My Big Fat Secular Wedding
by Sara on 05/01/09 filed under Favorites This Site
First off, Ted and I would like to apologize for our long absence from Skeptical Monkey. In the past eleven months, we’ve moved across the country, gotten new jobs, bought a house, and are currently in the process of planning a wedding. Sadly, in the midst of all these life-changing events, Skeptical Monkey was placed on the back burner—but that doesn’t mean we’ve lost our passion for skepticism!
Life is slowly returning to normal, and we plan to begin updating regularly again once the wedding is over.
And Speaking of Weddings…
When Ted and I first got engaged, we wondered how two secular people such as ourselve go about celebrating their marriage. As anyone who’s read this website might imagine, we both felt it would be weird and very unlike us to have a church wedding. Please understand, if one of us were religious, and desperately wanted a religious ceremony, it’s likely that the other would have gone along with it for tradition’s sake. But given that we both feel the same way, it seemed almost dishonest to have prayers, bible verses, and frequent mention of any god at our wedding ceremony. I knew I didn’t want to be standing before family and friends on what should have been the happiest day of my life, listening to a priest say that God has blessed our union and thinking, “Do you have evidence of that?”
Ted and I decided to plan an outdoor, lakeside ceremony at a country club, and we booked a “Humanist Celebrant” to officiate. In lieu of bible verses, we plan to have poems, such as “The Art of Marriage,” read at the ceremony. I specifically requested the band play “secular” music (they were not sure what that meant, so I had to tell them to please stay away from pieces like “Ave Maria”). If I had really felt like causing a stir, I might have somehow incorporated the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Invisible Pink Unicorn into my wedding jewelry, or named each table in the reception hall after a famous Atheist like Dawkins or Harris. Luckily, Ted was there to reign me in—and we both agreed that the very lack of any religion in the ceremony would be unsettling enough for some guests.
Which, of course, brings me to my final concern. I know our immediate families are fine with (or at least, tolerant of) our choice of ceremony. However, I can’t help but wonder if a good number of religious guests will arrive expecting a traditional Christian ceremony (my family members will be expecting Catholicism; his, Lutheran) only to be greeted by a Humanist Celebrant reading from “The Little Prince” by “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Will they shoot us icy stares? Or make snide comments? Or perhaps get up and leave halfway though?
Ted and I have decided, of course, that our family members may react as they will, as long as we get to have the wedding we choose.
What Have Your Experiences Been?
Now, if I can address our non-religious readers: how many of you have had secular weddings yourselves? How many of you have had to endure religious weddings for the sake of our partner? How many of you still look ahead to your own wedding days, not quite sure how you’ll handle it?
Whether the wedding is calm or riddled with angry outbursts, we’ll be posting a follow-up of the big day for all those who are interested. Stay tuned!
Gwen
May 1st, 2009
The wedding just got more interesting!!
Sara
May 1st, 2009
Hopefully, interesting in a good way!
Sarah M.
May 1st, 2009
Congrats on your engagement…however delayed this may be. Also, glad to see you guys are still alive! I was worried when I stopped getting updates on my RSS feed.
eruvande
May 2nd, 2009
My husband and I are both non-religious. All my people are Southern Baptist; most of his are Methodist. Without my permission and unbeknownst to me, my mom invited some folks from her church to our wedding. One of them jumped on our officiant right afterward (he practices Tibetan Buddhism, is ordained Unitarian, and performed a completely non-religious ceremony for us) to ask him what business he had marrying people if he wasn’t going to mention God. >_<
Apart from that it went off pretty well.
But then it was also a medieval-style wedding to which we invited people to come in costume, so there was enough else to look at that people didn’t bother with the God stuff, I think.
Congratulations and I hope it goes off well for you too!
Joe
May 14th, 2009
Hey Sara,
I was just talking to Chris about this actually, and I think realistically it could go either why. While obviously nobody in our immediate family will be concerned, I do wonder how some of the more religious guests will react. You know who I’m talking about.
Chris and I think that while some subtle religious remarks might be made, (traditional stuff like God Bless the Newlyweds or something) there probably won’t be anything “obnoxious” (which you are conversely refraining from as well). Most of the guest should be able to take the hint.
Your brother
Aunt Donna
May 15th, 2009
If you remember, we did not get married in a church. I tried to appease G & G and my inlaws by having a willing priest do the ceremony but he had a family emergency that morning & was replaced by a woman last-minute. I did hear some comments afterwards ( all of which I dismissed easily), nobody meant any harm, they were all said matter-of- factly. Anyhow, our marriage is not recognized by the church. The only time this came into play again was when Jim wanted to get the kids christened. The church asked that we get remarried (we haven’t) by a priest – anyway they went ahead & christened the first 2, we’ll see what happens with our third now. We cared very much about making our parents happy, and I didn’t care enough about what kind of ceremony we had, I just wanted it outside and on the water. It’s an easy one when you don’t feel strongly about religion. I cared more about the appetizers!
Now to veer completely off-topic —when you get pregnant, let me know how you feel about circumcision — do your research & get back to me, we’ll talk…