love.

[Kiss and Presentation of Married Couple!]

Service Available - Wedding Flowers!

2008-11-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

This is my wedding bouquet, made the day of the wedding from locally-sourced flowers and greens. I've also made available gorgeous terrariums, which look incredible on reception tables. Please email me for costs.

Sacred Ceremonies

Meeting With Your Officiant

A wedding in the Japanese gardens

Service Available - Wedding Flowers!