Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", wedding?

[StoopidMonkey]

Hi,

Both my future fiance and I aren't particularly religious and we both are open to the idea of a secular wedding that doesn't invoke religion. That said, we both want it to be as "traditional" as possible so that it looks and feels like a regular wedding. You know, the walk down the aile, "We are gathered here today", ring exchange, the "I do's", maybe even a unity candle or something. I've been to "Justice of the Peace" weddings where they were at the vows in under 5 minutes and it just seemed wrong. Has anybody been to a non-religious wedding that felt like a regular one & would like to share your experience? I know it's way ahead of time but I like gathering ideas.

Thanks!

 

[sillyberry]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

Don't worry - you can definitely have a secular wedding that feels traditional. I did! It was on the short side (about 13 minutes) as we only had one short reading and didn't do a unity candle or other ceremony, but otherwise all the parts were there.

The Wedding Ceremony Planner (I'm on my phone and can't remember the author's name offhand) is a great place to start gathering ideas!

 

[vc10um]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

It's by Judith Johnson, and can be purchased here.

Like SB said, that book will pretty much give you everything you need to plan the ceremony you're describing. My DH and I have faith, but do not belong to have beliefs restricted any one denomination, so we also used The Wedding Ceremony Planner to write a ceremony which incorporated what we felt was "just the right amount of God" into our ceremony. SB used it to write a completely secular but beautiful ceremony, which you can read here. (SB, I hope you don't mind me linking that! )

I highly recommend it!

 

[KittyGolightly]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

DH is atheist, so it was very important to us to have a secular wedding. We were married in a Unitarian church, which was very accomodating. It was a traditional ceremony in a beautiful gothic-style church, but there were no references to God or religion.

 

[slg47]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

we also plan to have a secular but traditional wedding

 

[jstarfireb]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

DH is atheist, so it was very important to us to have a secular wedding. We were married in a Unitarian church, which was very accomodating. It was a traditional ceremony in a beautiful gothic-style church, but there were no references to God or religion.

Kitty, I'm also an atheist and a Unitarian!

Our wedding was mostly traditional and secular. My friend who got ordained online officiated the ceremony. I wrote the ceremony myself and tried to draw from different cultural traditions (you'll see below there are Hebrew, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Native American elements). Not once did we use the word "god" or refer to prayer. Our ceremony was less than 20 minutes long, like sillyberry's, and the guests really appreciated that because they got to eat and drink sooner.

Here was our order of the ceremony:
-processional (both of my parents walked me down the aisle)
-opening words by officiant
-first reading (two poems, one by George Eliot and one from the I Ching)
-musical selection (my friend sang a Hebrew song)
-second reading (Kahlil Gibran)
-vows and ring exchange (we found lovely vows online and used the traditional Unitarian ring exchange script, at least according to about.com)
-officiant read the Apache Marriage Blessing
-pronouncement (stated in a feminist way rather than "you may now kiss the bride," as if only the groom has agency)
-recessional

 

[HopeDream]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

http://www.vs.gov.bc.ca/marriage/pdf/vsa718.pdf

Where I live we have licensed marriage commissioners who can perform non religeous ceremonies that are still very traditional. One of my friends got married this way and it was great!

 

[Gypsy]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

It's by Judith Johnson, and can be purchased here.

Like SB said, that book will pretty much give you everything you need to plan the ceremony you're describing. My DH and I have faith, but do not belong to have beliefs restricted any one denomination, so we also used The Wedding Ceremony Planner to write a ceremony which incorporated what we felt was "just the right amount of God" into our ceremony. SB used it to write a completely secular but beautiful ceremony, which you can read here. (SB, I hope you don't mind me linking that! )

I highly recommend it!

We had one. We used the book above. It's a fabulous tool. I walked down the aisle Cannon in D, my grandfather handed me over to my husband, our officiant thanked everyone for coming, we had a moment of reflection to remember those that couldn't be with us, then our officiant spoke about marriage and about us, we had readings (non-religious), then we said our vows, exchanged rings, were announced as man and wife and kissed. We did our own vows, but there's nothing that says you have to do it that way. You can have it be as traditional or as off the cuff as you want.

Only place we had the word God was at the end, and that was at the request of our officiant (DH's Uncle) and it was a very simple... God Bless to close out the ceremony.

