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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781596271784 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing Inc. |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2007 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 96 |
| File size: | 636 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Dearly Beloved
NAVIGATING YOUR CHURCH WEDDING
By Andrew MacBeth
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 2007 Andrew MacBethAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59627-178-4
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Whether you have received this book from your pastor or picked it up on your own, its intent is the same: to help you develop some hopes and expectations about what it will mean to plan a Christian wedding with your future partner and your pastor. The book will be particularly useful to those who come from a "liturgical" tradition like my own Episcopal Church, but it will provide principles and suggestions that will be useful to other couples too.
This book will be most helpful if you read it not only before you meet with your clergy person, but before you encounter the morass that is the modern American wedding industry. It is not that the wedding industry is full of bad people (though it has its share). But it is an industry, smaller than automobiles but larger than steel at our last reckoning. In recent years, Americans have spent an estimated $40 to $50 billion a year on their weddings and honeymoons. To be more specific, the average wedding (without the honeymoon) now costs nearly $30,000, according to 2005 statistics. The large amount of money to be made on weddings makes it a little difficult to know who you can trust. Although I do not know your pastor, he or she is likely to be a trustworthy person with whom to plan, and an ally in dealing with the expectations of family and merchants. Here is why.
First, your pastor has probably seen a lot of weddings, large and small, in many different situations. Second, he or she is grounded in the church's tradition, which can be a great resource to you, as well as a balance to the tyranny of whatever is trendy at the moment. Finally, the pastor has little to gain from a wedding economically. (We will talk about the minister's fee, but it is seldom large enough to provide a motive for doing more weddings.) He or she may, however, hope to build a stronger relationship with you, or want to get you more involved in the life of the congregation. And a pastor may take some satisfaction in helping you plan a wedding that is both deeply Christian and truly reflective of your personal values.
If you do not have anyone in your life just yet whom you would call "your" pastor, don't worry; the process of planning for a wedding is a great way to find out if you want one and to begin such a relationship if you do. Unlike the family members and friends who have so much invested in you (and perhaps in the way they think you should do things), the pastor is one person who can help you sort out which of the expectations of others to meet and which ones to modify.
Whether you obtained this book from your pastor or the bookstore, reading it will equip you to take an active, knowledgeable role in planning your own wedding. Since this is something one hopes to do just once in a lifetime, most people are stuck with few reliable resources for the task—just the weddings we may have attended, the suggestions of people in the wedding industry, and the general cultural assumptions about weddings that currently reign among our friends (and perhaps our parents' friends). This is unfortunate, because there is a rich and varied tradition regarding Christian weddings. Take the time to learn a bit about this tradition in the pages that follow and you will be able to shape a wedding that is both distinctively yours and deeply grounded in Christian tradition.
CHAPTER 2
Why a Wedding?
Since you are reading this book, you have probably already decided on having some kind of wedding to celebrate your marriage. Why do we do this? There are a number of reasons, even excluding such unpleasant possibilities as the desire of the couple or someone's parents to show off or hold the kind of wedding their friends or friends' children have had. One valid reason is the desire to share the beginning of a marriage with those special people who have made you who you are and who will form your support system in the months and years to come. Another is the chance to paint a picture for yourselves and your friends of the life the two of you envision sharing. A clear vision can be a powerful resource for the future. A wedding may also represent a way for members of those powerful, clingy systerns we call "family" to take account of the fact that something new has happened in their web of relationships, and to begin to relate to you in new ways.
One of the things I occasionally do at a wedding is ask the couple standing at the chancel steps to turn around and look at the congregation they have assembled for this day. Ideally, it will include many of the people who have shaped their lives and actually loved them into being the individuals they are today. I may remind all those assembled that some of the bride and groom's life- shaping people are no longer living. For your wedding it is appropriate to try to gather the family members, teachers, mentors, and coworkers whose lives have had the greatest influence on you. If the number of people you can invite will be limited by the kind of reception you envision, you might want to rethink those plans. The wedding should drive your plans, not the party! (See the suggestions about receptions in chapter 6.)
