Words about love and marriage in the wedding

By Sarah AirdCategories: All About Weddings

This entry is part 5 of 18 in the series Australian Wedding Ceremonies

After the processional, the introduction, and the giving away/family acknowledgement, the next element of my wedding ceremonies is usually some words about love and marriage. There are lots of different ways of creating this section; here’s how I do it.

Length

I like to keep this section relatively short and sweet. Honestly I find it incredibly boring when celebrants bang on for a page or more about their views on love and marriage. Let’s be honest, that’s often what they’re doing: talking about their views, not necessarily the couple’s views. And who wants to hear a ~~diatribe~~ sermon on the celebrant’s feelings about love and marriage? Doesn’t that feel kind of … “priest”-like? Aren’t we here to find out how the couple feels? So a paragraph or two is enough for me.

Creation

I have two different ways of creating this section of words about love and marriage: ~~stealing~~ borrowing from other much-more-talented-than-me writers, or using the couple’s own words.

Other writers

I have a massive ceremony script template that I’ve built over my years as a celebrant. It has all the sections of the ceremony laid out in order. Under each section’s subheading it has lots of bits of words I’ve collected over the years. Some I’ve written myself, some I’ve found in celebrant Facebook groups, and some I’ve ~~pinched~~ borrowed from books/poems/essays.

When I’m developing this section for a specific couple, I’ll scroll through my template, pick one of the paragraphs that I think fits them pretty well, and adjust as needed. Sometimes I don’t have anything that says what I want to say so I write something brand new. To be honest that doesn’t happen very often. I don’t see the point in spending time and effort trying to write something new about love and marriage. Love is probably the most-written-about topic of all time. Pretty much anything I could come up with has probably already been said, and already been said way better than I could say it.

I know a lot of celebrants boast about starting every ceremony from scratch and that all their ceremonies are unique. I personally don’t know how that’s possible. How many ways are there to say “please turn off your phones?” And really, how many ways are there to talk about love and marriage? I don’t feel bad about using similar wording in multiple ceremonies. If they’re the right words for that couple and that situation, and if I’m comfortable saying them, they’re going to get used often.