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Writing a ceremony almost as difficult as planning the wedding

Emily Campbell

The wedding planning continues despite me praying for all the madness to cease so I can get just one night of sleep without an anxiety nightmare.

This week I’ve been trying to write our wedding ceremony. My older brother is going to officiate, and he’s never done it before, so I thought it might be nice to write something up for him to follow along with.

I’ve written a lot of things before – articles, essays, resumes, blogs and even the first chapter of a fiction novel – but never anything as serious as a wedding ceremony. I turned to my favorite website, Pinterest, to figure out where to start. And while Pinterest is awesome because it gives you so much information at once, it’s also terrible because it gives you so much information at once.

Turns out, just like a wedding itself, there are hundreds of ways to write a wedding ceremony. Religious, secular, casual, formal, funny, serious, and on and on. My head was spinning after only ten minutes of reading into it. Luckily one of the posts did explain that most ceremonies follow a certain set of topics in a certain order. At least I had a starting point.

My fiancé and I are not religious, so our wedding is going to be a bit different from most. For starters, our ceremony is being held outside, not inside a church. We aren’t having any religious readings or prayers, and the ceremony should only last about 15 to 20 minutes to avoid guest boredom. And while I don’t want a stand-up comedy routine, I also don’t want a super serious, tense ceremony.

So … a short but meaningful ceremony that doesn’t bore anyone, is serious enough to be significant but funny enough to remember … no pressure, right? I started out by compiling some of my favorite vows, quotes and poems into one large Word document. Then I gave it to my fiancé and asked him which ones were his favorites, so we were able to pick and choose each portion.

The whole thing isn’t entirely written yet, but we have a rough draft, which is a good start for my brother in case he wants to add anything of his own to the ceremony. And we’ll keep working on it until it’s perfect – even if I have to suffer nightmares up until the day of the wedding!