 

[rosetta]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

I had a civil ceremony that was completely secular, but complete with readings, vows, rings and kiss.

It was about 15 minutes long.

I also walked down to canon D, played beautifully by our string quartet. I love that music!

 

[Echidna]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

Yes- my own! Incorporate whatever traditions/ceremonies/words you feel comfortable with and do away with the rest.

ETA. My wedding ceremony was 20-25 minutes. They don't have to be short and sweet.

 

[centralsquare]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

Absolutely - you can definitely put together any type of ceremony you want...it's your day!

 

[KittyGolightly]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

Kitty, I'm also an atheist and a Unitarian!

When I first started going to my Unitarian church, I was really surprised by how many atheists there were at the Sunday services!

 

[Future Mrs. Sterling]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

Our wedding will be exactly what you describe. FI is atheist, I am non-practicing (was raised Lutheran). There is no mention of God during our ceremony, except for what the Reverend will use in his Homily. Even then, it will be generic with no reference to any particular scripture or religion. Just open.

We are getting married outside on the shore of Lake Michigan. There will be an aisle sprinkled with rose petals in our wedding colors, orange and fucshia. There will be a string quartet for processional and recessional music. We are having one reading, a Shakespearean sonnet, and a secular song while we sign our marriage certificates (we are doing that in lieu of a unity candle). The whole ceremony will last 20 minutes, and will have the feel of a traditional wedding, just without being in a church and no particular identifiable religion over it all. Exactly what I want.

 

[stephbolt]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

This type of wedding is absolutely possible! My husband and I found a non-denominational officiant who worked with us to write the ceremony, and we incorporated the traditions that we wanted and the very minor amount of religion we wanted. Our ceremony was about half an hour, and we got so many compliments on it because we worked to make it representative of us and our relationship. I would recommend this route if you are feeling overwhelmed with the idea of writing your ceremony from scratch on your own. We paid $450 for our officiant but it was worth every bit of that.

 

[iheartscience]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

Yep, I had one too! I was actually super lazy about planning and my officiant (justice of the peace) had been doing it for years and had a standard ceremony that pretty much mirrored a church wedding so we went with that with a few tweaks. He was really great and very experienced so everything was seamless. I did have my older sister read the Irish Blessing (one mention of God) and our musician sang Ava Maria to make my Catholic parents (mostly my mom) happy.

ETA ours was probably 25 minutes long? The readings, the JOP's speech/reading thing and the lighting of the unity candle took up some time. It was a decent length of time, I think!

 

[StoopidMonkey]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

Thanks everybody! I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised at the number of people who opted for this type of wedding on the forum. Not being religious or flat out being an atheist still seems to have a heavy stigma in 2011 (could you imagine one trying to run for President, for example). There are a lot of great ideas here, yet the swarm of "yeah, me too" sentiments mean more to me than I thought they would, so thanks guys! I'm not very big on audience readings but maybe I can get the officiant to read off a thing or two to add some depth to things. About unity candles, they seem secular enough in theory but I was wondering if they had some strictly religious connotation that would make one seem very odd in a non-Christian ceremony.

 

[KittyGolightly]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

About unity candles, they seem secular enough in theory but I was wondering if they had some strictly religious connotation that would make one seem very odd in a non-Christian ceremony.

No, unity candles are a fairly modern thing and not considered especially religious. In fact, some churches won't let you have one in a religious ceremony.

 

[jstarfireb]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

Not being religious or flat out being an atheist still seems to have a heavy stigma in 2011 (could you imagine one trying to run for President, for example).

It really does have a stigma. We're assumed to be bad people with no morals if we don't believe in some sort of god or religion. Thanks for acknowledging that, and good luck with your ceremony!

 

[StoopidMonkey]

Re: Has anybody attended a secular, yet "traditional", weddi

You're welcome. Granted, I live in New Jersey so things aren't too bad over here. Most of the Christians I know are "non practicing" and see no need to go to church, which leads me to believe that if I really drilled down into it they'd be agnostics in terms of what they really believe, but there's so much variance there. What I love are the 40-60 something in-betweens that never go to church and don't know what they believe for sure, but will still make a fuss and talk behind your back if a new baby isn't baptized in the church. It's an interesting period of transition we're in right now, that's for sure.