Weddings in the New Century

This segment of the "album project" brings us to the most recent events which have happened. Many unforgettable moments in weddings took place in the first decade of the Third Millennium.  The most important moments include the events of “9/11” which will change forever the awareness of Americans who know that we are in a world more touched by outside events than at any time since December 7, 1941 when World War II began.

I have wondered often if events after 9/11 would influence the promises made in weddings. Does the threat of an airline hijacking make our lives feel differentl?. Are couples more or less likely to want wedding?. Will the language of weddings change?

I read that just after 9/11 a great surge in weddings took place;  perhaps it was the result of couples feeling that their lives had been threatened and there was urgency in their connectedness.

(1). Before the horrors of 9/11, the decade, indeed the century seemed peaceful and promising. Such was the he first wedding I did in the 21st Century was for Corinne Raef and Surya Jayaweera, on Lake Arrowhead on May 27, 2000.  Corinne brought to their wedding her beaming smile inherited from her Irish ancestors.  I trust it will always be on her face as I remember her into this decade.   Hers was the first wedding which I performed in the New Century.

   
They wanted words spoken that day which affirmed the ultimate intimacy between then and yet the awareness that they marriage would strengthen the “individuality of each”.  Then wanted read the words of Rainer Maria Rilke that their marriage was not such as “creating a quick community of spirit by tearing down and destroying all boundaries, but rather a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his/her solitude”…She has had a career as a community college adviser and he as a CEO of Software Co.  His ancestors came from Sri Lanka, and he brought a strongly supportive family in splendid costumes to the San Bernardino Mountains that day, and she brought her beaming smile. I kept their ceremony and include it now for their benefit and others who might wish to select parts of it herewith:

Huntley: Dear friends, we are gathered here at this hour to witness and to celebrate the drawing together of two separate lives. We have come so that this man, Surya, and this woman, Corinne, may be joined in marriage. It is not to be entered into lightly but with certainty, with mutual respect, and with a sense of reverence that does not preclude beauty, humor, or joy.
           " Love can be one of the highest experiences that come to humankind. At its best it reduces our selfishness, deepens our personalities, and make life far more meaningful.
            "All significant experiences are of concern to our fellow men and women. Two people in love do not live in isolation from the wider embraces of humanity. To achieve love is not to be absolved of social responsibility. So it is that the institution of marriage is ordained as a public recognition of the private experience of love and as a sanctifying of both parties to its greatest purposes.
           " Matrimony symbolizes the ultimate intimacy between a man and a woman; yet this closeness should not diminish but strengthen the individuality of each partner. A marriage that lasts is one the always has a little more to grow. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said that marriage in not a matter “of creating a quick community of spirit by tearing down and destroying all boundaries, but rather a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude…once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them” no less than one another" (Arisan 106).
            Kahlil Gibran echoed these sentiments in The Prophet:
           
            Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone,
            Even as the string of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music…
            And stand together yet not too near together
            For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
            And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
           
          "  Thus it is out of the resonance between individuality and union that love, whose incredible strength is equal only to its incredible fragility, is born and reborn.
           " Today’s celebration of human affection is therefore the outward sign of a sacred and inward commitment that religious societies may consecrate and states may legalize, but which neither can create nor annul. Such union can only be created by loving purpose, be maintained by abiding will, and be renewed by human feelings and intentions. In this spirit these two persons stand before us.
            Will you now please clasp your right hands?

            Do you, Surya, pledge your faithful love to Corinne for the rest of your life?

Groom: I do.

Huntley: Do you, Corinne, pledge your faithful love to Corinne for the rest of your life?

Bride: I do.

Huntley: Surya, what pledge do you offer in token of these vows?

Groom: This ring.

Huntley: As you give this ring, symbol of your commitment in marriage, to Corinne, repeat after me:

“With this ring I wed you and promise to take you to be the light of my days, the comfort of my nights;

[Groom repeats to bride]

To love and to cherish, to honor and to comfort, to support and to nurture, to challenge and to grow…

[Groom repeats to bride]

To double our happiness and halve our sorrows, in hardship and in ease, to have and to hold from this day forth!”

[Groom repeats to bride]

Huntley: Corinne, what pledge do you offer in token of these vows?

Bride: This ring.

Huntley: As you give this ring, symbol of your commitment in marriage to Surya, repeat after me:

“With this ring I wed you and promise to take you to be the light of my days, the comfort of my nights;

[Bride repeats to Groom]

To love and to cherish, to honor and to comfort, to support and to nurture, to challenge and to grow

[Bride repeats to Groom]

To double our happiness and to halve our sorrows, in hardship and in ease, to have and to hold from this day forth!”

[Bride repeats to Groom]

Huntley: For as much as Surya and Corinne have consented together in wedlock, and have pledged themselves to each other in presence of this company, I do now pronounce that they are husband and wife. Let all others honor their decision and the threshold of their house.
           " For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the hardest of all our tasks, the ultimate test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation…Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become…a world to himself for another’s sake…human love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
            "May these two people, now married, fulfill this covenant that they have made. May they openly give and take from each other, encouraging each other in whatever trials that may befall them, sharing in each other’s joys, helping each other as occasion requires. Having grown to trust themselves and each other as occasion requires. Having grown to trust themselves and each other, may they be unafraid to trust and welcome life. Yet may they not merely accept and give affection between themselves but also seek the lonely and the outcast in friendship. May they be willing and grateful to return love.
          "  We who are present, and those not here who care, hope that the inspiration of this hour will not forgotten. May they ever seek to achieve the perspective of serenity amidst conflict and of courage amidst any twilight of despair. Novelist George Eliot once asked: “What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined…to strengthen each other… [and] to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.”

I had known Corrine from the time she took my first year seminar-"The Eagle and the Crane" a study of the relationship of Japan and America. She remained my advisee through her junior year she spent at Waseda University in Japan, where I taught in the year l986-7.During Homecoming Week-end in October of 2010 I was able to make a presentation on my "wedding album project" to alumni. Corrine appeared, full of the same sense of excitement of the year 2000 she had at her wedding. She reported that she had beautiful children, and she asked if I would do her sister's wedding in March 2011. I agreed to do so. Below is a fascination image she sent in December 2010

(2) The wedding of Eli Loya and Steven Lozano.

Here are Eli Loya and her Dad just moments before she walked down the aisle to be married to Steven Lozano.  This picture I took seems to reflect her strong faith conquering all the threats of the 21st Century.  I include it here for her pictures bring back strong memories of her reactions to the events of 9/11.

After September 11, 2001, Eli ministered to me.  She must have realized that my belief that good will ultimately triumph over evil was put into question in the9/11 Attack  on New York and Washington; indeed,  I was shocked and saddened by success of the terrorists in hijacking four American airplanes, flying intointo the Twin Towers in New York City; one into the Pentagon in Washington and one into a hillside in Pennsylvania.  I know now that it was also a shock to the whole world.  Every day for some weeks, Eli quietly brought selections from the Psalms and put them on my office door. 

The joy on her face captured in her wedding pictures helps me, if even 5 years later, to remember the acts of kindness against a background of horror I felt in 2001. 

Eli had been a teacher’s assistant in my spring 2001 World Religions class. Looking back now that spring semester before the shocking events of “9/1/1,” I realize now nine years later with that act, I lave lost any expectation of peace I had for our planet. Each day the world seems to be more threatened.  I wonder if she and others who enrolled in the class look back on that spring to ponder whether the study of religions in a global context served to help understand some of the forces that brought both good and evil into our world.

Meanwhile, Steven Lozano, Eli’s bride groom had enrolled in my first year seminar class entitled “The Eagle and the Crane.”  Steven remained an advisee of mine for several years as he completed his degree in philosophy.  He often greeted me on campus to chat,  not revealing his attraction to Eli until his senior year. One rainy spring night as I brought Steven back to campus from a meal we had shared, he sat in my car and declared his love for Eli.  I was not surprised by his passion and enthusiasm, but I remember thinking to myself, “Steven, you shouldn’t be here telling me of your love, you should be telling Eli.”  As time passed, I realized that he had already done so! Below is a picture of Steven at the wedding ceremony at Trinity Church in Redlands, waiting for Eli to come down the aisle.

Waiting on the stage of the church stood Steven, like a quarterback of a football team, supported by his black suited linemen.  Here is what Steven recently wrote that he was thinking that very moment: "I will not begin to try and put into words what my 'being' felt and believed on our wedding day.  Finite words cannot hold the eternity of the moment.  My dreams of a life-time to wed the single most beautiful and captivating woman this side of heaven...as she walked down the aisle to take my arm forever, my being felt as if, just once,  in "modern society" that I too, was a Great Warrior of the old days who completely enveloped this heroine in my love... in my arms.  Then, to utter the words,” I will love you my whole life...You and no other"; is a moment in time that can never be relived.  I will fight for you...for that is why I am "here,"...my eternal lover…” (Thoughts on our wedding day, by Steven Lozano)

Eli shared her thoughts recalling the day she walked down the aisle to marry Steven as follows: "I was ready; in all senses of the word. I was ready to marry the man the Lord had brought into my life.Growing up, I was never the girl who dreamt of getting married, it just wasn’t in my plans. Steven changed my entire view of that plan. I never knew my heart needed to be rescued; I never knew what it was like to be desired in such a righteous and holy way. My heart was at full peace during the ceremony. I knew this day was a day that was written down even before I was born. The thing, I believe, that makes the love Steven and I share different is that we actually believe the ‘fairy tale’ story of love. I actually believe that I am the princess and that Steven is my knight and shining armor. This creates a worldview and excitement that will last beyond the years" (Thoughts on our day, by Eli Loya)..

The ceremony was conducted primarily by Pastor Mark Brattrud of Valley Christian Assembly in Palm Desert, California, where Steven grew up.  The Lozano/Loya wedding was a spiritual event in which I will always remember the vows exchanged in which they pledged to love each other “until Jesus comes again.”  The music we heard was beautiful; and the address which their friend and mentor, Jon Rittenhouse, gave was so memorable that I asked he send it to me for the "album project."
I attached it just as he sent it to me as follows:

