How to Make Your Wedding Spiritual
A wedding ceremony is an intensely personal expression of the love two people share and as such, it should appropriately reflect the values and tenets of the couple’s relationship. If spirituality is important to you and your significant other, there are many ways to incorporate it into your ceremony and share it with your friends and loved ones regardless of what, if any, faith you belong to.
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Instructions
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Have a hand-fasting ceremony. Hand-fasting is an old European ceremony demonstrating the binding agreement between a betrothed couple that has been adapted as a part of the wedding ceremony to represent the joining of you and your spouse hand in hand through life. Joins hands and have the officiant or family members and guests bind your hands together with a length of ribbon. During the ribbon tying, have the officiant or special guest give a speech emphasizing your commitment to each other and your faith or spirituality. Speeches are available online, but they can be individualized to represent your faith and ideals. For an inclusive ritual, give guests a length of ribbon when entering the ceremony to add to your hands or ask family members to symbolically wrap your hands a little bit at a time.
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Perform a sand ceremony, which represents you and your spouse becoming one. Place two small vases — each filled with different colored sand — on a table near where you take your vows. Put a clear empty vase between the two. During the ceremony, you and your spouse each pick up one of the smaller vases of sand and pour them together in the large vase while the officiant explains the symbolism of the two becoming one to the guests. Have each of your family members pour a little sand into the larger vase to symbolize two families becoming one family with your union, if you wish. Ask the officiant to incorporate your spirituality into her speech.
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Have a candle ceremony. Place two small taper candles on a table next to a large unlit candle. You and your spouse each light a small taper and use it to light the large candle together. For faiths where color and light are important, the candle ceremony is a versatile way to incorporate your spirituality. The light of the candles can be explained as representing the light of your faith becoming a stronger flame with your union. Use different colored candles to represent love, unity, faith or spirituality, depending on what they represent in your faith or culture.
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Write an invocation to open the wedding ceremony and set the spiritual tone for the rest of the ceremony. Commonly given after the bride walks down the aisle, the invocation is usually used in Christian ceremonies, but you can adapt it to any faith or spiritual belief system. Ask a deity or spiritual force to look down on and protect you and to favor your union. Traditional invocations and prayers are readily available on the Internet, but you or the officiant can write one. Choose meaningful spiritual quotes or religious passages, call upon guests to recognize your union.
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