Ashley and Greg chose a really special date for their wedding: their sixth anniversary!
They were married at the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City, on a very windy Saturday, overlooking the river and New York City. Ashley and Greg laugh a lot, so we, of course, had to include that in their ceremony, with a sweet and funny retelling of their first meeting – where the both promptly fell in love at first sight!
They wrote their own vows, and kept them a secret from one another – but managed to cite the same private joke, and each mentioned the special meaning behind their wedding date. It really showed how in sync Ashley and Greg are, and how well they complement each other.
We concluded their ceremony with a Shakespearan sonnet, which felt very approriate as we braved the winds during the ceremony:
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.
All in all, it was a wonderful ceremony for two wonderful people, who, even after six years, are still head over heels in love with each other. Ashley and Greg, I loved being a part of your wedding! Congratulations again!
All photos are courtesy of Black Dog Photography.
I always bring copies of their vows for the bride and groom, and I couldn’t believe how well the vows coordinated with Ashley’s bouquet!
You can see Ashley’s beautiful engagement ring, with sapphires!
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.
This was a wedding I’ve been looking forward to for what seems like forever! Eliza and Chris were so excited, and had a great vision for their wedding ceremony, right from the beginning, and I was so glad they found me and let me act as their guides in creating a beautiful ceremony.
They eventually decided to have their ceremony in Central Park, with just their immediate family and, oh, you know, a few dozen random onlookers who joined us to watch, too. We took advantage of the intimate setting to include a ring warming, passing the rings through all of the guests, to warm them, bless them, and imbue them with happy thoughts for a good marriage. We also took a popular reading (“The Blessing of the Hands”) and incorporated it into the handfasting and the ring vows.
The weather was perfect, and I could tell that the bride and groom were so happy to share this moment with those closest to them and finally be married! I am so, so glad that they found me, and that I got to be a part of their wedding. Love and congratulations, Eliza & Chris!!
Photos by Oh, Darling! Photography. Check out more of the day on their blog!
See more reviews of Eclectic Unions – Custom Wedding Ceremonies by Celebrant Jessie Blum on Project Wedding.
I’ve been enjoying my non-wedding season “down time” by doing lots of my own wedding planning! We’ve accomplished a lot, and were so excited to share and celebrate our engagement with our family and friends at our engagement party in December.
Shannon of Fromage Photography was nice enough to travel up from Philly to take photos, so we have great pictures of the party! Both Dan and I aren’t great at bringing the camera place and remembering to take shots, so it was so great to know we had someone awesome ready to capture it for us!
There were two stars of the party: my friend Ben & Emily’s adorable son Caleb, and the cake!
Caleb being zerberted by Dad while Mom looks on!
There were some wonderful moments captured, too.
The two essential elements to any Blum holiday or celebratory dinner are a giant cheese plate and an immense amount of delicious smoked salmon. Of course, the party included both! Along with other delicious finger foods.
We demolished the cake.
And Shannon captured many great moments throughout the rest of the day, too.
Like me crying as Dan throws the Vulcan symbol after the toasts (ended with “Live long and prosper”).
Laughing at another toast.
Chatting with my grandmother, who was meeting Dan for the first time.
My grandma, and Robin, who was generous enough to open her home and host the party, along with my mom!
Attacking the food!
My mom with Caleb!
It was the first time that our families met each other, and was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Dan and I still dream about that cake!
A very popular element that many of my couples chose to include in their wedding ceremony are special readings, pieces of poetry or prose that really resonate with them, that they want to include in their wedding ceremony. But there are so many options out there! As a wedding officiant, I try to guide my couples towards some readings that I feel are good choices for them!
Here are a few of my favorite readings that I’ve compiled, maybe there’s one you’d like to include in your ceremony?
Any of these can be edited down a little, if you feel they are too long, and can also be incorporated in certain places of the wedding ceremony as well, like the closing remarks or before the vows.
From Union by Robert Fulghum
You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. At some point, you decided to marry. From that moment of yes, to this moment of yes, indeed, you have been making commitments in an informal way. All of those conversations that were held in a car, or over a meal, or during long walks – all those conversations that began with, “When we’re married”, and continued with “I will” and “you will” and “we will” – all those late night talks that included “someday” and “somehow” and “maybe” – and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart. All these common things, and more, are the real process of a wedding.
The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another, “You know all those things that we’ve promised, and hoped, and dreamed – well, I meant it all, every word.”
Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another – acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, even teacher, for you have learned much from one another these past few years. Shortly you shall say a few words that will take you across a threshold of life, and things between you will never quite be the same.
For after today you shall say to the world –
This is my husband. This is my wife.
From The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
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 the same cup
Sing and dance together and be joyous,
But let each one of you be alone
Even as the strings of the 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.
From The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
from The Art of a Good Marriage by Wilferd Arlan Peterson
A good marriage must be created.
In marriage the “little” things are the big things.
It is never being too old to hold hands.
It is remembering to say, ”I love you” at least once a day.
It is never going to sleep angry.
It is having a mutual sense of values, and common objectives.
It is standing together and facing the world.
