How Ceremonies enable New Beginnings
The central attraction for me about creating Ceremonies is the long enduring tradition of their purpose in enabling transition. In 2022 ‘Fun’ is on a lot of our minds, or the lack of it. Covid and the long years of restrictions have left us thirsting for fun. Sometimes having fun at our weddings is a central motivation and that is a really valuable thing. Of course we want to have fun at our ceremony and it is definitely not always on offer at every ceremony. But it isn’t my starting point. My starting point is your story.
For those of you thinking of booking me for a ceremony you need to know that my central focus is ‘Meaning’. Your ceremony with me will be Meaningful. I have a light touch and my ceremonies are never serious or sombre. There is always laughter but their focus is on meaning. Ceremonies have always traditionally happened as Rites of Passage. They are conducted to mark Life Events. Births, Namings, Marriages, Religious Initiations, Deaths. They mark our movement through our lives. They mark transition and often transformation.
If you are moving into a marriage with someone this is a significant point in your journey so far. It is a marker in that journey. There is a ‘before’ and there is an ‘after’. It is marking the moment at which you moved your relationship forwards. Finding Meaning in your ceremony is important. A moment like that needs to be meaningful. It may be that the meaning is ‘fun’. It might be the point at which you decided to prioritise fun. Thats a brilliant thing. For others it will be an opportunity to leave the past behind you. For others it will be healing. For yet others it will be a chance to join your two families together. Jasmin and Luke, pictured here, saw this ceremony as they ‘Spiritual ceremony’ and they saw the Legal ceremony as one thing and this as the point at which they became ‘Spiritually married’. I’ve never heard that said before but I really like it.
In life we place ‘meaning’ onto our words, actions, dates and places. I will listen to your story and hear about what that day means for you, what the colours say about you, why particular words resonate. I will listen to the ‘why’ of your decision to marry, and the ‘what’ of why you’ve chosen your ‘how’.
You will be doing things for a reason. Very little about your choices will be arbitrary and they will all relate to your Life and Love Story. If you dog is a ring bearer it is because they are important to you and your family. If your daughter is doing your handfasting there are reasons why that is an important choice for you. If you are being walked down the aisle by both your Biological parent and your Non biological parent at the same time, there is a reason for that. If you decide not to have an aisle but get married in a circle or if you use non-gendered pronouns, all have meaning. All are part of your story. All are important. They help you to declare your values and priorities to yourselves and those around you. They strengthen your resolve. They offer clarity. They mark a point in time at which you said and believed particular things about yourselves and your relationships at that time.
People often find that Weddings and Namings change things for them. There is a remarkable amount of healing that takes place at a Wedding or a Naming Ceremony. I don’t know that it is always obvious that this is the case unless you do a job like mine. People move on from painful surgeries, from difficult labours, family discord, unresolvable complex issues that demand acceptance. They move on from trauma, from grief, from all kinds of parts of their journey they are happy to leave behind them. They integrate their pst histories as they go. They move on. They decide to journey forwards. I often ask my couples ‘why now’? “why get married now?’ and most of the time people reply by saying ‘it felt like the right time’ and usually a ‘because’ follows quickly.
People’s reasons vary, some marry for legal reasons because of practicalities like needing to draw up Wills. Others marry because they want to have a baby and feel right about it. Others want a party. Sometimes the reason for the ‘now’ is simply circumstantial. They have the funds and before they had no money. But most people really deep down have profound reasons for why they are doing what they are doing and why they are doing it now.
One thing is for sure. It has to be your decision to do this at this point in your story. When you come to me you will have to opportunity to tell you story and share it in all its preciousness. You will have decided I’m the right person to tell your story at this point in your journey.
Get in touch if you’d like to share your story with me and start to move into a new phase of your journey through life.