"Wedding remarks from the Heart"
given by Jon Rittenhouse

           " This is a day of joy and celebration and each of us are glad to be a part of it. The book of proverbs observes many things in life are hard to understand and one of them being the way of a man with a woman. When a man pursues a woman, mysterious things happen. He feels differently, acts differently; in fact, he may not eat or sleep at times, strange indeed!
            I have had the privilege of observing and at times, helping along Steven and Elianne's relationship. I wasn't aware of it until this week that I had been the first to introduce them to one another in the school cafeteria at the University of Redlands.
            Through the years I have known both of you I have seen you grow personally, spiritually; and in recent times grow in your love for one another. Eli, I have seen the woman that God created you to be come out more and more. Your compassionate heart, your gentle spirit, your kindness toward people, your caring attitude, your thoughtfulness, and your ability to encourage. You have moved from little interest in relationships or that far off theoretical idea of marriage to desiring and even longing for someone to share your life with. A God-created desire to be a wife, to give yourself fully to another and to dream about the time when the Lord would bless you with children. That is a great and meaningful journey which begins to be fulfillment today.
            Now I have a confession to make. I have always spent more time with the men in my ministry than the women because...well, I'm a guy. Yet by the providence of God I had the opportunity to have both Eli and Steven in a small group study during Elianne's senior year. We refer affectionately to that bible study time as Elianne and the boys. It was a fun year and through that time, and the opportunity to connecting with Eli I came to adopt her in my heart like I would a daughter. You are very special to me Eli!!
            Eli you are getting a man that has many passions and I am glad that you are willing to be a Dodgers fan, I'm not sure there would be hope for the marriage without that commitment on your part.
            Steven I have seen you develop a bit of the gentle side and Elianne has been instrumental in this process. Steven you are a black and white person; honest, up front, real and intense. You are a man who pursues things with passion whether that is the goal line, the basketball court, the truth of God's Word, or a woman that you have deeply on your heart. All of which are good things and meant to be enjoyed, all gifts from the hand of God.
            I remember a couple of major events that helped move your relationship ahead. One was serving the Lord among needy people in the inner city of LA with a summer missions project. You were able to work together, love on people together, and hang out in an intense environment together. Steven, God used that summer to awaken within your heart a desire to pursue Elianne. Yet, she was yet unaware of your increasing interest.
            Steven you are a man with intensity. I love that about you brother. You are passionate about the right things -- truth, living life right, the Lord Jesus, and passionate about your soon to be bride Elianne. Yet with all the strength and passion that men possess we have a chink in our armor -- fear of being turned down by a woman. It is amazing how our knees get weak and our confidence can go down the drain as we face the prospect of pursuing a woman and not knowing how she will respond. If there is any credit that I could claim, however small it might be, it is at this juncture.
            I remember the night. Our small group men's study, Courtner Hall. Steven you shared about your interest and desire to pursue a relationship with Elianne; who at the time was working back in Houston. I pushed your hand to the wheel and told you that you needed to call her and tell her how you felt. Like all men you was concerned, apprehensive, no let's say it more clearly -- scared about how she might respond. I assured you that it would go well, in part knowing the gentle and caring side of Eli. I exhorted you to go next door and call her. It was like minutes before the big football game when you have a vast array of emotions ranging from anxiety to elation and during it all the adrenalin is rushing.
            You took the challenge Steven and you gave us reports of your conversation along the way by gestures and eye glances. We all could tell you were excited. Since then your relationship has continued to grow, mature and blossom and today it finds not a culmination as some might think but a continuance in a deeper and more committed fashion. You have a lifetime ahead to enjoy each other as you enjoy the Lord together.
            And as I think of the months leading up to this point I am deeply grateful to you and for you. I am especially grateful and proud of both your commitment to personal purity and keeping healthy boundaries with one another. You even backed away from a goodnight kiss because you observed the wisdom of the Solomon when he said, "Do not awaken physical love too soon." You have honored the Lord, the community of faith and each other by your wisdom and diligence.
                        You know in light of how vastly different men and women are it is surprising that anyone ever gets married. Yet God in his wisdom had a plan to make it more possible. Now, let me give everyone a cue card, I am about to tell you a joke. Two thoughts before I do. First, please laugh at the right time and second, women don't think about shooting me until after the punch line.
            When the Lord created Adam and Eve the text of Scripture says that Adam had conversations with the Lord on a daily basis. Well, one of the first conversations Adam had was about this women God made for him and his relationship with her. It seems that Adam couldn't figure out a couple of things. Lord, I was wondering why you made this woman so incredibly beautiful, I mean she's gorgeous, a total knock out! Why did you go all out on making her like that Lord. "Well, Adam that's so you would love her." Hmmm, that's good God, real good, thanks. But Lord, I have another question. Yes, Adam. Lord why did you make her so dumb. "Well, Adam, that's so she would love you!"
            Steven I think you are getting the better deal in this marriage. You like all of us men, are marrying up as they say.
            I would like to give you a brief word of exhortation to you guys. Eli you are marrying in the words of John Eldridge, A Wild Man. Don't try to domestic him too much. Let him have his passion and intensity; just add a little bit of gentleness and compassion to his life. Let him seek adventure and risk in his life and go along with him in some of those adventures.
            Steven seek to cultivate an on going appreciation for Elianne's unique qualities, her soft tender heart, her appreciation of small things, her desire to have things be attractive and in order, her appreciation of details. Now that the hunt is over and you have captured your bride don't stop pursuing her. That might require more deliberateness on your part as the years move ahead but it is still worth the effort. Keep your intensity for her.
            And Steven you already know this humorous story but I will tell it for the sake of all your family and friends here today. Steven, as I have said before Elianne is very special to me and I have a father's desire to protect her and have her be happy. So, in light of this I want you to know that if Elianne is happy, then I am happy and if I'm happy you will be happy. However, if Eli isn't happy, I'm not happy and if I'm not happy...well, you get the picture.
            May the Lord bless and encourage you and draw you nearer to each other and to Himself.” (J.Rittenhouse, email message to author, 2007, May 1).

Now a flash forward in time, Steven achieved his teaching credential to teach in the public schools of California.  In fact, during many days of the spring, as I type on wedding reflections in the School of Education, Steven has sat across the room typing away on his own compositions for his credential..  Meanwhile, Eli has a job as ESRI and has recently started a home-based business with Argonne International.

(3). The wedding of Mark Hartley and Heather Morse.

Mark Hartley and Heather Morse held their wedding on Sunday April 27, 2001 at Pine Creek Gardens in San Bernardino.  The language they used in their invitation for a ceremony to “unite their hearts, lives and souls as one”  felt quite powerful.  Again and again in the ceremony this tone was affirmed by the presiding minister.  I did not perform the ceremony, nor did I imagine at the time that I was going to write about it, for sometimes a celebrant of weddings enjoys research by attending ceremonies for individuals for whom he has a great respect. 

        Mark Hartley had been a student in my first year seminar entitled “The Eagle and the Crane” in l991; the following year he was my peer adviser in the class.  During “Interim 1994” I was able to visit him in Japan during his junior year at Waseda, from which he returned as an Asian Studies Major and wrote a brilliant senior thesis.     He waited almost a decade before he married Heather, but she was as he once said, "well worth the wait." Heather held a position in the University of Redlands Development Office.    

One unusual moment in the weddng came when the minister, who performed their ceremony, asked us to stand and confirm that we would never give either of them advice which led to a divorce.  He further pointed out that sometimes the very same individuals who were groomsmen and bridesmaids at a wedding were the same folks who gave their best friends advice to get a divorce.  As I stood, I realized I had never given such advice during pre-wedding discussions or certainly never in a ceremony at the request of any couple for whom I performed a ceremony; nevertheless, I learned many new things at wedding.

Among the Mark's choices for those who stood with him as groomsmen was Michael Birkland, also a student of mine in my first year seminar. He wrote the one of the best senior projects in Asian Studies during my tenure as director of the program as a portfolio, which shall be long remembered. His joyful face at the wedding loomed large that day and now in my album.

In 2007 Mark Hartley took a new position with the California State University, San Bernardino in student life, where I predict he will make a big success.  Recently he showed me, as a proud father would, the picture of their first child. But, alas, I could not find it in 2010.

Next come three weddings of students I had come to know in Salzburg in the spring of 1997.   I should point out that Salzburg is one of the most romantic places on this planet, at least for the thousands of University of Redlands students who have spent a semester or even a month there during the 50 years that our program has sent students, and faculty there.  At least one faculty member is reported to have made his proposal there, but I did not perform his wedding.  Look at this view of Salzburg:

http://www.europelifeofluxury.com/images/salzburg_festival_2.jpg

Seems to capture the romance of Salzburg, even in these warm colors.Also the “Sound of Music” film, in which a joyful wedding takes place in a church, to which each group of Redlands students were taken during their semester in Europe. 

 (4). Sometimes students, who did not meet their marriage partners in Salzburg, have asked me to perform a wedding ceremony.  For example, Nikki Kraus became engaged to Ryan Steeley, leading to a wedding on May 12, 2001.  Although I had not met Ryan until our discussions started about the wedding and marriage, with his warm smile and thoughtful manner, I sensed his love for Nikki, who had been one of my favorite students that semester; she took an independent study dealing with Asian influences upon Europe, which meant went to some special places as we traveled through Europe including one day to a class in Chinese at the University of Venice.

     Nikki and Ryan picked the place for their wedding as the First United Methodist Church in Ontario which was the same sanctuary where her parents gave their vows.  For the ceremony they picked a selection from Arisian’s New Wedding that acknowledges that no minister, priest or rabbi can marry two people only you can marry each other.  It grows out of a mutual love of each other and that at a wedding the bride and groom “stand somewhat apart from all other human beings….within the charmed circle” in the love they feel.

        They also asked for the lines from the traditional ceremony which calls for staying together in “sickness and in health, for better and for worse….”

        In June 2007, they send the following words:
So, life has been great for Ryan and me.  We now have been married for 6 years and have a beautiful two year old daughter, Robin.  Having a daughter has been an incredible experience.  She has been wonderful.  We have been teaching her sign language to help with 
communication and it has been amazing!  At about 15 months she really started catching on and now knows numerous signs.  She is also speaking more and more too!

  I am now teaching fifth grade out here in Apple Valley and I absolutely love it!  I had taught first grade for 7 years and didn't love it so I am so happy for the change. (NSteeley, email message to the author, 2007, June 6). 

(5) From the same group of students with whom I shared a semester in the small castle in the spring of 1997 in Salzburg, I performed another ceremony for Matt Mitchell and Marissa Santa Cruz at Loew’s Coronado Bay Resort and Marina in April 2000.  Matt had been serving in the Redlands Police force since his graduation from the University of Redlands and was headed for law school.

     Matt and Marissa invited three more students from our Salzburg semester to witness their vows.  Their last communication was a thank you card.  “Dear Bill, we wanted to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to come down and marry us.  It really meant a lot to both of us to have you perform the ceremony. Take care and we will see you soon, Matt and Marissa.”
        A “thank you card” seems a small gesture, but it demonstrates an important aspect of a wedding, to thank the pastor.  So, “You are welcome, Matt and Marissa, wherever you are. I learned a lot from you in this gesture and in the class we shared in Salzburg which dealt with the Holocaust.”

  I “crashed” a wedding on Google, which took place in the very same setting as Matt and Marissa's wedding. Their kiss was just as tender, but I hope I looked a bit more pleased than did the offical at the wedding below.

http://www.hopkinsproductions.com/weddings/del_coronado/371.jpg

I felt like I had been at this wedding, for I did indeed perform a wedding in this very spot, with bridesmaids wearing red rather than the blue dresses.  Matt did not wear a hat in his wedding, but he looks good in such a hat, for I remember giving him one when went to the Jewish Ghetto in Prague.  My costume was also white, as are my hair and beard in this decade.  However, the priest above looks more serious than I feel at weddings, On this web site above, as on many others one can arrange many details, such as the place, as here in Coronado, buy clothes, order rings to fit, and even find a rabbi or priest. In my case, however, I do not intend to be listed or found there.

During the semester of 1997, while we were in Salzburg, we went to the church where the wedding scene in the film "Sound of Music" was filmed. The image below came from the web and not my camera, but there is a magic in that film forty years old which haunted many students who had seen the film years earlier and it may have had a huge imact in making them want to study in Salzburg in our program there, and the church below, no more than an hour from Salzburg, may be an inspiration for their own weddings, although no wedding I conducted has had "Edelweiss" as one of the musical selections.

In November 2010 Julie Andrews and the other actors and actresses are still alive after 45 years and sometimes still singing together and recently celebrated the effects that performing together had upon their individual lives and upon the tourist industry of Salzburg, which has a "Sound of Music" tour every day.

soundofmusic65.jpg

(http://www.filmsite.org/sound.html)

(6). Also from our Salzburg Semester in l997, Jennifer Huston and Dashan Hayhurst invited me to celebrate their memorable wedding on New Year’s Eve of 2003 in the Burrage Mansion, built in 1901 as a Mission Revival landmark in Redlands.   They had barely known each other when they went on the semester program.  But once there, it seems, their love blossomed.  Usually professors can be unaware of such developing connections in a regular class on campus. But it is hard for professors to miss the work of cupid when we watch his work. Alas the whole group eats together for three meals a day, as well as the hours in class and riding on buses and trains across Europe together.

  I vividly recall hearing Jennifer and Dashan professing their attraction to each other just outside my room in Florence, while I was trying to regain control over my digestive system, after a large Italian dinner.   I opened the door and whispered, “I can hear everything you are saying, so perhaps you want to express your feelings elsewhere!”  They vanished.

If I had been less dazed that night, I might have imagined that in a few years they would ask me to celebrate with them a more official profession of their feelings and promises “before God and these witnesses.”  In the fall of 2002 they worked hard on their ceremony and wrote a ceremony with a powerful welcome to the friends and family who had come to celebrate the “miracle of love and to witness the union of this man, Dashan Von Hayhurst and this woman, Jennifer Darlene Huston.”
  Then I reminded them that every experience they ever had and everything they had ever done, everything they have ever learned brought them to this moment, standing before these witnesses to take each other as husband and wife.  Wow, that is powerful to read again in 2007!  Then each in turn affirmed that they had come of their own free will and with family blessings to be united “forevermore.”  We used the paragraph from Arisian about marriage being a intimate sharing but with a purpose to enhance the individuality of each partner and recognizing the fact that “each partner is continually developing, while growing in understand of the other.
Then they let me use the story of the “wedding of Adam and Eve” (Gen 2).  There we found and studied in Salzburg a story of man falling into a deep sleep and while he was sleeping YHWH (the Lord) took one of the man’s ribs from which he formed a woman then He brought her to him.  Adam shouted “this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!  She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man!” To which they added the Pesher (commentary) about this woman who was made from the rib of man.  She was not created from his head to top him, nor from his feet to be stepped on.  She was made from his side to be equal to him, from beneath is arm to be protected by him, near his heart to be loved by him. Then picking up with the 'Yahwist’s' explanation, “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife(cf. chapter above "The Wedding of Adam and Eve").
Jen and Dashan stated their wedding vows as:   “I take you to be my partner in life.  I will cherish our friendship and love you today, tomorrow and forever.  I will trust you and honor you.  I will love you faithfully through the best and the worst, thorough the difficult and easy.  What may come, I will be there always.  As I have given you my hand to hold, so I give you my life to keep.
 “Beautiful,” I thought in 2005 and again today in 2007.  Then they exchanged rings lit the unity candle and listened as Tara Kemp sang “You’ve Got a Way” by Shania Twain.

