This Cape Cod Wedding Celebrant reflects on 2015

It has been a sweetly sincere ceremony season. I've enjoyed presiding over

 low key weddings that leave everyone on a high note.

"To be natural "as John O'Donohue says, "is to be holy.  I'm loving the authenticity of the couples who seek my services for weddings and later for baby blessings. So what is this quality of being authentic? I see it in my couples who talk to me not only about their wedding but their hopes for a contented married life.

As for me I hope I am congruent and authentic in my approach to presiding over weddings. I can authentically claim to be both rustic and vintage- more and more so with each passing year. With great gratitude I come from a place of contentment after 27 years of marriage. When I get impatient with my husband he reminds me of my own words of wedding wisdom. And to be totally honest somedays I think about what I gave my word to 27 years ago. Giving your word to each other is the heart and soul of a ceremony. As Wendell Berry reminds us. "The meaning of marriage begins with the giving of our word...."

 So stay true to yourself and to one another. Allow yourself to be content and grateful as I am to all of you for making 2015 such a wonderful wedding season. 

                                Remember: Don't Worry. Be Married and

                                                   THANK YOU

Photos of Bryan and Allison at Borsari Gallery in Dennis

photography by Stop Go Love http://www.stopgolove.net

Autumn Weddings in New England

Does it get anymore colorful and heartfelt. Autumn weather, dancing light,pumpkins and promises, harvest hues-  it makes me want to weep in a good way.

Last weekend I presided over my second Rhode Island wedding in the charming town of Bristol at the Blithewold Mansion The bride at this wedding is a nurse and she got my name from another nurse who married a few years ago beneath this gorgeous archway of roses.

Brittany and Tom take each other's hand in marriage.

A wedding in Autumn hues at Blithewold.

Pumpkins and promises and harvest hues as Edward and Ellen say I do at Town Cove in Orleans.

Happy Thanksgiving: We Thank You Now for Love

 This Cape Cod Wedding Officiant / Celebrant /Interfaith minister wants to say thank you to all the couples who I have had the privledge of presiding over these past 13 years.  My life is so rich and blessed and all of you have contributed to this bounty of love. At this time of Harvest and Thanksgiving  we gather together to give thanks for love.

 We Thank You Now for Love   

 WE thank you now for love, the great miraculous gift of love.

For love in the body that comforts,

for love in the emotional body that delights, frustrates and instructs,

for the love of our sacred circle of friends,

for love in the spirit beyond all walls and wounds, bounds and ends.

  Love, we thank you for love, love that stirs and soothes us,

love that gathers us into all joy and delivers us from all brokenness.

Love that hears the soundless language,

love that imagines and dreams,

that can conquer all and willingly surrenders everything.

Love that brought us into our lives and love that will carry us home

to each other.

 Daphne Rose Kingma   

 

 Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

This Cape Cod Wedding Officiant/Celebrant- Sandwich Weddings

In the Autumn Garden  

No not in the spring garden with its long-awaited rush of new life,

nor in the cacophony of summer’s hectic humming boom

but here in the Autumn garden,

with pumpkin- colored nasturtiums

wending their way towards the light,

Sedum and mums in bloom, yes

yes, this feels right.

in this place of quiet brilliance

muted whisperings of winter on its way

there is time, but none to waste,

 so give your love full sway.

In the Autumn garden

at the Abbey

Diane and Steve are wed today.

 

Also a lovely setting for a smaller wedding is the Garden at the Daniel Webster Inn

This Cape Cod Wedding Officiant /Celebrant /Interfaith Minister....

 felt inspired by this quote today especially the dance like Zorba part!

September 24, 2013 Crack yourself open! What use is it to continue to hide behind your facades and roles? Why waste your energy playing games? Isn't it time to cry your tears; to shout your passion; to dance like Zorba; and to let your soul touch the Soul of the world?                                     - William Martin, The Sage's Tao Te Ching

A wedding ceremony can be like this ....full of happy tears, shouting passion, dancing like Zorba, as two souls touch the Soul of the World.

At the first wedding I officiated in October of 2000 at the Dennis Inn, the Groom's Greek family all invited us into their circle for some dancing.  We did dance like Zorba!  I also remember the bride, Kathy, shaking a tail feather, with my husband and our ten yr.old son, to the rousing sounds of the classic, Love Shack. Now that was a moment not to be missed! 

At a ceremony for Kathleen and Ben in 2010 (see Happy Anniversary a few blogs ago) we had a dancer on the tidal flats. He was related to the groom and right before the ceremony he sort of swirled out on to the sands and began to dance. He said later it was he, who warded off the rain. The lovely Julia Cumes caught it on camera. 

 After all my years as a nurse and my work as an Interfaith Chaplain, I pinch myself each morning and say," No,  its not a dream.. You really do get to preside over wedding ceremonies as a profession "- WOW. 

So let's all crack ourselves open and see what emerges. I bet butterflies have to pinch themselves when, each morning, they are sunning their wings.

So let's shout out our passions and perhaps some of you out there may find that in that shouting, comes the quiet realization that you have found the one you love, that you have already chosen the one you want to love above all the rest!  

 Happy Autumn everyone! Here are Erika and Andrew shouting out their passion, as they are pronounced husband and wife, last October at the Wequassett Inn on Cape Cod.