Unitarian Universalist Wedding Ceremonies

A Personalised Approach

Our view of marriage

As in all religious traditions, Unitarian Universalists celebrate the joining of two lives with vows and symbols. In form these ceremonies are similar to many weddings in other religious traditions that they might include prayers and the singing of hymns - some of the language used would remind the first-time observer of traditional occasions across the lines of denominational practice. But Unitarian Universalist weddings are different in several important ways.

A personal choice

First, Unitarian Universalists do not view vows of marriage as a sacrament. This word, which really springs from the Latin for "holy act" is seen by orthodox churches as being "an earthly and visible sign of a spiritual reality". In the case of most Christian ceremonies, this means that the joining of two people is something that is "ordained by God" but enacted on earth. Thus the sacramental act of marriage is dependent upon certain theological beliefs for its existence. Unitarian Universalists, in contrast, emphasise that the decision to marry is made by two individuals in relation to their communities and their own spiritual visions, rather than as an act of obedience and conformity to particular religious codes.

Adding the spiritual dimension

Based on our long history of relying more upon reason and conscience rather than holy books, the rite of marriage in a Unitarian Universalist place of worship has more to do with the desire of people to add a spiritual dimension to their freely chosen act - rather than to receive endorsement in accordance with a particular tradition's view of God. Because of this, Unitarian Universalist ministers and worship leaders encourage the participants to examine their own motives and to seek their own ways of making a "holy act". Couples are helped in deciding the form of language used in the ceremony

On first contact with a Unitarian Universalist minister or lay leader, many people are surprised to discover that there are no tests or "right answers" to be produced. Often people coming to interview who have been divorced, or who come from varying religious backgrounds (Anglican and Jewish, for example), may be anxious that they will either be turned away or will have to agree with certain tenets or creeds. To the contrary, most Unitarian Universalist worship leaders will only wish to assure themselves that the couple have thought seriously about their desire to be married, and that they wish to celebrate it in a spiritual context. Because we believe in the right of each person to seek her or his own spiritual reality, there are no "right answers" at all.

Elements of the service

Couples will discover that the minister wishes for guidance from them as to appropriate language, readings, music and vows. These may come from many religious traditions, or from none. A Unitarian Universalist wedding might include words from the Koran or the Bible, with readings from Walt Whitman or Rabindranath Tagore. In some countries there are no set words which must by law be used; in England and Wales there are two short sentences which are legally required for a valid marriage ceremony. All other elements within reason are open to discussion. If the couple do not wish to take a major role in designing the service, the minister, with the couple's permission, is able to do so. In general, weddings are arranged in good time to allow participants to consider what they wish to include, from prayers and solo vocalists to kissing the bride.

When Selecting the venue Religious ceremonies of blessing with or without civil marriages may take place at any suitable location - on a beach, in the rain forest or even including the garden of your own home.

Whom should I contact? Most Unitarian Universalist churches and fellowships have someone who can help you with specific questions. If you do not know of a Unitarian Universalist congregation nearby, use the contact list below to bring you to a list of congregations in that country. You may be put in touch with a minister or lay leader, or someone who has responsibility for "special services" within the congregation.

The details of your wedding plans can be worked out following initial contact, including other considerations, such as music and flowers.

You will find that the process of marriage in a Unitarian Universalist church can be a help in a very important rite of passage. The spiritual significance of the act, as in all Unitarian Universalist events, is entirely yours to decide and enjoy. The wedding readings actually go all the way to z but I don't want to overwhelm you.

Readings

1-A Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments; love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds Or bends with the remover to remove. O, no, it is an ever fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown although its height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within its bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with its brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no one ever loved. —William Shakespeare

1-B (Lindbergh’s comment is based on the lines from Blake) Those who bind to themselves a joy Do the wingËd life destroy; But those who kiss the joy as it flies Live in Eternity’s sunrise. —William Blake

When you love someone you do not love them all the time in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity—in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. For relationships too, must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits—islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the security of the winged life, of the ebb and flow, of intermittency. —Anne Morrow Lindbergh

1-C

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but joyful and swift and free. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back—it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it. The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined. —Anne Morrow Lindbergh

1-D

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. —I Corinthians 13:1-10, 12-13 (NRSV)

1-E

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely. … Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. —Song of Solomon 2:8-14

1-F

Listen! I will be honest with you. I do not offer the old smooth prizes, But offer rough new prizes. These are the days that must happen to you: You shall not heap up what is called riches, You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve, However sweet the laid-up stores, However convenient the dwelling, You shall not remain there. However sheltered the port, and however calm the waters, You shall not anchor there. However welcome the hospitality that welcomes you, You are permitted to receive it but a little while. Afoot and lighthearted, take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before you, The long brown path before you, leading wherever you choose. Say only to one another: Camerado, I give you my hand! I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law: Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live? —Walt Whitman

1-G

Marriage is a gradual, a fraction of us at a time. It takes years to marry completely two hearts, even of the most loving and well-assorted. A happy wedlock is a long falling in love. Young persons think love belongs only to the brown-haired and crimson-cheeked. So it does for its beginning. But the golden marriage is a part of love of which the bridal day knows nothing. A perfect and complete marriage, where wedlock is everything you could ask and the ideal of marriage becomes actual, is not common, perhaps as rare as perfect personal beauty. Men and women are married fractionally, now a small fraction, then a large fraction. Very few are married totally, and they only after some forty or fifty years of gradual approach and experiment. Such a large and sweet fruit is a complete marriage that it needs a long summer in which to ripen and then a long winter to mellow and season it. But a real, happy marriage of love and judgment between noble men and women is one of the things so very handsome that if the sun were, as the Greek poets fabled, a God, he might stop the world and hold it still now and then in order to look all day long on some common example thereof. —Theodore Parker

1-H

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup, but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping, For only the hand of life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together; For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love. —Kahlil Gibran

1-I

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as people strive for right; I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! —Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1-J

Shine! Shine! Shine! Pour down your warmth, great sun! While we bask, we two together. Two together! Winds blow south, or winds blow north, Day come white, or night come black, Home, or rivers and mountains from home, Singing all the time, minding no time, While we two keep together. —Walt Whitman


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