Behold this picture of the happy couple on their wedding day with the Burrage Mansion in the background for this sunny California wedding on New Year’s Eve.
Here now are some comments by Russ Huston, father of the Jen, in “A Father’s View of his Daughter’s Courtship & Wedding” as follows:

In 1997, Jennifer went to a study abroad trip to Salzburg, Austria so I invited myself to come and visit.  This was where I first met Bill and Helen Huntley.  We had many mutual friends, so it was only natural that we hit it off right from the start.  Bill had been there about 3 months with approximately 25 students. They all were great kids, but the first thing Bill said to me was, “I’m really glad you’re here, I really need some adult conversation.”  That evening, Jen and I caught a train to Berlin where we stayed for the weekend. I could sense she was missing someone.  At this point, I still haven’t met Dashan.  The first evening after our trip home back in Salzburg, Dashan met us for dinner.  We had pizza and beer and I didn’t suspect anything but a friendship. Jennifer and Dashan both had relationships back home, so I was convinced that they were just friends. One indication was the huge phone bill I received to her friend at home in Redlands.  It took a few years, Jen and Dashan didn’t start dating for over a year after they returned home. The family felt like there would be a long term relationship that would turn into a marriage, but who knew it would be a 5 year courtship.
    After about 4 years of serious dating and getting to know the family I got a call from Dashan, he thought it would be a good idea to come to Redlands and go to lunch. He was working hard, and I quickly sensed what he wanted, so we agreed to meet half way.
     There was only one reason for this meeting, but Dashan was a “class act” making me wait until after lunch for the conversation that only a future son-in-law could give. Then came the long speech he prepared including the reason they should get married. How he loves Jen & our family. He really did a good job. I think I would have been upset if he didn’t ask Jen to marry him. Of all her relationships we all agreed Dashan was the best. With this started the year long preparation for the grandest wedding I’ve ever been involved in.
     Many years earlier, on an October afternoon, Jennifer and I made plans for a wedding.  The plan was to get married at the outside Greek Theater at the University of Redlands with a guest list of about 400.  The reception would have been across the street at Sylvan Park.  I would have several of my friends barbeque, and a band playing at the band stand.  I guess this was more my idea than hers, Jen was interested in something different. We were in for a class act and the big bucks.
     Jennifer soon told me of the plan.  It was to be at the hundred year old Burrage Mansion on 28 acres, one of the most beautiful locations in Redlands.  The date they chose was New Year’s Eve 2003, my parents’ anniversary date as well.
     As the plans were now set in stone, I had exactly 7 months to figure out how to pay for such an elaborate wedding.  The thing that saved us was the group Jen hired to do the wedding set up a prepayment program.  Besides the expense, there were also a few speed bumps as it came closer to the day.
 The first one was the City of Redlands. They cancelled all activities at the Burrage Mansion the month before the wedding. No weddings, no receptions, no fundraisers, nothing. It was discovered they were booking commercial events without proper permits.  Lucky for us, the owner of the Mansion was a family friend so we were able to hold the wedding as a non-commercial event. There were a few stressful days of not knowing what would happen!  I couldn’t let my daughter lose her dream wedding so I met with the Chief of Police and the City Counsel members to come to an agreement.  All the neighbors, especially the ones that complained of noise in the past, were given a flyer with my cell phone number. I prayed that the wedding didn’t get out of hand!
The next stress was the weather.  The wedding was outdoors, and three days before the wedding the weatherman predicted a rainstorm. There was no room to have the wedding inside, so I called a friend that works at a party rental store.  He jumped right in and arranged a tent to hold 200 people just in case. The tent was erected, but thank God we did not need it.  Rain threatened up until that morning.   When the ceremony began at 3pm the clouds rolled out and the sun came shining through.
    The wedding was classy, but also light hearted. The flower girls were my granddaughters, Madeline & Kennedy. They were a hit as Kennedy took her basket at the end of the aisle and turned her basket upside down to make sure she was rid of all the petals in her basket!  As I took Jennifer’s arm to walk her down the isle, I was so proud of her. She truly was a beautiful bride. I couldn’t help to look around and see what a tremendous job she had did to pull of such an elaborate event.  Dr. Huntley delivered a beautiful ceremony that Jen and Dashan wrote entirely together.  He put in his own stories of their travels together and how he got to know them.
          One of the most enjoyable parts of the wedding was the opportunity to meet members of Dashan’s family for the first time. The Hayhurst family traveled down from Northern California and Colorado and it was a pleasure to get to know them better. I also met many new family members from Dashan’s mother's side, the Hullah family, which traveled out from Wisconsin to share the special day. After meeting Dashan's family, I knew he was cut from a good cloth and I felt good about the extended family that the marriage was bringing together.
 After the wedding the reception went well.  Everyone seemed to take a turn at keeping the bar going. Jennifer and Dashan truly are blessed with wonderful friends. The reception started with a slide show of each coming to adulthood and coming together. At Midnight we toasted to the New Year with a balloon drop and went from singing “Auld Lang Syne” into Happy Birthday to me.”

        Both Jennifer and Dashan graduated in l998 and focused on their careers.  On their 1st anniversary they bought a house in Mentone and on the third they bought a second home in Huntington Beach.  Having a father in real estate, Jennifer knows when to buy and how to invest it seems!   Dashan is working on an MBA at the University of Redlands, satellite campus in Orange County which includes a study abroad in Cambridge, England in April 2007.
To celebrate their decade together since being in Salzburg in the spring of l997 they returned there for  a 10th Anniversary.   Jenn  recently reported “no kids yet, want to, almost ready.”  But in 2010 they have two and have recently moved back to Redlands. Perhaps they were inspired by the "romance" of Salzburg, and the chance to see another human being to whom one is attracted for several months, breakfast, lunch and dinner, with travel times to Italy and Eastern Europe gives a rare glance at what the person is like as seasons change and challenges are overcome.

I received my last Christmas card from Peter Madler, the Director of our Salz burg Semester Program on the day of Jenn and Dashan’s wedding; it was the last card I have received from Peter, a man for whom I, like the thousands of students in 60 groups of Redlands students who went to Salzburg, remember and cherish his insights of travel through Europe.

  The magic of Salzburg also led to a wedding of a faculty member, for when he was sent there as the faculty representative, Dr. Art Swenson, was inspired by the setting on the Untersberg that he proposed there. The wedding was held back in Redlands in his backyard and conducted by the Redlands Symphony Conductor, Jan

Now in 2010 with their two children, my illustrious colleage Art Swenson with his family are getting packed for their journey in Jaunary to Bejing where he will be a Fulbright professor.

(7) As another "flashback" in this album of reflections, I remembered the wedding of Becky
Boykin and Doug Dotson who went with me to Salzburg back in the spring semester of l982. During the following summer after witing a yearuntil Becky graduate and married in San Diego in Becky's home church. I did not conduct the ceremony and hence do not have a copy of the license. But I do recall that I videotaped the wedding. Then twenty six years later, their daughter appeared on campus and enrolled in my world religions class. I am grateful to her for appearing in my line of vision this smester and reminding me of the fact that I was the videographer at the wedding. Here are Dr. and Mrs. Doug Dotson:

and another favorite image they recently send me with their cake:

1983dougbeckcake.jpg

And to create the update to 2010 here are Becky with Sam, her daughter, and myself in the arrival on campus of the next whole generation bringing tidings of a happy 27 years of marriage. Alas, the old guy in the middle has aged a generation, but Becky seems to have captured the portion of an ageless life!

beckydotsonsam.jpg

In 2003 Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” was performed in the Booth Theater where it was videotaped and made into a DVD co-production between Showtime Inc and ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theater.  It brought back memories of the last year at Yale, where Wilder came and spoke to my “Religion and the Arts” class.  I wondered if the DVD production would remind other viewers of earlier memories of this wonderful story.

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newmanourtown.jpg

(http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_item.asp?/id=650546)
            Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” premiered in Westport Country Playhouse forty years ago and has been studied in almost every high school in the USA.  For my purpose it contains a wedding for  a couple who lived next door to each growing up. Perhaps my "album project" has a couple with such a long term relationship, but none told me so in our discussion.    In the play, George Gibbs is  the son of the diligent doctor who still made house calls and Emily Webb is  daughter of the editor of a local paper in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. (Our Town, 2003)
 

Paul Newman played the stage manager who captured the “voice” and age of a senior citizen who introduces us to all the characters with more charm than in a Greek tragedy, and also served as the pastor of the Congregational Church where the wedding scene takes place, and finally like “Beatrice” taking Dante’s protagonist into the world beyond.

 Let’s focus on the wedding.  What is memorable of the hundred other weddings in this study?  The bride and groom wear traditional costumes,e.g. the bride wears  a veil.  The couple were ushered in  by their parents, but only after both the groom and bride express hesitation on going through with the ceremony.  Each needs to be consoled by a parent, after Emily’s mother has prevented the groom from seeing the bride on the day of the wedding.

Since that weddings are such public events where guests and family gather to support the bride and groom and where each has to make some kind of affirmation of intent is a way of overcoming the sudden fear that might well cause hesitation for any bride and groom. This DVD actually has a wedding with a brief entrance than many brides face.

The couple took the vows seriously in the play, “until death do you part,” as  Emily lived only for nine more years from the wedding.  She bore one son then dies in childbirth with her second child.  After her death in the hereafter, Emily only gets to go back for one day from the “hereafter” to her twelfth birthday, but that is another story.  She had been advised NOT to go back to her wedding day.

Seeing the DVD brought back a personal memory of being taken by friends to a restaurant in Santa Monica where Paul and Joanne were eating.  There were only six of us in the whole room, and we pretended as if the famous couple only ten feet away in space were total strangers.  They seemed to ignore us as well, but I could feel the magic power of Paul Newman’s presence.  Even now I buy anything with his name on it in a grocery store to support the generosity in his organization to give all profits away.

In the new century, even before the terrorist attack on New York and Washington,
a debate was taking place over whether it should be legal for people of the same sex to be married.  In this decade doors opened for some same sex couples to be married in San Francisco, and it is still legal to do in Massachusetts and Hawaii.  I have not yet been asked to perform such a marriage, and I have not even been invited to one.  But the time is coming!  At the same time I am aware that my presbytery would do more than frown upon my performing such a ceremony, and in our little church we held a dramatic adult study on the topic of gay marriages (Rogers, 2006)  and the form of such ceremonies (Cherry, 1995).

“One Wedding and a Revolution: the day San Francisco City Hall said' I do'” is DVD about a touching story by Debra Chasnoff and Kate Stilley of the way Mayor Gavin Newsom, newly elected to office went to Washington for Bush’s inauguration speech in 2004, became so offended at the tone in Washington that he came home to California to respond to Bush’s policy by making it possible for  4,000 couples to be married in San Francisco (if only between February and March 2004).   

The DVD traces the process leading to the ceremony of two women who had worked for half a century for lesbian rights.  They were in their ‘80’s in 2004 when they were picked by San Francisco City Hall to be the first to be allowed to wed.  Dell Martin and Phyllis Lyon were married by Assessor-Recorder Mabel Teng, in ceremony which was almost identical to many of the weddings I had performed, as described elsewhere in my "album project."  There are many parts of the San Francisco ceremony in which the Anglican Prayer Book wedding service was used, such as the following:  the gathering statement, the vows, the rings, and the pronouncement.

In the DVD “God” was never mentioned, nor was there a reading from Hebrew or Christian Scriptures nor were there any love poems from Gibran, Shakespeare or Milton.  I would guess not many people married in civil ceremonies between people of different genders choose to use such poems either.  Since, I had never witnessed a civil ceremony in a city hall before watching this DVD, I found it educational on many levels. 

Instead of using the word “husband” or “wife,” the more inclusive term “spouse” was used throughout the ceremony.  And on the California wedding licenses where males sign first and the females below,  the San Francisco licenses have “applicant 1” and “applicant 2.” Kate Kendell, Executive Director of National Center for Lesbian Rights, gave comments in the edited version, and I am especially grateful to my colleague of 20 years, Dr. Emily Culpepper for alerting me as to the DVD, during which I must confess to having shed some tears at the touching tone of the wedding.(Chasnoff,2004).

