Draft Wedding Ceremony
DRAFT AS OF MARCH 13, 2007
Dave and Rachel’s Wedding Ceremony
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Chair Setup:
The chairs are arranged in the round- ideally on the patio, with corridors open facing to the north, east, south, and west. Map the corridors with a compass, if possible. Done. The chairs form an X pattern relative to the building.
Directions: Helen enters from the west (water; wisdom); Gina from the east (air). She gets a basket with things to carry held inside it. Dave enters from the south (fire), and lights the candle when he reaches the center; Rachel enters from the north (earth). Entrances are one at a time and in the order above.
Helen: Welcome, everyone. Today, we are gathered from as near as here in Berkeley and as far as Africa and London to bear witness to the wedding of David Watt and Rachel Medanic.
We have gathered here in the presence of the divine and this beautiful space to witness and celebrate their marriage. They have asked me to thank you, their community, for the blessing of your presence. You have helped build the foundation of character that David and Rachel each bring to this union. From this strength and wisdom, they start their life together today in this place.
And I want to ask that we be blessed today by the four directions – the North, the South, the East and the West.
First, the North, which represents power and right action. The Warrior in us lives in the North, and it is there that we find our sense of leadership and ability to show up. Healing in the North is done through dancing; the season is Winter, and the warrior’s instrument is the rattle. (rattle is played) Shira has said she has the instruments covered.
And we ask for blessings from the South, the direction of love. This is where the Healer in us resides, and it is there that we learn about the ability to pay attention to what has heart for us. Healing in the South is done through storytelling; the season is the Spring, and the healer’s instrument is the drum. (drum is played)
We ask for blessings from the East, the direction of intuition and insight, where our Visionary lives. The East teaches us about clarity, spontaneity and the ability to tell the truth; and it is there that we learn about playfulness and humor. Healing is done through singing; the season is Summer and the instrument of the East is the bell. (bell is played)
Finally, we turn to the West, the direction of wisdom and trust. This is where the Teacher in us lives, and it is also the direction of our ancestors. We are taught about detachment and flexibility here, and about letting go. The teacher heals through silence; her season is Autumn, and her instruments are sticks or bones. (sticks are played)
Marriage is like two trees that lay down roots together. As the poet Janet Miles wrote:
A portion of your soul has been
Intertwined with mine.
A gentle kind of togetherness, while
Separately we stand.
As two trees deeply rooted in
Separate plots of ground,
While their topmost branches
Come together,
Forming a miracle of lace
Against the heavens.
Both strong, growing some branches together, and their tops, and deeply intertwining their roots.
Back in January, David and Rachel spent a weekend up in Mendocino writing this ceremony. They researched vows and rituals, while sipping hot chocolate, surfing the Internet, and watching the rain come down as they sat by the fire at the Mendocino hotel.
And they searched for ideas about weddings. They thought about trees, and nature, and roots, and how they love this space, and how to incorporate symbols of nature into their ceremony.
Then, during one of their Google searches about trees, they learned about Banyan trees.
Banyan trees, common all over India and southeast Asia, like to have lots of space in which to spread themselves out. As the tree grows and matures, new roots grow from all its branches, pushing into the ground and forming new trunks. A single Banyan tree may lay down dozens of trunks. Banyans are known as trees that walk, because unlike other trees that have to stay rooted in one place all their lives, the Banyan tree actually moves forward slowly with every new trunk it puts out. It is always cool and shady under a Banyan tree, and because of the number of trunks it has, this tree is full of cozy, dark niches and interesting little cubby holes that house a variety of creatures.
If you think about it, a good marriage is a lot like a Banyan tree. Over time, it moves forward and grows, in ever greater complexity. The marriage creates a protective space. Animals and children are welcome within, and they can be nurtured within it. In its shade and security, friends and family can feel welcome too.
David and Rachel’s story together involves the Christmas Revels, a holiday show which David and many friends here (including me) sing and dance in every year. Tom Robinson and Theresa Nelson, both of whom are here today, tried for years to persuade David to sing in the Revels. He finally signed up for the show in 2003, where he met Rachel during the first week of performances. She’d been in the 2002 show, but in 2003 instead volunteered to help the men in the cast put on their stage makeup. They first met when David sat down in a barber chair in the back of the food room at the Scottish Rite Theater, and Rachel applied his eye liner, blush, and lipstick.
