Using a ceremony you find here
If you decide to use a ceremony you find here as your finished wedding or as a basis for your wedding, please email me! I am interested in your plans, your experience with the ceremony, your partnership, and photos. Give me as much or as little information as you like. If you contact me at least a month before your ceremony, I might be able to send you some tips or even a gift! Also, I am occasionally available to officiate at weddings.


Copying your ceremony

If you choose to use a wedding you find here, you'll have to turn it into a script by copying it. I recommend that you copy the ceremony into a word processor, but you can copy it by hand if you prefer. Change its names to your names and change its gender pronouns to fit you and your partner. Fill in a personal phrase wherever your ceremony calls for it. And remove those explanations and directions that you won't need to read during the wedding (directions that offer several ways to complete a single part of the ceremony, for instance).

Once you make copies of the ceremony for every participant in your wedding, secure the pages of each script in some sort of binder or folder that each participant can flip through to read the ceremony aloud. Or get each copy bound at a print shop – spiral binding is particularly easy to flip with one hand while standing. Your script will probably end up looking something like a choral singer's folder of music. It will be quite prominent during the ceremony, so make it attractive. You might print the script on nice paper and cover your binder with pretty cloth or paper that matches your wedding outfit.


Speak loudly, speak slowly

One word of advice on how to deliver your ceremony's lines: slowly. The language of the weddings you'll find here is denser than that of most weddings. If you read your ceremony loudly and slowly, your guests will understand what you say and they will have time to process the ideas and images you describe. If you speak too quickly, your guests will not follow your thoughts, and they will feel bored instead of involved with the meaningful experience of your wedding.

Most people can project loudly enough to be heard by a small audience. Unless your voice is impaired or you expect lots of guests and lots of wind, try to project. This will save you the difficulty of moving around while you're wired to an amplifier. Rehearse your wedding in the space you'll hold it in, planting a listener in the farthest nook you expect a guest to sit in, and see if you can project loudly enough for your listener to hear you. If you can't, or if you conclude after rehearsing that projection will ruin your experience of the ceremony, get a microphone.

Copyright 2007 Kelly Fine. You may print this document for your personal use. Do not reproduce it by other means or for another purpose without my permission.