It is forming a circle that gathers in the whole family.
It is speaking words of appreciation, and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.
It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.
It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.
It is not only marrying the right person — it is being the right partner.
The Confirmation by Edwin Muir
Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.
In my mind I had waited for this long,
Seeing the false and searching for the true,
Then found you as a traveler finds a place of welcome
suddenly amid the wrong valleys and rocks and twisting roads.
But you, what shall I call you? A fountain in a waste,
A well of water in a country dry,
Or anything that’s honest and good,
an eye that makes the whole world bright.
Your open heart, simple with giving, gives the primal deed,
The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,
The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea.
Not beautiful or rare in every part.
But like yourself, as they were meant to be.
From Plato’s Symposium
Humans have never understood the power of Love, for if they had they would surely have built noble temples and altars and offered solemn sacrifices; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done, since Love is our best friend, our helper, and the healer of the ills which prevent us from being happy.
To understand the power of Love, we must understand that our original human nature was not like it is now, but different. Human beings each had two sets of arms, two sets of legs, and two faces looking in opposite directions. Due to the power and might of these original humans, the Gods began to fear that their reign might be threatened. They sought for a way to end the humans’ insolence without destroying them.
It was at this point that Zeus divided the humans in half. After the division the two parts of each desiring their other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one. So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of humankind.
Each of us when separated, having one side only, is but the indenture of a person, and we are always looking for our other half. And when one of us meets our other half, we are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other’s sight even for a moment. We pass our whole lives together, desiring that we should be melted into one, to spend our lives as one person instead of two, and so that after our death there will be one departed soul instead of two; this is the very expression of our ancient need. And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called Love.
From Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love.
Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. And great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. And even loved in spite of ourselves.
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
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.
Falling in love is like owning a dog by Taylor Mali
First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?
On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.
Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.
Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.
Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!
Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you’re all wound up and can’t move.
But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.
Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.
From Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky
From The Irrational Season by Madeleine L’Engle
But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.
To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.
Love by Roy Croft
I love you
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.
I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.
I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can’t help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find
I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple.
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.
I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good.
And more than any fate
Could have done
To make me happy.
You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it
By being yourself.
Perhaps that is what
Being a friend means,
After all.
Sonnet 17 by Pablo Neruda (one of my all time favorite poems!)
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
in which there is no I or you
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand
so intimate that when you fall asleep it is my eyes that close
Tin Wedding Whistle by Ogden Nash
Though you know it anyhow
Listen to me, darling, now,
Proving what I need not prove
How I know I love you, love.
Near and far, near and far,
I am happy where you are;
Likewise I have never larnt
How to be it where you aren’t.
Far and wide, far and wide,
I can walk with you beside;
Furthermore, I tell you what,
I sit and sulk where you are not.
Visitors remark my frown
Where you’re upstairs and I am down,
Yes, and I’m afraid I pout
When I’m indoors and you are out;
But how contentedly I view
Any room containing you.
In fact I care not where you be,
Just as long as it’s with me.
In all your absences I glimpse
Fire and flood and trolls and imps.
Is your train a minute slothful?
I goad the stationmaster wrothful.
When with friends to bridge you drive
I never know if you’re alive,
And when you linger late in shops
I long to telephone the cops.
Yet how worth the waiting for,
To see you coming through the door.
Somehow, I can be complacent
Never but with you adjacent.
Near and far, near and far,
I am happy where you are;
Likewise I have never larnt
How to be it where you aren’t.
Then grudge me not my fond endeavor,
To hold you in my sight forever;
Let none, not even you, disparage
Such valid reason for a marriage.
Notes on Marriage (Made When Deciding Whether or Not to Marry) by Charles Darwin
Not Marry?
Freedom to go where one liked
Choice of society and little of it.
Conversation of clever men at clubs.
Not forced to visit relatives, and to bend to every trifle…
To have the expense and anxiety of children – perhaps quarreling.
Loss of time – cannot read in the evenings.
Fatness and idleness.
Anxiety and responsibility.
Less money for books.
If many children, forced to gain one’s bread (but then it is very bad for one’s health to work too much).
Perhaps my wife won’t like London, then the sentence is banishment and degradation with indolent, idle fool.
Marry?
Children (if it please God)
Constant companion, who will feel interested in one (a friend in old age)
Object to be beloved and played with – better than a dog anyhow
Home, and someone to take care of house
Charms of music and female chit chat – these things good for ones health but terrible loss of time
My God, it is unthinkable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, and nothing after all.
No, no, won’t do.
Imagine living all one’s days solitarily in smoky dirty London House.
Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, and books, and music perhaps – compare this vision with dingy reality.
Marry! Marry! Marry!
Eclectic Unions is now a part of Style Me Pretty’s exclusive vendor listing, their Little Black Book!
Style Me Pretty’s Little Black Book is a highly edited collection of wedding service providers – from mom and pop boutiques to A-Listers. Bottom line, these vendors are the best of the best.
You can check out my officiant listing here – I’m honored to be included. If you haven’t check out the Style Me Pretty Blog, take some time to check it out – lots of beautiful wedding inspiration and ideas to be had!