By the way, David would like to acknowledge a debt to a nameless actor, the man who was a star of the Revels show that year. He and this actor look, well, somewhat similar. At their first meeting, Rachel mistook David for the other guy.
When David sat down in Rachel’s makeup chair, she looked at him and said, “Oh, you’re the evil one.” Well, no, actually, that was the other one – his character was a thorn in the side of Will Kemp, the protagonist.
But, as pickup lines go, it worked pretty well.
David and Rachel enjoyed dancing together at the Revels cast party a week or so later. As they talked, David mentioned that he was looking for an apartment in Oakland. At the end of the evening, they nearly parted without exchanging phone numbers – it was only at the very last minute that Rachel handed David a business card, and offered to help him look for a place to rent in her neighborhood. David agreed. Full of boyish enthusiasm, he showed up on her doorstep with half an hour’s notice on the cold morning of January 2, 2004. They spent four hours talking about the neighborhood and themselves, and managed not to see a single apartment together that day.
David eventually moved into a one-bedroom place, located a ten-minute walk from Rachel’s apartment complex. Which worked out well, because parking in that neighborhood still remains a nightmare. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Jeannette Rehrig and Tom Robinson will now perform a sweet old song first performed by Jefferson Airplane in 1967 – just after David was born, and just before Rachel.
Comin’ Back To Me, by Jefferson Airplane
The summer had inhaled
And held its breath too long.
The winter looked the same,
As if it had never gone,
And through an open window,
Where no curtain hung,
I saw you, I saw you,
Coming back to me.
One begins to read between
The pages of a look.
The sound of sleepy music,
And suddenly, you're hooked.
I saw you, I saw you,
Coming back to me.
You came to stay and live my way,
Scatter my love like leaves in the wind.
You always say that you won't go away,
But I know what it always has been,
It always has been.
Small things like reasons
Are put in a jar.
Whatever happened to wishes,
Wished on a star?
Was it just something
That I made up for fun?
I saw you, I saw you,
Coming back to me.
[Since it’s sort of a wistful song, we need to pick up the mood here & we need more transition words from Helen].
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116
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 wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his 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 man ever loved.
David and Rachel chose these vows from the Celtic tradition. They like the primal feel these vows bring, something ancient, out of time.
David, please repeat to Rachel:
I vow to you the first cut of my meat, the first sip of my wine;
from this day on, it shall be only your name I cry out
and into your eyes that I smile each morning; [ Low drum ]
I shall be a shield for your back as you are for mine.
Above and beyond this, I will cherish and honor you
through this life and into the next [ Low drum ]
Ye are blood of my blood and bone of my bone
I give ye my body, that we two might be one
I give ye my spirit, till our life shall be done.
[ Low drum ]
Rachel, please repeat to David:
I vow to you the first cut of my meat, the first sip of my wine;
from this day on, it shall be only your name I cry out
and into your eyes that I smile each morning; [ Low drum ]
I shall be a shield for your back as you are for mine.
Above and beyond this, I will cherish and honor you
through this life and into the next [ Low drum ]
Ye are blood of my blood and bone of my bone
I give ye my body, that we two might be one
I give ye my spirit, till our life shall be done.
[ Low drum ]
[Gina, the six-year-old daughter of one of Rachel’s best friends, will bear the rings.]
Gina, may we please have the rings? David takes his ring first and repeats the following:
With this ring I thee wed, as a symbol of love that has neither beginning nor end.
Go little ring to that same sweet
That hath my heart in her domain.
Rachel takes David’s ring and repeats:
With this ring I thee wed, as a symbol of love that has neither beginning nor end.
Go little ring to that same sweet
That hath my heart in his domain.
All rise: repeat the pronouncement: Dave and Rachel, you are married!
Having exchanged vows and rings, etc. We’re pronounced
husband and wife.
[ We’d like to do the drinking and breaking a glass here,
if we can figure out how to make it fit. ]
Feelin’ Groovy
Exit to the south, and disappear behind the building for a while.
Reception notes: Parties of three or more need to sing a song with the word love in it. One verse or chorus will be okay.
Theresa will announce the reception at that point.
People will clap when we reappear. No need to announce. (Someone on a mike saying something to us?)
Arrange for our families to be close by when we re-enter. Families will be close by.
Begin the open mike with Getting in Tune by The Who.