Couples should also think about who will be in their support system when the wedding is over and day-to-day living begins. If your pastor does not ask you to do it in your counseling sessions, then something you should do on your own is to take a big piece of poster paper or newsprint and draw yourselves a diagram of those you expect will be vital to you and how you are connected to them. Include people from your work, church, neighborhood, and community involvements. Do not include friends from the past with whom you no longer have an active relationship. Are most of your special support people on the guest list? Some of them may not actually know how much you are counting on them unless you tell them. If you plan it well, your wedding can serve as a sort of commissioning for your supporters, a chance for you to acknowledge how important they are to you and a chance for them to make a commitment to give you the help you will need.
Finally, whether we recognize it or not, most of us are part of families who exercise a powerful influence on us, even years after we become independent adults. A wedding does not change this reality, but it can be a formal opportunity for family members to recognize that the constellation of relationships around you is changing. Your primary allegiance will now be to your new spouse. You will have not only your own family but your partner's to deal with now. This can be wonderful or worrisome, and it is usually a bit of both. Because planning a wedding is often stressful, the process can provide an opportunity for you to understand better the family dynamics your spouse-to-be grew up with and continues to live with today. If either of you is young or comes from a family that still tends to treat you primarily as their child, it will be especially important for you to make your own decisions in creating your wedding. Handing parents a few disappointments can help them comprehend the changes that should be underway at this point. If you cannot set your own course now, do not expect that this will change when you get back from your honeymoon.
To be honest, most people do not really plan their own wedding. They simply reproduce, with minor variations, the weddings they have seen friends or family members have. Many couples have sadly realized, even before the day of the wedding, that they have ended up with a wedding that does not really reflect their values and their vision. Often the disconnect has to do with spending money in ways they cannot justify, despite the fact that there is clearly no correlation between the cost of a wedding and the future happiness of the couple. A wedding should be a real celebration, but where does a good party end and excess begin? You can talk with your pastor not just about the marriage you envision and the wedding service at which he or she will preside but about the whole wedding process. Together, you can strategize about how to make your wedding an event that truly represents your best values and your hopes for the future.
CHAPTER 3
Why a Church Wedding?
In most western nations today, having a church wedding requires a much clearer choice than it does for Americans. In these other countries, marriages are legally complete when one leaves the government office that records them. Only in the United States are clergy routinely licensed to perform marriages in the name of the state, a considerable irony given our highly valued tradition of separation between church and state. Exactly how this works varies from state to state, but in most cases, when a couple goes to the local government office where marriages are recorded and fills out the paperwork there, what they are doing is indicating an intention to marry. The marriage will be recorded as complete only when a minister, magistrate, or some person who is licensed to oversee the exchange of marriage promises certifies that the couple has actually made them. In most of the United States, therefore, the assumption is made that some sort of ceremony beyond what happens at the marriage license office will probably take place. This may just happen in the office of the marriage commissioner down the hall, but it is more likely to happen in a church or a church-like setting, no matter what the religious sensibilities of the couple may be.
For this reason, a church with an attractive sanctuary will have people coming to the door from time to time who assume that making arrangements for using the church building should be like any other part of their preparations—a matter of scheduling, cost, and groundrules. If one or both of you are serious Christians, however, your reasons for choosing to have your wedding in the church may be different.
The most obvious reason for having your wedding in a church is that the building is a tangible symbol of God's presence. Of course, Christians believe God is present everywhere. But churches are specifically designed to be a visible sign for us of God's presence, to help us tune in to the fact (of which we may not always be aware) that God is there. For Christians and for Jews, there is a strong tradition suggesting God cares that commitments between people are made and kept, particularly marriage commitments. A number of the Ten Commandments involve the commitments of marriage and family, and not only the one that says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Although Jesus does not seem to have been married, at least one glimpse we get of Jesus' life involves his participation in a wedding in the village of Cana, and quite a number of the parables that Jesus told display an intimate familiarity with the way weddings were celebrated in his own time.
What specifically is God's stake in the marriage of two Christians? At baptism, we say that each disciple of Christ is given unique gifts, gifts that are intended to be used by that person to carry out the specific task or "ministry" to which God has called them. Given our theology of vocation, most Christians would say that God's call to each of the individual partners in a marriage has to be respected and, hopefully, advanced by their new call to marry. It may also be that the couple can accomplish things for God together that would be unlikely for them to do individually.