The Wedding of Noah Dietrich and Christina Manning

(8) On August 28, 2004 at a private home in San Juan Capistrano with a lily covered pool, I conducted a wedding for Noah Dietrich and Christina Manning.  Another picture of their ceremony appears on the "home page."

 The picture above, shot by my brother, Betts Huntley, has a professional quality about it. Indeed the ceremony brought together in marriage Noah, whose grandmother had been a colleague of mine from the first days after I arrived in California and had founded the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Redlands, with Christina, whom I had known for five years while she took four courses with me; thereafter she attended “my” divinity school- Yale.

In fact, at the wedding, I was able to offer her a contract for a year in Redland teaching in the department that she had graduated from only 2 years before.  The wedding brought together a most amazing gathering of friends and family, a far more interesting gathering than in the film entitled “Wedding Crasher."  The bride at last report was finishing her dissertation for her doctorate at her doctorate in Religious Studies at UC, Santa Barbara, after a year of field study in Africa, and she has held a position teaching in New York, and now a Sabbatical in S. C.

Now in December 2010, I received the following message:

"Hope all is well your way and that you are enjoying the holiday season.  Things over here in Charleston have been going extremely well.  I am close to finishing the dissertation, Noah is almost done with a master's in computer science, and I am about to have 16 publication entries in the upcoming Encyclopedia of Global Religion and Society.  I also recently went to the AAR in Atlanta and enjoyed catching up with old friends, professors, and colleagues and engaging in fruitful debate" C. Dietrich, personal communication by e-mail, December 2010).

(9) The wedding of Bethany Reeves

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I was invited to two weddings by the Reeves sisters in this decade, but was not able to perform either ceremony. Nonetheless, since both took classes with me at the University of Redlands I want to include their weddings..  Bethany, captured above with her winning smile, took my Hebrew Scriptures course;, and Rachel took the World Religions course. .

Bethany Reeves married Stephen Wright on October 26, 2003 at the University of Redlands.  Pictured above are Dave Wright (Stephen’s Dad) on the left, Daniel Ramierez, Albert Garcia, Stephen, Bethany, Rachel Reeves, Kimberly Toole and Heather Guhl.  I had a warm feeling looking at the picture having had three students in the picture in class and now remembering the excellent work each of them did.  Bethany took Hebrew Scriptures with me and brought in many extra discoveries beyond the class reading.  Rachel took world religions and seemed amazed at some of the things other religious taught, but she was wonderfully open.  Kim Toole was a Religious Studies major and took many of our classes in her program.

Bethany showed her aptitude for scholarship as she worked hard writing their program and ceremony.  This kind of effort is exactly what I tried to get scores of students (and faculty) to do in recent decades to “take control of their own ceremony” and perhaps as way to be empowered for the lives that stretch out from weddings for both bride and groom.  Thanks Bethany and Reeves.  I especially liked the poetry about hands, but the rest has a strong sense of religious conviction and respect for the traditional words which all us English speaking peoples inherited from the Anglicans in the 17th Century.  I attach the ceremony as follows:

Order of wedding ceremony
A Gathering Statement

Dearly Beloved: We are gathered here, in the presence of God and in the presence of these witnesses, for the purpose of uniting Bethany Suzanne Reeves and Stephen Vincent Wright in holy matrimony. Your presence here adds greatly to their joy and happiness on this day, which marks the beginning of their lives together. They stand before you now, declaring their love for each other and their intent to be joined in marriage; to share without reservation their lives, fortunes, and future. Bethany and Stephen hope that you will continue to wish them well in their new life as you have done in the past, and that you will pray God’s continued blessing.  (Bethany cited her source as: www.nycweddingcenter.com.)

We are here to celebrate and share in the glorious act that God is about to perform - the act by which He converts their love for one another, into the holy and sacred estate of marriage. This relationship is an honorable one, established by our Creator for the welfare and happiness of mankind, and described by the Apostle Paul as being honorable among all men. It is designed to unite two sympathies and hopes into one; and it rests upon the mutual trust and devotion of husband and wife.  Bethany and Stephen, may it be in thoughtfulness and reverence, and in dependence upon divine guidance, that you enter now into this holy relationship."   (Bethany cited her source for this paragraph as: http://hipsher6.com/wedding.aspx)

Opening Prayer:

 Dear Father in Heaven, You are the beginning and ending of love, the fullness of every good thing. We humbly come to this after noon, and pray that you will put your love, your hope, and your joy into the hearts of every person here today.

We also ask that you will bless Bethany and Steve in a special way. You knew each of them before they were born, and have guided them safely to this place. Bless them now as they come to begin to walk life’s journey and husband and wife. Bind them together in holy love. Give them your peace that surpasses all understanding. Give them joy that sustains, even in sorrow. Give them strength for each day. And finally, when life’s journey is over and they are parted by death, give them hope in your Salvation.

Please bless us now, as we celebrate the marriage of Steve and Bethany.

 I pray these things, trusting in your mercy, and in your Son, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Daryl gave a sermon here.
Wedding vows:
Daryl:
Preamble: Marriage is an honorable estate. It is not to be entered into lightly or unadvisedly, but respectfully, discreetly, and soberly. Into this relationship Bethany and Stephen have come to be joined. I therefore charge both of you, to carefully consider this before you make your vows.  (Bethany cited her source as from the San Bernardino County Civil Ceremony.)
Declaration of Intention:
Daryl:
Being assured of your love, and your choice of each other as lifelong companions, and with your families’ blessings, are you ready to take these vows of marriage?

Bethany and Steve: “We are.”

Daryl: Stephen, will you take Bethany to be your wedded wife, to live together in the bonds of marriage?  Will you love her, comfort, honor, and keep her as long as you both shall live?

Steve: “I will”

Daryl: Bethany, will you take Stephen to be your wedded husband, to live together in the bonds of marriage?  Will you love him, comfort, honor, and keep him as long as you both shall live?

Bethany: “I will.”

Daryl:
Please face each other and join hands.

Stephen, repeat after me:

I, Stephen, Take you, Bethany, To be my wedded wife.
To have and to hold, from this day forward For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, To love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live. Bethany, please repeat after me:
I, Bethany, Take you, Stephen,
To be my wedded husband.
To have and to hold, from this day forward
For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, To love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live. PRAYER after Vows:
Daryl:
Will everyone please bow your heads in prayer.

“Father in heaven, You ordained marriage for your children, and You gave us love. We present to You Stephen and Bethany, who have taken the vows of marriage. May the covenant of love they just made be blessed with true devotion and commitment. We ask that You will give them the ability to keep the covenant they have made. When selfishness rears it ugly head, replace it with generosity; when mistrust is a temptation, give them faith; when there is misunderstanding, give them forgiveness and gentleness. But most of all, we ask for a strong and abiding love, love with out fail, and love with out end. In Jesus name, Amen." 

Poem: These Hands
 Daryl: Bethany, please face Steve, and hold his hands,
palms up, so you may see the gift that they are to you.

These are the hands of your best friend, young and strong and vibrant with love that you hold in your hands on your wedding day, as he promises to love you all the days of his life.
These are the hands that will work along side yours, as together you build your future, as you laugh and cry, as you share your secrets and dreams.
These are the hands, so large and strong, yet they will be so gentle as he holds your children for the first time.
These are the hands that will work long hours for you and your family.
These are the hands you will reach for in times of happiness and joy.
These are the hands that will countless times wipe the tears from your eyes: tears of sorrow and tears of joy.
These are the hands that will comfort you in illness, and hold you when fear or grief wracks your mind.
These are that hands that will love you and cherish you through the years, for a lifetime of happiness.


Stephen, please hold Bethany’s hands, palms up, where you may see the gift that they are to you.

These are the hands of your best friend, smooth, young and carefree, that you hold in your hands on your wedding day, as she pledges her love and commitment to you all the days of her life.
These are the hands that you will hold in joy and excitement and hope.
These are the hands that will hold you tight as you struggle through difficult times.
These are the hands that will greet you in the evenings after you’ve both had a long hard day.
These are the hands that will cradle your children, that will hold them in tender love, soothing through illness and hurt, supporting and encouraging along the way, and knowing when it is time to let go.
These are the hands that will comfort you when you are sick, and console you when you are grieving.
        These are the hands that will support you, as she encourages you to follow your dreams.
They are the hands that will love you and cherish you through the years, for a lifetime of happiness.  (Bethany cited an internet source: jeanette_bursely@yahoo.com for the poem).

Song: These Hands: Georgette

Prayer for Hands:
Daryl:
Please remain seated, and bow your heads in prayer.

Dear God, bless these hands that you see before you this day. May they always be held by one another. Give them the strength to hold on during the storms of stress and the dark of disillusionment. Keep them tender and gentle as they nurture each other in their wondrous love. Help these hands to continue building a relationship founded in your grace, rich in caring, and devoted to reaching your perfection. May Stephen and Bethany see their four hands as a source of protection, help, encouragement, and love. We ask this in your name, Amen.

 Scripture Reading: Kimberly Toole

The following verses are a paraphrase from the writings of King Solomon. These verses were selected from Proverbs and the Song of Solomon.

“He who finds a wife, finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the Lord. A virtuous woman is more precious than jewels, and her value is far above rubies. The heart of her husband trusts in her with confidence, and relies on her securely. She will comfort, encourage, and do him good, all the days of her life.

 Her husband says to her, “Behold, you are beautiful, by love! Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. You have ravished my heart. How beautiful is your love, my bride, your love is better than wine. I am my beloved’s, and she is mine. Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a signet upon your arm, for love is strong as death. Many waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it.
Jealousy is as cruel as the grave, but your love is better than wine. Oh, precious one, you are mine. Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a signet upon your arm.”

Ring Exchange

Daryl: Traditionally, the marking of the passage to full status of husband and wife is marked by the exchange of rings. These rings are a symbol of the unbroken circle of love. As the rings have no end, so may your love have no end. The rings are made of gold, to remind you of the value of your spouse. As often as you see them, remember this moment, and promise of committed love you have made today. Wear them always with joy, as a sign of your love for each other.

Daryl: Steve, place the ring on Bethany’s hand and repeat after me.

“With this ring, I thee wed” (with this ring, I thee wed)
“and pledge to you my love” (and pledge to you my love)

Daryl: Bethany, repeat after me:

“I accept this ring as a sign” (I accept this ring as a sign)
“of our constant faith and abiding love” (of our constant faith and abiding love)

Daryl: Bethany, place the ring on Steve’s hand and repeat after me.

“With this ring, I thee wed” (with this ring, I thee wed)
“and pledge to you my love” (and pledge to you my love)

Daryl: Stephen, repeat after me:

“I accept this ring as a sign” (I accept this ring as a sign)
“of our constant faith and abiding love” (of our constant faith and abiding love)

(Rachel will walk to over to piano.

Song: Set me as a Seal: Georgette and Rachel

(Rachel will walk back to place with bridesmaids.)
(Daryl, Bethany and Steve go over to unity candle table.)

Lighting of the Unity Candle
Daryl:
In the beginning, the earth was with out form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of the Lord moved upon the face of the waters. For five days the lord did the work of creation, to create every living thing that grows on the earth, swims in the sea, flies in the air, or walks on the earth. And behold, it was very good. But it was not complete. On the sixth day, the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Man became a living being.  

And the Lord put the Man in a beautiful garden, to tend it and keep it, and behold, it was very good, but it still was not complete. And the Lord said, ‘It is not good for Man to be alone. I will make a helpmeet for him.” And the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and as he slept, the Lord took one of his ribs. And around this rib, he formed a woman, and breathed into her nostrils the breath of life, and she became a living being. 

And he brought her to Adam. And Adam said, “This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and cling only to his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” (BETHANY AND STEVE LIGHT BIG CANDLE) And with the addition of Woman, Creation was complete; and behold, it was very, very good.

(Daryl, Bethany, and Steve walk back to the front)

PRAYER for the Bride and Groom
Daryl:
Please stand and bow your heads for prayer.
(Steve and Bethany join hands)

"O eternal God, our Father and our Friend, You have heard these words of promise just spoken today. May the Holy Spirit deepen in the mind of this man and this woman, the sense of the sacred and binding power of their vows. And as in Your Name these words were spoken to make their lives one, may your rich blessing be added. Give them Your grace and guidance, that they may loyally fulfill the vows they have taken. May Your joy abide with them always, that they may be a blessing to each other, and to those around them. May they find in the closeness and happiness, in their home life on earth, a sample of the happiness of Your eternal home. We ask for these things through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 

Declaration of Marriage:
 Daryl:

In as much as Stephen and Bethany have thus consented to live together in holy matrimony, and have promised to so before God and this company, and have pledged their love and loyalty to each other; I, therefore, by the authority vested in me, now pronounce them husband and wife.

