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when religious relatives asked you why you did it the way you did, what did you say? what kind of secular readings did you have in the ceremony, was there even a ceremony? how did you make it your own instead of rolling your eyes through a religious ceremony?
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15 Comments
December 31, 2009 in Wedding Planning - General Tagged approach, atheists...if, been, ever, fellow, married, Planning, wedding
15 Responses
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The Reverend Soleil
I was reasonably involved; though I knew it generally meant more to my future wife than to me, so I was willing to defer to her wishes most of the time.
In both cases (married twice, divorced once), the actual ceremonies were fairly non-denominational. The first one, I was too busy wincing in pain to pay much attention to the minister’s speechifying (my bride’s thumb was squeezing on the open blister on my hand the whole time); and my second wife and I wrote our own vows to avoid any overt religious references.
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We had a civil ceremony (in both senses of the word!) – though my Mother (a devout Catholic) was upset, she accepted that my wife and I were both non-believers… There was some small amount of grumbling, but honestly there was no problem…
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I let my future mother-in-law plan the whole thing, and I stood where I was told and said what I was told to say. Not a battle I considered important.
It was all for the best.
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Nope, I don’t believe in marriage.
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I have not been married yet and considering the reasons behind marriage I don’t think I want to.
However I would make it completely insane. I would have statues of the flying spaghetti monster, everyone must attend wearing a pirate suit and the bride must use a jetpack to fly in and land next to me.
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My lady and I went to a JP and there was not one religious word used.
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We just had a very simple wedding at the Justice of Peace.
It was very nice and did not cost us a fortune.
We never made a big deal out of it, simply because we did not want to.
Some still complain that we never had a “real wedding” but we are (1 year later) happier than ever and have the perfect marriage. No blessings and big celebration etc. where needed
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Just promise to be good together and promise to be loyal for as long as we were alive on this Earth.
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I’m not an atheist… but I wasn’t a Christian when I got married, and my husband was an atheist, so can I answer from that perspective? If not, I’ll gladly delete my answer.
What my husband and I did was write our own vows, and hold the ceremony outside (in the backyard belonging to an elderly lady my sister was taking care of). The music we chose was Alice In Chains’ Whale and Wasp, Mazzy Star’s Five String Serenade, Enya’s On Your Shore, and The Cure’s LoveSong. We were married by a pastor, but the mentions of God were kept to a minimum.
It was perfect for us… and our atheist, agnostic, and pagan friends were all comfortable with it too.
I did wear a white dress, even though it made my friends snicker knowingly. And my sister.
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I had a small wedding in my garden with friends and family. We had a JP that was a friend of my husbands dad preform it . We wrote our own vows and had a little prayer (our father) because I was not as against religion as much as I am now and for my husbands family and my own. I was told by more than one person it was the nicest wedding they every went to.
NO relative asked why we chose to do it that way. -
I’ve been married several times. First marriage: Ethical humanist. Second marriage: City clerk. Third marriage: Municipal judge. Fourth marriage: Non-denominational minister. She provided us with a basic format and a selection of passages we could include, and we wrote our own vows.
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ON Sunset Beach at sunset Rarotonga, Cook Islands South Pacific with a church of god minister and a Maori priest.
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It worked out that my husband is also an atheist. We are from two different countries and we planned a wedding in Barbados as we both liked the idea of a tropical island ceremony with just our closest friends and relatives. Since it was small, only twenty, they were people who were genuinely close to us and so knew religion wasn’t really something important to us to begin with. A few might not have known or still not know that we are atheists if it hasn’t directly come up but weren’t expecting a mass or some other church type setting. Our family also know. We got married in a gazebo overlooking the beach by a civil servant authorized to perform marriages. We also had a ceremony in the states to make sure it was legal as there were some issues with us being different nationalities and then the foreign wedding. That was a court house thing I did in jeans after classes one day and I consider Barbados our real wedding. I do joke with my husband now of 11 years that if he ever does want to split he’ll need two divorces to cancel out two marriage ceremonies. As for the ceremony we wrote our vows but following an outline the officiant sent us and customizing it with our own ideas. A musical friend of ours played the guitar and a song we loved as couple that had significance as part of the ceremony and my sister read a passage from a book and another friend a poem that had meaning for us. It was easy enough to explain to those outside that for us being from two distant places a third neutral territory was appropriate and that we as part of our personal tastes and the planning from a distance wanted something simple and that we aren’t part of any specific religions ourselves. If they have an issue with that then its their thing.
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I was not an atheist at the time.
I had been kicked out of my parents house the summer previous. I was living with my boyfriend to pay the bills and trying to work and go to school. I got knocked up unexpectedly. We were in love and had discussed wanting to marry in a couple of years anyway and perhaps start having kids a couple years after that. So we just rescheduled and went through with the original plan on fast forward.We did not want an ordeal with both our families present to irritate us. We did not want a preacher or any squabbling over napkin colors or money. I could not pin point my dress size as my breasts ballooned up to an enormous size just a few weeks into the pregnancy and the rest of me soon followed. (Water retention is a bee-atch.) So, we went to the court house, paid $37 and got a judge to read us the standard Bible marriage ceremony. (That was not our idea, that’s just what he used.) We ate some cake, took a nap and went back to living and working as we had before.
That was over 13 years ago. Our little trio is still happy and well. I’m glad we never had a big wedding. It just does not look like fun to me.
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