humanist ceremony

trina2010

ok so ive had a search and ive found a few threads talking about humanist ceremonies.

we have been to 2 weddings recently, both civil and personally I cant really picture myself up there, it just seemed to me a bit stiff and legal more than a personal thing which I think the wedding should be. (this is just my PoV)

so ive been thinking more about a humanist ceremony, but i think OH needs a bit more insight into what it entails.
we are in scotland and having the wedding here also so we would not need the additional RO ceremony to make it legal.

my question is to brides who have already had a humanist ceremony...how was it?? why did you choose it? what did it entail? did it feel personal?

thanks in advance

Trina
x

hunnycat

I am having a humanist wedding, i am in scotland too. My ceremony is not until next october but we are all booked. I have chosen Paul Harkin fron the humanism society scotland http://www.humanism-scotland.org.uk/ . He was the celebrant at my partners grandfathers funeral and we felt he was a good choice.

Look on the site and email a few of the celebrants or ring them, they are really friendly andwill give you all the info you require. Paul sent me a sample of a ceromony and its really nice but basically you have what you want and he writes it around your needs.

Good luck and congratualation on your wedding.x

MsChazzer

Hi, we had a Humanist ceremony when we got married recently. I am a Humanist, and my husband is an atheist, we did consider a registry office wedding but I think my husband was more keen on a Humanist ceremony, plus I think it worked out a bit cheaper too, that all depends on days and place you're getting married etc.

It was an incredibly personal ceremony. Our celebrant was Juliet Wilson and the ceremony basically went like this:

Welcome and introduction - This kind of sets the tone, we took some extracts from a book called Sharing the Future by Jane Wynne Wilson about why we chose a Humanist ceremony and what we wanted the day to be like. We also had a little bit about who the bridesmaids and best man were, and acknowledged the distance people had travelled. Juliet explained that we wanted the day to be fun and relaxed.

Reading

About us - This was how we met, a kind of 'story of us'.

Reading

About marriage - How we view marriage, we found some extracts in Sharing the Future that said exactly what we thought! We also had what we hoped for from our marriage.

Reading

Ten things - Juliet asked us to list 10 things we loved about each other and she worked this up into something that didn't sound like a bullet point list, it was quite sweet really. Different celebrants do different things, a friend of mine and her husband had to list 3 things but not tell each other and then the celebrant unveiled what they were during the ceremony.

Reading

Vows

You get given a load of sample vows from your celebrant. We originally thought we were going to do a cut and past job as there were so many things we liked. Then that just got totally overwhelming so we each wrote a short paragraph of vows which was even more personal and meant we said exactly what we wanted. Some couples leave this as a surprise to each other but we shared ours beforehand. We put the legal vows and exchanging of the ring together

Signing register - Juliet introduced our mums at this point, who were our witnesses. We also had music at this point.

Celtic verse - All our guests said a short verse to us.

Toast - Instead of speeches and toasts later on (we dispensed with these for various reasons) Juliet toasted us at this point. Wine was handed out whilst we were signing the register for this.

Back down the aisle and finish!

Does that help?

trina2010

thats fantastic, thank you very much for that. it sounds lovely and far more personal and romantic than a civil ceremony.
I think for me the decision is made, but OH is a different kettle of fish!

thank you so much guys

Doomcow

im no kettle, and i certainly havent ate fish recently.

aye looks alright, but will have to look more into it and meet the celebrant / priest whatever

looks fabby though

MsChazzer

Just remember you can make it how you want, you don't have to have readings and you basically write the ceremony yourself with input from the celebrant. A lot of the celebrants have blogs so it's worth looking at those to see what other people have done for their weddings.