 To Steve: "You may kiss the Bride."

What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.

Apache wedding blessing

Now you will feel no rain, for each of you is shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold, for each of you is warmth to the other.
Now you are two people, but there is only one life before you.
Enter now, into the days of your life together.

PRESENTATION
Daryl:
It is now my great pleasure, to present to you,
Stephen and Bethany Wright!

(People cheer!)

I have received a long Christmas message each year from Bethany and the last indicated that a divorce was ahead. But her work on the ceremony was the most careful, extensive, moving and personal of any in this project, and several other couples have used parts of what she wrote. I fell certain she would like it retain in my album for many to use hereafter

(10).  Rachel Reeves, Bethany's sister, and Michael were wed in Redlands, just in front of the Lincoln Shrine, followed by  a brunch reception only 10 yards away on a beautiful summer morning. Rachel recently wrote me her account of her weddings, since I was there taking pictures, and not being the celebrant, I would never have known that such things were happening all around me.  But like many others weddings with less well articulated comments, Rachel and Michaels is memorable for the following story as well as my memories.
Michael and I are doing well, and I hope you are, too.  We have just started the process of the American Dream--buying our own home!  We have only barely begun looking, etc., but it's none too soon as we're three years into our marriage (Already!) and getting quite tired of renting.  We live in Salem, OR, and I work for the American Red Cross helping set up blood drives (I really like it).  Michael works in a nearby town (Silverton) at a heating/sheet metal place.  Unfortunately, it's not a job he loves, but it pays the bills for now, at least.
I guess some of the most memorable moments from the wedding are how chaotic it seemed--I was running late, and we never even did a formal dress rehearsal so when we got to the site, it was kind of like 'uuuhhh, what do we do now?'  Haha!  And when we finally entered (everyone from stage right, where did that plan come from?) Michael and I stood SO far apart from each other during the ceremony nobody even got us in the same picture! (at least not a frame-worthy photo).  Another surprise came when we went to eat and discovered that what was supposed to be our wedding "cake"--the stack of Cinnabons with flowers decorating it--had been dug into right from the get-go.   With rubble left of the bun tower,  we didn't have a "cake" cutting part of the ceremony that went as planned.  Luckily, though, those cinnabons tasted great even with sections cut out :)  Hmm, also regarding food I have a picture from during the best man's toast, and I'm holding a sausage in my hand and trying to hide it behind my back.  Lots of people (including me) have laughed at that snapshot.  One of the best surprises of the morning, though, was my bouquet: I was supposed to be holding something like two dozen calla lilies, but they didn't open as they were supposed to, so the bouquet looked ridiculous! (because it was the 4th of July, everything was closed, so I had picked up the flowers the evening before, and they were supposed to open over night)  My family has been friends with some wonderful people named the Harters since I was about 7 years old.  John, Faith (the kids, now my age--I count John as my oldest and best guy friend) and their mom all came, and Joan (mom) brought a single magnolia blossom from the tree in their front yard, just because it was beautiful--and that's what I ended up carrying.  It means so much to me that my history, my family, and my friends all came together on that day, and sometimes in such an unusual way, or with such a tangible symbol.
I'm so glad you were there, too, and thank you much for sharing (and documenting with those nice pictures you sent) this particular day in my life.
It's great to hear from you, and hope to hear from you later, or as this project progresses or is finished!
Blessings,
Rachel (Reeves) Kite

Sara and Chuck, now four years after their wedding, appear with great joy on their faces at Rachel’s wedding, for Rachel, I remembered was at their wedding and the reception in Trinity Church Hall.

(11).   Mike Little and Kristine Brown’s wedding:
Both Mike and Kristine graduated in l999, and both had been in my first year seminar when they entered the UOR in l995.  Mike came the first day that the class met, and by the second day he brought Kristine, who said that she wanted to be in the course because we were planning to study Japan and America.  I did not suspect for some months that she was in the class because Mike was already enrolled. 

But five years later, when they asked me to do their wedding, I had flashbacks to that first week of September l995.  In the meanwhile, Mike had entered the U. S. Army as an intelligence officer, and he told me that he would soon be going to Germany for his next duty station and that Kristine would join him there.  I do not have a picture of the wedding, just this moment in our converstions as above.

sandinhillsgolfbride.jpg

The setting captured above by the golf course web site is not of Kristine looking for her groom, but the image above captures the sense of nature that I felt that day, thinking what a wonderful place they had picked for their wedding. Their wedding was the only one I performed on a golf course.  The wedding guests were seated about 50 feet from the 4th green, just to the left of the place one tees off for the 5th hole  An avid golfer like my dad would have loved this spot.  But I noticed that there were no “wedding crashers” with their golf bags hidden behind a bush.  Indeed, all of us who were there for the wedding were delivered by golf carts to the spot where weddings were held, and we were all picked up after the wedding to be taken to the reception in the club house.  I assume that was to prevent us from walking across a fairway and getting hit by a ball.  The reception was memorable because of the interaction I had in the hall way with those who had come to play golf, and I suspect some of the golfers tried to “crash” the reception in order to dance with a guest at the wedding.

In 2007 the University of Redlands celebrated its 100th Anniversary with many memorable events. The image below of the Memorial Chapel by with notes flying through the sky like clouds created by Joanna Mersereau on a greeting card is one of my favorite images of that year.

.

photo: uofrchapelmusicimmemorial100thcelebrationmersereau.

While on campus many exciting events during that year, a graduate of the University was falling in love and getting married in Europe. She captured the excitement of her romance on a blog and sent it to me, showing the power of connections on the world wide web.

 
Samantha Trad’s wedding: A European Romance.

(12). In May 2007, I opened my email and found a most amazing wedding story which came as a “blog.”  Below is web address from Samantha Trade about her wedding” with pictures on another link.  She was an advisee of mine in the fall semester 2001, having transferred from University of San Diego.  She grew up just across our canyon between Sunset and Pacific Street. And she returned to Redlands for her last three years; she told me she wanted to major in religious studies, but her father wanted her to become a lawyer; so she came looking for advice. Since her father was paying the tuition,  she majored in government, graduating in 2004 with a BA and went to Prague in the Czech State.  Read is what she sent today as “- The Happiest Day “on her blog
http://belovdrock.livejournal.com/

Above are Samantha and her husband at the altar in the Czech Church, this seems a suitable conclusion to my reflections on weddings, reminding me of the global age in which we now live.

(13). A wedding in the mountains for Kathrn La Matery.(Lucky #13 of the weddings in this decade.

     On July 7, 2007, the lucky day of “7-7-7” when 20,000 weddings were held in Las Vegas in  24 hours, I performed a wedding at Inspiration Point in Idyllwild, California overlooking the Hemet Valley for Stephen Amschel and Kathryn La Mattery. Their wedding was unique for me in that I had performed a wedding two years before for Kathryn's daughter Emily, who served as Matron of Honor in the “7-7-7 wedding” and Emily's daughter, age one, was the flower girl.  Kathryn's son, CJ, was the usher.

      I discovered in a counseling session that Stephen and Kathryn had been in high school together and had reconnected on the internet in recent years.  Stephen had moved to Colorado, but now the couple is settling in Hemet where they first met. Kathryn’s beauty seemed as much a wonder of nature as the surroundings in those mountains.  Stephen’s face seemed to echo the granite of the rocks in what one friend of mine looking at this draft asked, “Is that Jack Palance or not?”
Looking across the audience I saw several young guests who did not appear to be related to either bride or groom and later learned some were from Kathryn’s kindergarten class.
    
     At our counseling session, I assigned Kathryn and Steve the task of writing their own ceremony from several selections which are elsewhere on this CD. They worked very hard in the last week before the wedding and send me the ceremony as follows:
The Musical Prelude:  “Until there was you.”

Until there was you
I walked the earth alone
No hand to hold in mine
My heart was all my own

Until there was you
True love was just a dream
Dreams of wonder and tears
Dreams of hope and fears

Until there was you
My life had no direction
A road of uncertainty
But now we have a journey
Together you and me

So I thank my lucky stars
And God from the heavens above
For my heart and soul could never
Feel the impact of true love
Until there was you . . .
http://www.netpoets.com/poems/love/1193001.htm#poem

Kathryn came down the aisle with her father to a tape recording of the Wedding March. Kathryn came down the aisle with her father.

Photo by Ed Williams who wrote:

The wedding took place in a brilliant choice of venue…(for) at a “wide spot, a lookout point on a spectacular mountain road, an authentic wedding atmosphere was generated.  For instance, the bride would need an aisle to float down, so an aisle was created that ignored the (normal) separation of groom’s side and bride’s side.  (he continued)  “once the electrifying sounds of the wedding march began, so did the crowd’s dramatic reaction.  People scraped back their chairs, sprain to their feet, turned to the rear. Unfortunately, during those reversals parasols got turned to the front, mingling with balloons to form virtually solid phalanxes, row on row, between the bride and me…

                Photo by Ed Williams of Toni shooting a video which will play if one clicks here (only on the CD version).

To see a portion of the wedding, click here.

In "The Gathering,"  I said, "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the presence of God, family and friends to celebrate the joining of Stephen and Kathryn in the unity of marriage. There are no commitments on Earth sweeter or more tender than those you are about to assume. There are no vows more solemn than those you are about to make. True marriage is the holiest of all earthly relationships. The state of matrimony is based in this deep, invisible union of two souls who seek to find completion in one another. Holy Matrimony is an honorable estate instituted of God and therefore is not to be entered into unadvisedly or carelessly, but reverently, joyfully and in the love of God. Into this holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined."

I asked,
"Who gives this woman in marriage? " Then I said,
"Stephen and Kathryn come today desiring to be united in this sacred relationship."

Prayer:
"Oh, Almighty God, you have created us all in the image of Love, the image of Yourself. Bless now these two who stand before you. Guide them in your wisdom, shine your light upon them, that as they journey through this life together they will walk as bearers of your Truth. Amen."

Music: "Perhaps Love" by John Denver.
Perhaps love is like a resting place, a shelter from the storm
It exists to give you comfort, it is there to keep you warm
And in those times of trouble when you are most alone
The memory of love will bring you home.
Perhaps love is like a window, perhaps an open door
It invites you to come closer, it wants to show you more
And even if you lose yourself and don't know what to do
The memory of love will see you through.
Love to some is like a cloud, to some as strong as steel
For some a way of living, for some a way to feel
And some say love is holding on and some say letting go
And some say love is everything, and some say they don't know.
Perhaps love is like the ocean, full of conflict, full of pain
Like a fire when it's cold outside, thunder when it rains
If I should live forever , and all my dreams come true
My memories of love will be of you.
Some say love is holding on and some say letting go
Some say love is everything and some say they don't know.
Perhaps love is like the mountains, full of conflict, full of change
Like a fire when it's cold outside, thunder when it rains
If I should live forever, and all my dreams come true
My memories of love will be of you .
http://www.romantic-lyrics.com/lp4.shtml

I asked, “Will you please face each other and join hands?

Photo by Ellen Tichy

“Stephen, will you take this woman, whose hands you hold, choosing her alone to be your wedded wife? Will you live with her in the state of holy matrimony? Will you love her, comfort her, through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, honor her at all times, and be faithful to her?

“Kathryn, will you take this man, whose hands you hold, choosing him alone to be your wedded husband? Will you live with him in the state of holy matrimony? Will you love him, comfort him, through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, honor him at all times, and be faithful to him?

“As you take these preliminary vows, Stephen and Kathryn, I would have you remember:

"To love is to come together from the pathways of our past and then move forward...Hand in hand, along the uncharted roads of our future, ready to risk, to dream, and to dare.... And always believe that all things are possible with faith and love in God, and in each other.

"Will you repeat after me?( to which he did)

"I Stephen, take you Kathryn to be my wife, to love and cherish, from this day forward, and thereto pledge you my faith,"

Likewise Kathryn said, "I Kathryn, take you Stephen, to be my husband, to love and to cherish, from this day forward, and thereto pledge you my faith."

I said, "You have brought rings as a token of your sincerity.”

EXCHANGE OF RINGS:

“Stephen as you place this ring on Kathryn's finger I ask that you repeat these words" to which he said.." This ring is my sacred gift to you, a symbol of my Love, A sign that from this day forward and always, My Love will surround you, with this ring I thee wed."

Likewise Kathryn placed the ring on his hand and said, "This ring is my sacred gift to you, a symbol of my Love, A sign that from this day forward and always, My Love will surround you, with this ring I thee wed.”