Whether your pastor is open to performing a wedding in some setting outside the church building is a question you can explore with him or her, if you have a reason for doing this. Perhaps the reception is going to be held at a remote location, such as a family ranch, which is a long way from the nearest church. In practice, I have found that many couples who want a Christian minister involved but do not want the wedding itself held in a church are avoiding something. Most often, that "something" is the question of the couple's own religious commitments. Perhaps the groom is far more deeply religious than the bride. Or perhaps the bride's family is so devoutly Roman Catholic that the couple, who don't want to get married in the Catholic Church, think it will be less of an issue if they do not get married in a church at all. Whatever the situation, if this sort of religious confusion applies to you, it is worthwhile trying to sort out some of the questions before you plan the details of your wedding.
If the question of just how much "church" you want in your lives is an issue for one or both of you, you will find that most clergy will understand your questioning about faith and the church, and you may be able to find a pastor who will be helpful in working it out. Let me share what my own congregation says to couples who are wondering about whether or not they want to be married in our church—or any church!
Getting Involved
If you are not already involved in the church, do not fear. You may find that some clergy are a bit reluctant to talk about weddings with people they have never seen. It makes a huge difference to us if the couple has actually come to church together once or twice to check us out. Believe it or not, clergy are often frustrated with couples who do not seem to take the planning of the wedding service as seriously as we do. A little theological seriousness on your part will be greatly appreciated by whoever meets with you about your hopes and plans for your wedding and your life together. Let the pastor know you have been reading and talking together about marriage. He or she will be impressed!
What if you come from different religious traditions? There are whole books on this subject. As with any other couple, however, the willingness of your faith communities to get involved will depend greatly on whether or not you have an active relationship with them. In my own experience, it has proven easier to work with a couple where both have a strong religious commitment, however different, than in a situation where either the bride or the groom is just religious enough to want to do things in his or her own way. Most clergy will be more than willing to invest the extra time and effort required to help craft a wedding ceremony that respects both of your faith traditions—if you will do the same.
CHAPTER 4
Concerning the Service
THE PROCESSION
More energy gets spent on how the wedding party enters the church than on the whole rest of the service! This is probably unfortunate, but it's not likely to change anytime soon. The procession matters because it sets the tone for the rest of the wedding and helps tell the congregation what sort of event this is. Let's look at some of the ways that the formal "gathering" of the wedding party can be carried out—and what they signify.
What many of us think of as the "traditional" wedding procession dates back only to the late Victorian age. Being able to mount an elaborate procession meant that a family had, or aspired to, a certain social status. There are glaring problems with repeating this kind of procession today. Having the bride and groom enter the church from different directions symbolizes suspicion, not unity. Your wedding is not a confrontation between the Hatfields and McCoys; it is a gathering of those who love you, united in support.
Another element of "traditional" processions—placing a veiled bride at the end of a long line of bridesmaids—does give the bride a certain importance, but it also turns her into an object for evaluation. The custom of veiling the bride and not letting the groom see her on the wedding day is a throwback to the days of arranged marriages, when the bride and groom really might not know who they were marrying until they met at the altar.
In some places it is still the custom for the bride's father to stand between the bride and groom for the first part of the service, another symbol of suspicion. Under this scenario, the father only takes his seat after the Declaration of Consent—that is, after the groom has declared his intentions to be honorable. Passing the hand of a woman who cannot see where she is going from one male to another suggests that she is a helpless creature who needs custodial care. Asking the question, "Who gives this woman to be married to this man?" makes it official. The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer has discouraged this practice since 1976, though some couples who wish to include it in the service soften the patriarchal imagery by having the parents of both the bride and the groom "give away" their children.
In summary, the statements that these "traditional" elements of the service make may not be what the couple intend when they say they want a "traditional" service. More likely, the call for tradition is a plea for a service that touches the heart, sounds an appropriate note of solemnity, and represents a genuine celebration.
Some couples want to cut down on the pomp and circumstance involved in a wedding, for a variety of reasons. I happen to think that older couples and folks who have had previous marriages should celebrate just as lavishly as younger couples. However, if simplicity is your goal, one of the best ways to achieve it is by eliminating the procession. Just have the bride and groom take seats in the front row of the church's seating area ten minutes or so before the wedding. Relax and enjoy the music (you are having music, aren't you?) until it is time for the service to begin.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dearly Beloved by Andrew MacBeth. Copyright © 2007 Andrew MacBeth. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Why a Wedding?
3. Why a Church Wedding?
4. Concerning the Service
5. The Shape of the Service
6. Other Things to Think About
7. Unusual and Nontraditional Weddings