Music:
Love and happiness...
something that can make you do wrong, make you do right...
Love...
Love and happiness
Wait a minute...
something's going wrong
someone's on the phone
three o'clock in the morning, yeah
talkin' about how she can make it right, yeah
well,
happiness is when you really feel good about somebody
nothing wrong with being in love with someone, yeah
oh, baby, love and happiness
love and happiness...
love and happiness...



Love and happiness
You be good to me
I'll be good to you
we'll be together, yeah
we'll see each other
walk away with victory
oh baby,
love and happiness...
love and happiness...

Make you do right... love'll make you do wrong...
make you come home early...
make you stay out all night long...
the power of love...
wait a minute,
let me tell you...
the power of love...
make you do right... love'll make you do wrong...
make you want to dance...
love and happiness...
love and happiness...

love is... wait a minute... love is...
walkin' together...
talkin' together...
say it again...
say it together...
Mmmm.... ***Complimentary Love And Happiness Ringtone ***

CLOSING PRAYERS:
"Oh, eternal God Creator and preserver, Giver of all spiritual grace, the Author of everlasting life; Send thy blessing upon these thy servants, this man and this woman, whom we bless in thy Name; that they, living faithfully together, may surely perform and keep the vow and covenant between them as symbolized by these rings as a token and pledge, and may ever remain in perfect love and peace together and live according to thy laws." Ame

" Now as you, Stephen, and you Kathryn, have consented together in the union of matrimony and you have pledged your faith each to the other in the presence of God and these witnesses,  I now pronounce you Husband and Wife.

"You may kiss the Bride.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I NOW PRESENT TO YOU MR. & MRS. AMSCHEL.

Somewhat later I received an epistle witr a comment by the Steve bridegroom:

"Pastor Bill,
 It was so beautiful to be married to the woman I love on the top of a mountain before God, our families and friends. I felt like our vows were carried by the winds to the four corners of the Earth for all to hear. I sensed our words were heralded throughout Heaven proclaiming our love for each other and our love for Him.
The live music was provided by Kathy’s cousin Kurt and his wife Sue. They live in Manhattan Beach. He teaches music to high school students and has for years. That was so awesome of them to come all that way with all their equipment and sing so sweetly.

Thank you for performing such a perfect ceremony,
Steve and Kathy Amschel.

About one year passed, the seasons changed 4 times, to winter, spring, summer and then in August I did another wedding.

(14). The wedding of Alison Moore and Seth Alexander

On August 30, 2008 during our new fall semester, after a most hectic week of advising first year students, I found a delightful escape to the cool ocean air of Santa Ana in Orange County where I performed the wedding of Alison Moore and Seth Alexander.  It was all the more meaningful to me for I had known both of them in classes.  Seth had more recently taken world religions and Alison had taken both that same class, if another time, and another c lass preparing to go to study in Japan.  Both had graduated and worked in the San Francisco for a year, even more, and planned to return to S. California where Seth would pursue his doctorate at the University of California, Irvine, where they would live.

The setting for the ceremony was an amazing hundred year old home in one of the few remaining orange groves in the county named, “Orange.”  Also some oranges remained on the trees even at the end of August.  It was clear to me that their college years had allowed them the chance to know each other well and to know the parents of each other, who appeared to approve in this marriage. They were able to bring friends from their college years together for what seemed more than just beautiful people but wise souls who would support Alison and Seth in the years ahead.

From “Companions for Life” ceremony in Arisian’s The New Wedding.

Greeting:
             "  Friends, we are gathered here at this hour to witness and to celebrate the coming together of two separate lives.  We have come to join Seth and Alison in marriage, to be with them and rejoice with them in the making of this important commitment.  The essence of this commitment is the taking of another person in his or her entirety, as lover, companion, and friend.  It is therefore a decision which is not to be entered into lightly, but rather undertaken with great consideration and respect for both the other person and oneself.
             "  Love is one of the highest experiences that we human beings can have, and it can add depth of meaning to our lives.  Love is one of greatest joys, and when this is combined with real friendship both are infinitely enhanced.  The day-to-day companionship – the pleasure of doing things together, or in doing separate things but in delighting to exchange experiences – is a continuous and central part of what two people who love each other can share.
              " Marriage symbolizes the intimate sharing of two lives, yet this s sharing must not diminish but enhance the individuality of each partner.  A marriage that lasts is one which is continuously developing and in which each person is individually developing, while growing in understanding of the other.  Deep knowledge of another is not something that can be achieved in a short time, and real understanding of the other’s feelings can develop fully only with years of intimacy.  This wonderful knowledge of another person grows out of really caring for the other so much that one wants to understand as completely as possible what the other is feeling.  Thus it is possible to share not only joys and success but also the burden of sorrow and failures.  To be known in this way is priceless thing, because such understanding and acceptance make it easier to live with our problems, and failures, and worries.  But, again, while marriage is the intimate sharing of two lives, it can yet enhance the differences and individuality of each partner.  We must give ourselves in love, but we must not give ourselves away.  A good and balanced relationship is one in which neither person is overpowered or absorbed by the other.  Thus it is out of the tension between separateness and union that love, whose incredible strength is equal only to its incredible fragility, is born and reborn.

              " We are here today, then, to celebrate the love that Alison and Seth have for each other, and to give social recognition to their decision to accept each other totally and permanently.  Into this state of marriage these two persons come now to be united. "(Adapted from the greeting: in “Companions for Life” ceremony in Arisian’s The New Wedding by Seth and Alison.).

 Reading:  Seth and Alison to read, alternating verses
From “The Dance” Moving to the Deep Rhythms of Your Life – By Oriah
“Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart, and I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

"Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are.  When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us, shout that soul’s desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

"Show me how you offer to your people and the world the stories and the songs you want our children’s children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle, not to change the world, but to love it.

"Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude, knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging.   Dance with me in the silence and the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.

"And when the sound of all the declarations our sincerest intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

"Don’t say, 'Yes! Just take my hand and dance with me.'”

Vows:

Rings:

Both the bride and groom said,
"With this ring I promise to dance through life with you as your partner and best friend.  I give you my heart until the end of time."

Closing:

I concluded the ceremony with the lines as follows:
               “May these two people keep this covenant which they have made.  May the be a blessing and a comfort to each other, sharers of each other’s joys, consolers in each other’s sorrows, helpers to each other in all the challenges of life.  May they encourage each other in whatever they set out to achieve.  May they,  trusting each other, trust life and not be afraid.  Yet may they not only accept and give affection between themselves, but also together have affection and consideration for others.
               We who are here present, and those who are absent thinking of these two people, hope that the inspiration of this hour will not be forgotten.  May they continue to love one another forever." (From “Companions for Life” ceremony in Arisian’s The New Wedding adapted by Seth and Alison) .

Then they kissed and went out as "husband and wife."

The joyful ceremony ends with their exit. The reception took place in the same area.

Indeed, everyone looks happy in this picture of Seth and Alison at the end of the wedding ( all pictures in this section come from their DVD).

I liked the way these two excellent students could take Arisian’s The New Wedding and edit it to their choosing for the wonderful lines as above. wedding of Jessica Friebus and Kevin Sharp

(15). The wedding of KevinSharp and Jessica Friebus took place In the spring of 2009 on the grass leading down to the gazebo at the Alumni House I conducted a wedding for Jessica Friebus and Kevin Sharp. Their vows were very well and creatively worked out, capturing their own strong religious feelings as follows:

THE CONVOCATION
            We are gathered here in the presence of God and of this company to join in marriage Kevin and Jessica and to bear witness to the transforming power of love.
            Love is a quality of spirit and an attitude of emotions, but marriage is a life’s work, a spiritual art form. Therefore, this is an occasion of both profound joy and great responsibility, and we who partake in it bind ourselves as witnesses to the labor of love that Kevin and Jessica are undertaking here.
            In acknowledgement of this holy purpose and of the power of this occasion, let us pray.

THE INVOCATION
            God of light, who gives us the ongoing for love and the capability of loving, we give you thanks for Kevin and Jessica, for their open hearts and willing spirits, and for the example of love that they embody here in our presence.
            Be with them on this joyous occasion of showing their love and making their vows; and be with us, their witnesses, that we may all be changed by what is said and witnessed here.

THE READINGS
Sonnet 116
Let me not the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove
Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass some;
Love alters not with its brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
            If this be error and upon me proved,
            I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
                        -William Shakespear 1 Corinthians13: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
            Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
            Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophecy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
            And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

THE ADDRESS:

"We are gathered here to celebrate a marriage, a spiritual union that embodies love’s most profound possibilities. As we have heard in these readings, love in this form is the greatest of virtues; love is the highest spiritual work. Love is both immanent and transcendent. And it is love, kindled by romance and clasped by heartfelt marriage vows, that has the capacity to deliver marriage from being merely a domestic arrangement, a supportive partnership, and an emotional bonding, and elevate into a spiritual enterprise.
            As you step into marriage you must remember first of all that marriage is a process of transformation. Because of it, inside of it, you will change most remarkably. And not necessarily or exclusively in the ways you had hoped for or imagined. For marriage is the spiritual grinding stone that will hone you to your brightest brilliance. It will cause you to become not only who you wanted to be, but also the person whom you have no choice to but to be. In marriage you will be re-formed, for in choosing this particular person to love and make your whole life with, you are choosing to be affected. You will be polished though the actions of your beloved upon you, through the praise, criticism, frustration, excitement, actions, and inactions of the person you marry today.
            In this regard it is important to remember that, more than you can possibly imagine, you are unconsciously drawn to precisely that person who possesses the attributes you need to be affected by in order to change. These are the very qualities which, because of their capacity to irritate and inspire you, will encourage in you the very dimensions you lack, the qualities which, as you acquire them, will represent and enlargement of your soul. What this means, simply, is that in spite of yourself you will be drawn into a process of personal evolution. Whatever is missing in your character will gradually be developed, and what’s remarkable about this transformation is that in the end, rather than feeling bitter, resentful, or unwilling, you will come to see the acquisition of these attributes as an exquisite refinement of your spirit.
            This is a spiritual process because it deals not with the superficial aspects of your personality-how you dress and what you eat, although changes in these areas may also be a part of the process- but with the deepest essence of your being and, ultimately, with your capacity to love. You will learn to be kinder, or more gently critical, to be empathetic, or more trusting. For wherever we are bound by our own emotional limitation, wherever we have judgments or cannot come into the presence of our own generosity or compassion because of our woundedness, there certainly, we will be met in marriage. We transcend our own limitations- our judgments, our stinginess, our lack of trust, our fear of intimacy, our pride, our self focus, our self-righteousness-and strive for their beautiful opposites, to reach, in short, of our capacity to love.
            For it is love, of course, true love, unconditional love, the love of the tree for all the earth, the love of the bird for the air, the love of God for creation, that shatters all limitations, that dissolves all fears. This unconditional love is the true gift of marriage, its greatest, most spirit-embracing work.
            Thus in what we will bear, go through, endure without sinking, or just plain put up with, marriage encourages us to the ultimate expansion of our capabilities. It is in this way that love invites us into the state of spiritual evolution which requires that, on behalf of our beloved, we pass again and again though what we believe are our own limitation, that over and over we accept the seemingly unacceptable and endure what we believe we cannot endure.
            To know that marriage has a high spiritual purpose is to be willing to bear the suffering that lie along its path. But it is also to rejoice and be glad, to be exuberant and playful, to bask in the companionship of the person who delights your, to participate in the joys of incarnations by being happy animals, creature of passion and habit and comfort.
            For marriage as a spiritual enterprise is also, in essence, about joy. It is joy that brings us to marriage, joy that inhabits it happiest moments, and joy with which we shall contemplate it when our lives draw to a close. For it is joy of all the joy, the infinite joy, which in its finite form a marriage symbolizes. For joy, unlike happiness, which is merely emotion, is a state of being-that state of ultimate bliss an intimate union in which nothing and no one is separate from anything or anyone. In joy are we born; to joy we shall return. Joy is an endless ecstatic state, the ultimate spiritual condition.
            To suffer the challenges of marriage is also to deliver yourself to its joys-to joy itself. And it is thus, in the spirit of joy, that we welcome Kevin and Jessica to the spiritual undertaking of marriage. Long may it stand as the cathedral of their love."

THE CONSECRATION:

" Dear God, look mercifully upon your children, Kevin and Jessica, and be generous to them, so that in unfolding veils of time, they may truly stand for one another as emblems of the incarnation of your love. Give them a sense of joy, excitement, possibility, and challenge about what they are undertaking here, the ever-unfolding and beautiful work of refining their spirits in the presence of each other’s witness, of becoming the bearers of your love.
            And knowing that this a high and often difficult work-that its rewards are uncommon, invisible-often, in ordinary day-to-day life, we pray for them the benediction of company, the encouragement of witnesses, the boundless joy of living always in the midst of love.
            Give them peace of heart and strength of spirit so they may honor the vows they make here today. And may the promises they make inspire and instruct each one of us who celebrates with them. Amen.

THE EXPRESSION OF INTENT:

Now that you have heard the high calling of marriage, do you Jessica choose Kevin to be your honored and cherished husband to live wither him in the consecrated state of marriage

Answer: I do choose to marry her (him).

THE VOWS:

In the name of God, I Kevin (Jessica), take you, Jessica (Kevin), to be
My beloved wife (husband), to have you and hold you,
To honor you. To treasure you,
To be at your side in sorrow and in joy
To suffer with you and be transformed,
And to love and cherish you alwaysI promise you this from my heart, with my soul,
For all the days of my life,
And, if God wills,
Beyond the walls of life,
Beyond the bounds of time.

THE BLESSING OF THE RINGS:

" As God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, so let the seamless circle of these rings become the symbol of your endless love.

THE EXCHANGING OF RINGS:

Beloved Jessica (Kevin), I give you this ring
As a symbol of my steadfastness and joy
In loving you, and as a pledge to honor you
With all that I am and all I shall become
For my whole life.

THE PRONOUNCEMENT OF MARRIAGE:

Now that you, Kevin, and you, Jessica, have promised to give yourselves to one another and to love each other through your sacred vows and through the giving and receiving of these rings, I now pronounce you husband and wife.
Those whom God has joined together may he generously bless forever. You may now kiss one another.

THE BENEDICTION:

Because you can rest in the comfort of knowing that you are chosen through one another to serve the highest purposes of love, depart in peace, recognizing that what you undertake together will bring you inestimable joy, and that the love you share can truly help to change the world. Now go forth from this place with jubilation in your hearts and gladness in your feet. Amen.

The picture they recently sent me came with the words of theceremony that they had worked on together.

photo: jessicakevinsharp.jpg

Unable to enage either bride or groom by telephone, I called Jessica's mother and received a glowing report of the happy life that Jessica and Kevin were sharing and her thanks for a memorable and beautiful ceremony. Thanks go out from me to Jessica and Kevin for the form, content, especially for the religious meaning they captured in their wedding.

(16). The wedding of Tim Streisko and Jessica Moore

In June 2009 I was able to attnd the wedding of Tim Streisko and Jessica Moore in her home church, First Methodist Church in Yucaipa, where her pastor for many years and Chaplain John Walsh of the University of Redlands conducted the ceremony.

jessicasayingvows.jpg photo by Stephen Klein

Here Jessica and Tim exchange their vows from the Methodist Prayer Book.

When John Walsh gave his homily he commented on their long courtship which had endured all the temptations that challenge college romances. Memorable to me was the fact that the couple shared the Sacrament of Holy Communion at the end of the ceremony.

In a Roman Catholic wedding the couple may receive the Sacrament in "a Eucharistic liturgy, (upon) the exchange of vows coming after the gospel reading and homily” (Carmody 32). In my experience to have the Sacrament of Holy Communion in a Protestant wedding ceremonies is very rare. But for Tim and Jessica to share the Sacrament had a powerful and memorable effect, even though those of us who felt as if we were members of the congregation did not, or were not, offered the elements. On reflection, thereafter, I felt that this moment in the ceremony was clearly one of the elements which all Christians may recognize as coming from the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church.

Both the bride and groom were religious studies majors inducted into the national society for majors who receive a high GPA. Together they decided that Jessica should start her graduate work first on a scholarship at Harvard Divinity School. Tim decided to support his bride taking a position at a bank. To me that seems comparable to giving a dowry in more ancient ceremonies discussed in this "album project" especially in the chapter on the Native American weddings in the "Weddings around the World".

photo: jessiantim.jpg

This wedding was the first I attended for identical twins, although I dated on in junior high school, but that is another story for anothr book. In this wedding to see Jessica's siser come down the aisle first, but in blue, I was confused, for brides were to wear white, not plue. Then in the photo I took at the reception, I could perceive no difference except the colors of their garments. Well Jessica looked happier than her sister.

Their wedding was so well prepared that we were given not only a beautiful program but a packet of tissues, in case we might be inclined toward tears. For me this moment came when the two exchanged a kiss. This promises to be, in my opinion, the best kiss of the decade. Recently in a visit back to campus from their active lives in Massachusetts where Tim is working in the Bank of America and Jessicais a gradute student in the Harvard Divinity Schoo, Tim recounted the story of another kiss, the one after he proposed to Jessica in the little park just in from of the Westminster Cathedral. In fact, he said he went on a May term class to London with a group studying theater with Dr. Nancy Carrick just for the purpose of seeing Jessica who had been at Oxford University in a semester long program since January. He said that he proposed to her while on his knees, forgetting entirely a longer speech to her as he got out the ring, and could only say, "Jessica, I love you, will you marry me?" It is clear that his question was enough. The drama came in getting to London to that setting.

(17)I was invited to the wedding of Eric Stoddard and the Rev. Erin Goddard,associate pastor of First Baptist church of Redlands, where Eric has worked for a decade in the Mustard Seed Program and is now in the ministry of music.

The wedding was conducted in a regular Sunday morning worship service; the vows were said to the Rev. Scott Hovey, who had graduated from the University of Redlands and thereafter Duke Divinity School, a friend of both bride and groom presently serving in North Carolina

How happy the couple looked as the come down the aisle together admid the singing congregation.

It was clear that the whole congregation enjoyed the fact that the couple decided to have their wedding during a regular Sunday morning worhip service. The setting of weddings in church worship servi es was a practice of many churches in New England in earlier centuries, for only the church pastors could approve the mariages in their parrishes.

It was clear to me at this wedding that the whole congregation approved of the match, and the hymns and responses of the people were strong and and affirming. For example, I had never realized how well my good friend Ben Dillow, who sent me all over the world in exchange programs, could sing. Perhaps it was the voice of his wife Darla, who inspired his singing this day, or the memory of their own wedding in Iowa some years earlier passing through their heads and hearts!

During that season somehow the Library of Congress found my annotating an album-web-page and an official of a project named "Story Corps" which is "a project of Sound Portraits Production in partnership with NPR, called my office and sent emails. A couple of weeks later, by appointment a portable sound recording studio was brought to our home on March 6, 2010 and a two hour interview about my "wedding album" project was recorded. I was given a CD on the spot, even before the recording crew packed up, and I was told it would be part of the story telling archive in the Library of Congress. Is that an honor? At least the CD will be available even if GOOGLE should go defunk or delete my work.

Even after writing about more than one hundred weddings, I remain fascinated by the topic. I even continue to rent DVDs with wedding themes. For example, this week I found a 2010 DVD entitled "Our Family Wedding" produced by Rick Famuywa starring Forest Whitaker, America Ferrera, Carlos Mencia, Regina King and Lance Gross. The wedding ceremony itself lasted about thirty seconds, and all one hears is the vow "..for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, which was discussed above in "weddings in Christianity" as the only required element in a Roman Catholic ceremony along with "I do." The DVD spends the other 102 minutes on the complexity of an Afro-American groom from a disfunctional family and an Hispanic bride from a traditional family with both parents, a sister, a grandmother and a host of friends who want elements of Mexican wedding magic and music in the ceremony, including even a goat to be slaughter for the event. The most memorable moment watching this film for me was the escape of the goat into the bathroom of the groom's father where he digests a whole bottle of viagra, thereupon becoming high animated! Somehow the bonding between the two "dads" seems as important as the bond between the bride and the groom.Perhaps every couple planning a wedding which involves so many people with such different ideas should watch the DVD, and perhaps, as this couple did, imagine an escape to Las Vegas!

ourfamilywedding.jpg (http://content.foxsearchlight.com/inside/ node/4502)

As my relections on weddings I have attended and those I would like to have "crashed" come to an end in December of 2010 there are some questions which remain, although I have already three more weddings to perform in the coming months, so I will keep the project going in a more modest manner.Perhaps I have hit upon a topic which will be of more interest as the number of weddings and thereby the number of marriages decreases in the world. In November of 2010 even with the excitement of a wedding in April next year for Prince William of England to his bride Kate Middleton on Westminster Abbey , there came a report the Pew Research Cener that asked the question 'is marriage becoming obsolete? (Luscombe 48-54). Decreasing numbers of Americans are having weddings and living with partners in ways which were not so likely in the l950's when I started thinking about weddings, and "doing them." It seems ironic that fewer people think of marriage as a pathway at the same time same-sex couples are working hard to get marriges recognized in the United States. It might have been possible for me to have conducted a wedding for my friends or students for some months in California in this decade and it is likely that I will be asked to do so in the future when the issue is settled by the U. S. Supreme Court or by voters of California. In fact, I wonder what right either body has to to decide what to call a relationship between two people that contributes to their own sense of equality, or co-operation and of self-esteem. (Snyder 142ff).

Let's end our reflections on weddings so far with an upbeat wedding.

One wedding which may be the" wedding of the decade" took place in August 2010 in the Clinton Family.

Now in July 2010," the wedding of the year, if not of the century took place. Without a royal family, the closest we can come to such a wedding is one from a sitting or former president. 

http://www.thenewsone.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/chelsea-clinton-wedding-pictures-450x326.jpg

Hence the wedding of Chelsea Clinton to Marc Mezvinsky in Rhinebeck, New York takes on almost "royal significance."
I did not receive an invitation to the ceremony, but a colleague of mine in the Armacost Library reported that it was because I had moved since my last correspondence with the Clintons. I realize that aving voted for Bill Clinton twice would not quality me to be invited. I can recall that more than half the nation voted for him twice, but I chose not to "crash" the ceremony. Yet during my reflections about the wedding I remembered something attractive about Chelsea. For even as an awkward teen ager, she had a magnetic charm.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01245/Chelsea-Clinton_1245595i.jpg

All Americans have watched Chelsea growing up these last eighteen years from a young school girl living the White House, then to college, until suddenly she appears in a wedding dress. Her adoring parents seemed happy with her choice of a mate, and it was nice to see Bill Clinton looking fit and trim and in the role of father of the bride rather than a scandal maker in his last years as president.

http://wwf.lv/wp-content/uploads/chelsea-clinton-wedding.jpg

Thanks, Chelsea, and thanks, Bill, and most of all thanks to Hillary as she travels around the planet as secretary of state. If there is anything about the ceremony that I would have likely to have heard it would be the way that this "interfaith wedding" combined parts of Chelsea's Methodist and Mark's Jewish elements in their ceremony. . In one picture I could see what looked like a Kethuva. I cannot read on the photograph what they wrote. Perhaps it is something of an agreement between them as to how they will raise their children, with respect and practice of Jewish holidays as well as Christian ones. During this week of reading about this editing, I learned that 35% of American weddings which involve interfaith marriages.

I wondered if they had good advice on the way to share an interfaith wedding (Hawxhurst 36-39) But I also wondered how do weddings ceremonies like that of Chelsea ande Mark's capture the respect for both religious traditions. One rabbi said on the news this week that both sets of families suffer something of a sense of loss which their children do not marry within the traditions of that side of the family. Yet Chelsea and Mark looked happy, very happy.

http://cdn5.mattters.com/photos/photos/3398630/chelsea_clinton_wedding_photos1.jpg

I shall continue to ponder what to say at such an event or to assist the couple in framing their own vows.

In December the 9th District heard the arguments regarding Proposition 8 in the fall election in California which will be soon heard in the United States Supreme Court, and could very quickly change things throughout the whole nation opening much wider the gates for those of us who are asked to conduct weddings. "A three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard oral argument on

California's ban against same-sex marriage. In the November 2008 elections California voters approved Proposition 8, an amendment to California's Constitution that limits marriage to a man and a woman. The Court will decide if a lower court rightly struck down the voter-approved ban as unconstitutional" (C-SPAN-ORG 2010, December 6).

Weddings from December 2010

(18) On December 2, I conducted a wedding for Maeve Treneman and Jan Holden in San Bernardino at the Casaways Resturant in the largest rainstorm I have ever experienced in 100 wedding. In fact that week brought more rain than normally we would receive in two years of rainfall.

Until the time of the wedding I had had only two short encounters with the bride and bridegroom who somehow found me by calling the University of Redlands to ask if anyone in the religion department knew anything about Buddhist weddings. My colleage Dr. Karen Derris, knowing far more, I feel sure than I do, referred them to me for she knows I am ordained and might help them.

I was intrigued, for only once before had I used Buddhist elements in such a ceremony. I learned that it was not easy to find a text to use from ancient times, but I found out that in some Buddhist weddings a ball of twine is used to wrap all those assembled in one huge circle, then after the ceremony the twine between each person is cut and each ties the short string around their wrists, as if in support of the event.

The couple came to my office and Mauve introduced herself as a nurse in the Redlands Hospital with no connection to the University of Redlands. Then the bridegroom affirmed that he was a high school English teacher in Beaumont. We talked for some time about their religious background and/or beliefs and I said I would be free that Saturday in December. The second meeting was at their home on Buena Visa for a rehearsal. The third meeting was "magic" for it was the wedding, except for getting there in the heavy rain up onto the little mountain, which I learned, only three days later, all who went for dinner there, had to be removed by helicopter when the road washed away.

But inside the Castaway the setting was charming, if still in process. I saw a _; all were gathering.

Indeed Maeve was wearing a beautiful off color white gown and Jan seemed distinguished in his suit, and they did not request a robe as my dres; so, when I discovered the Scottish background of the bride's family, I went back to the car and got a Royal Stewart scarf as a stoll and my Scottish golfing hat, the only time, I might add in the 100 weddings.
Wonderful music inspired by Hawaiian chanting was played by "Root Hub" (Greg Williams).

Mauve sister, Jan Horton, adapted a poem that seemed perfect for the event and I gave, at their request, a very short homily. They gave the vows that they had written for each other. I pronounced them "husband and wife" which was followed by a powerful kiss and a celebration.

It seemed that Mauve was surprised about something. Was it the signing of the license?

In any case, her sister was one of the signers.

Of all the folks I met at the wedding, and at the beginning of the rehearsal, I had only met the bride and groom, the one who charmed me most was Mauve's mom, Bev Treneman.Her first question was, "I hear that you are a Presbyterian minister, so what are you doing performing a wedding for my daughter who is in the process of becoming a Buddhist?"
My answer was that I was free to do so as a college teacher who teaches students of many different backgrounds, and I said, "You daughter told me she is a nurse, and who knows when I might meet her again under much less desireable circumstances, would she ask my religious affiliation before healing me?"
The mother laughed and said, "I was just jesting. I am also a Presbyterian and delighted to know you would come here tonight to perform this ceremony, actually none of my three daughters turned out to be Presbyterians. Not many ministers I know would have performed this ceremony!"

(19) On the very next morning, Saturaday December 3, in what seemed like a regular Sunday worship service at First Presbyterian Church of Redlands, Emily Whitlock married John Lasse in a beautiful, traditional ceremony representing the couple in this album with the greatest combination of years lived and greatest joy on their two faces. Look at them in the image I shot below. Was there any couple in this album who projected more joy? Moveover at the very end of the day, Emily looked out over the gathering of friends and family said, "Behold, whoever said that there is no prospect of marriage for a woman over 70?

This wedding brought back powerful memories 37 years earlier when I recalled Emily Whitlock and her first husband, Dr. Glen Whitlock, were among the people who welcomed my family to Redlands in l974 attending another small Presbyterian church then called "Impact." Some years later I asked Glen to be a guest speaker in a religious studies class, for he had both a seminary degree and a Ph. D. in Psychology. When Glen died, they had been married for more than thirty years and had a grown daughter. The ceremony in December was taken directly from the Presbyterian Book of Worship, and it had special meaning in a church building supported by congregatinal singing with hymns with joy. Dr. Syliva Karcer was the celebrant, and she too had known Emily for almost forty years.

Also having her daughter as a maid of honor with two grandchildren, all dressed as junior bridesmaids, who felt freer to move about and look in various directions added an immense feeling to the event.

To conclude I did two Weddings on March 19-

(20) This wedding might seem more appropriate to put just after wedding #1 as within the same family. But eleven years had passed since Corrine Raef married Surya Jayaweera, when Corrine came to campus and asked me to conduct a wedding for hir sister, Naomi. We set a date for a meeting, and as promised Corrine brought her sister Naomi, the bride to be of this wedding, and Frank Rice, the bridegroom, to Jones Computer Center in the week before their wedding. As we sat in the area arround the new beautiful Naslund Student Lounge. The television screens were showing the horrors of the Japanese earthquake and the tsunami. Corrine, who had spent a semester at Waseda University in Japan as part of her Asian Studies major was as horrified as I was. We did not imagine at that moment that the nuclear reactor would be in such danger, nor did we imagine that the following week our proposed trip to Japan would be cancelled when the host families sent their politely worded request that we "consider not coming."

The couple, who were holding hands I noticed, asked me about my credentials which would allow me to conduct weddings. I answered their question by saying that I was ordained by the Presbyterian church to teach in a college, not to be a pastor in a church, and as a result I do weddings for students from many different backgrounds.

I then asked about their own religious backgrounds; meanwhile, I showed them a copy of the tradition wedding ceremony from the Anglican tradition that I had just printed out from my album project. Naomi told me that she had gone to Roman Catholic churches as a child, and Frank said this background had been Mormon. Then I reminded them that one session with me a week before a wedding would not be sufficient for either a Roman Catholic priest or a Mormon elder. They smiled in agreement. I was touched to see that they were holding hands, perhaps in fear that I might examine their religious beliefs.

So I said, I can perform ceremonies for people without any expectation of them becoming Presbyterians, since my teaching and counseling is with a wide variety of people. I told them I had just conducted a ceremony for a woman who was becoming a Buddhist and a bridegroom who said I am "an agnostic." They looked relieved. I then acknowledged that both that Naomi and Frank deserved a wedding and with a clergyman like myself, if they should so desire. By then Naomi, who had been looking over the ceremony of the Anglican tradition, said, "This looks like the traditional ceremony we want. I asked if they wanted to write their own vows as her sister had done. But she said that she did not want to write anything to say, but rather she wanted just to repeat the vows. I agreed and said that to have a wedding one did NOT have to write an original vow or revise the ceremony. The next time we met it was in Claremont at the Women's Club for a rehearsal with the supporting cast of readers and singers on the Friday afternoon.

Here are Corrine, her mother, her sister Naomi, and her father.

The following afternoon March 19, 2011brought us together again, and with thankful spirits we noticed that there was no rain.

As the bride approached, I raised my hands to indicate all should rise.

After all were seated, I used the ceremony from the Book of worship of the Presbyterian Church omitting only the lines .."if anyone should know any reason why the couple should not marry……"
A song "He is my hero" was sung.
I read from Matthew's gospel about love,
They exchanged their vows line by line in a tender and loving manner. I felt touched and smiled at Naomi's mother, who returned my smile.
The ceremony concluded with my pronouncement: According to the laws of California, I as an ordained minister pronounce them married. Please greet Mr. and Mrs. Frank Rice" upon which a kiss was exchanged. We gathered for pictures as above

(21) The wedding of Brianna Wettland and Joseph George took place also on March 19, but in the morininin Caoline Park in Redlands. So on this week-end just before the spring equinox when the planet Jupiter was to be at its closest approach to earth in a generation I had two weddings.

The wedding was no surprise, for Brianna Wettland and Joseph George had been planning a wedding for a year. They were hoping to have the wedding in June, but they decided March was better sometime in February. Little did they know the weather forecast would be bad.

So I packed my umbrella, put on my warmest Austrian wool jacket, and even wore a Greek fisherman's hat; and I decided not to wear a robe as I set out at 8:30 in the morning for the wedding of Brianna Wetteland and Joseph George.

They had been engaged from almost a year ago, and they told me last summer that they wanted the wedding to be outside and at the place were Joseph proposed. It would, I knew, always be a sacred spot for them, and now it became even more so.

Caroline Park in Redlands is a very natural place. Only one part is mowed a couple of times year and the rest of the park reveals the natural undergrowth of California plants which do not need to be watered, except by the rainfall. This year with 20 inches of rain in December and several more in the next three weeks, March brought forth a glorious green color, hiding the red earth which gives our town its name.

Helen and I parked at the very bottom of the hill, and we had at least a 20 minute walk to the top, but I had remembered to bring my Austrian Wander's Stick, which prevented about 3 dangerous falls. So we still arrived at the top of he hill several minutes before the groom the bride appeared with her father at the spot where other had gathered.

I reflected on the time that Joseph and Bri had met in my Hebrew Scripture class three years earlier, so their vows were as special to me as any in this whole collecion of memories. I smiled as i reallized although none of the three of us could have imagined this wedding in Caroline Park as we started to discuss the time Adam met Eve in the Garden of Eden in that class in 2008.

As we waited in observed a good deal of cell phone comunications took place at the site of the wedding under a big tree about half way down the slope. The rain clouds seemed to hold their own for the moment, and anyone attending the wedding could look across the great valley that extends from Los Angeles to Redlands, all green as far as one could see. There was only a little bit of snow on top Mt. San Bernardino to our North.
Suddenty all heads turned to the South as we obsrved Bri and her dad to appear at the top of the hill.

Joseph suddently became very animated and instructed us just where we should stand, but his grandfather and grandmother who brought mobile seats had alreay placed them where they wanted them, so I suggested we move up to a spot close enough for the grandparents to hear the ceremony.

A tape machine played the wedding march, and Bri and her father came closer. I could see from a distance that Bri was smiling, her big, broad wonderful smile, and I assumed her dad would be just as happy as they came the 50 yards down the hill. It was one of the most triumphant entries I have ever seen. Bri seemed to be soaring over white capped waves as the sunlight danced across her gown. But it was a cold morning and I feared she would be chilled. I had to resist taking off my well chosen Lent colored stoll to put across her shoulders.

I started by calling attention to the glory of the promise of spring and the fact I had learned the whole universal was supporting their wedding date.. I told them they could always associate the celestial support for the day they had picked. Then I told all 20 or so who had found us on that hillside that I had met both bride and groom on the same day in the spring of 2008 when they enrolled in my Hebrew Scriptures class. As I said that I remembered that Joseph's father had also been a student in an earlier verssion of that same class 25 years before. I reminded father and son that they had picked the very same seat in the very same classroom. I said that Bri had not only taken that class, but the following spring she served as my TA in the Hebrew Scriptures class. I felt as connected with this wonderful couple as much as with any wedding in my life.

My joy must have been obvious as I told them to speak the vows they had written. Joseph went first. He said, "I remember a line that 'Fools rush in where angels fear to trod,' but I could not help falling in love with you!" He then promised to love her as long as he lived, and he expressed his joy that they had already made a family. Then Bri give her vows:
"I know that it's you I want to spend the rest of my life with. I want to laugh with you until I cry; I want to go on adventures with you; I want to grow old with you, Joseph.
I didn't know that you would make me laugh until I cried. I didn't know that when you looked at me so seriously with those big brown eyes, that you were telling me something. I didn't know that you would become my best friend. I didn't know. I didn't know that I would become pregnant. But I did know that beneath the fear and shame was a blessing rather than we could imagine. I knew that God was there."

With that powerful exchange I pronounced them husband and wife, and they kissed a long and powerful kiss. I feared for a moment that they would fall over.

Although I was not invited to the wedding in London of 2011 in Westminster Abbey within a month of Brianna's wedding, but I somehow felt I attended for I managed to take my May term class in 2010 to the Abbey, if not for a wedding, at least for a service of worship in which we heard the same gathering of young boys singing as if they were little angels.

William, the Prince of Wales, married Catherine (Kate) of Middleton soon to be Duchess of Cambridge in an hour long service on many American channels from 3:00 a.m. until 4:00 in April. I doubt I would have watched it had I not been working on this album project and had not just been in Westminster Abbey, at least parts of it, the year before. But on that April morning I was able to see in almost every knock and cranny of the Abbey, if filled with trees and people that I have not imagined the year before. From first to last, the ceremony followed exactly the ceremony used in that sanctuary and throughout the English speaking world for 400 years. I have already included the ceremony as a whole in the chapter above, "weddings in the United Kingdom." I was surprised, if pleased to hear that the Archbishop of Canterbury even read the line, "If there is anyone present who knows any reason why ......."

I must confess happiness when no one spoke up. In fact, it seemed that no one in proximity to the microphone even breathed a breath for about 30 seconds. The ceremony seemed powerful, not because of the gathering of well dressed men and women, but because of the way the two said their vows and the langauage in the ceremony itself, which although I have never use in totality, its echoes vibrate through my brain in every ceremony I have performed.

Let me include a picture of the couple to conclude, if for the time being, this album project.

Source: http://www.a-pakistannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/William-And-Kate-Wedding.jpg

So ended the last wedding I have done, so far, and so ends the project designed to complete during Sabbatical leave from the University of Redlands. Thanks to all who approved the continuation my project of continuing to research and write "Annotating an Album" as follows: the Faculty Review Committee, Dean Barbara Moore, President Jim Appleton , and the Board of Trustees.