pagan & wiccan weddings & handfastings

Heartfelt friendship and weddings

There's something special about real friendship. True friends are the kind of people that you can know for years, and yet even if you don't end up hanging out quite as often as you had before, the feeling of kinship never goes away.

When you are with a true friend, it doesn't matter if you last spoke a year ago, picking up the thread of conversation is as natural and as easy as if you'd last spoken the previous afternoon.

Even though this wedding was last September, I have been wanting to write a blog post about it ever since then, so here are my belated congratulations to the happy couple.

This wedding is all about friendship, come on in and let me tell you why.

When Norm met Kim, it was that kind of instant friendship, one that is so critical to a good marriage. He told me repeatedly in the days leading up to the wedding, "She is my best friend." When someone tells me that, I know that their wedding and relationship are going to be a solid success. They had met years previously, and yet at their second meeting, many years later, the planets all aligned for them, and just being around the two of them for their wedding, you could feel the deep friendship and spark of true love that flowed between them.

Friendship has another part to play in this wedding also. I have considered Norm a true friend for nearly twenty years now. We have seen each others children born and our respective love relationships go through their ups and downs. We have shared deep conversation, desperate emotion, good times and bad, and through all of it, we carried a deep connection of friendship that was not dependent on when or where or how often we spoke.

All weddings are an honor and a pleasure, but this one in particular was an immense honor and a deeply satisfying pleasure, as I saw my great friend Norm be so incredibly happy with his best friend Kim. Congratulations to Norm and Kim, and may your friendship and love eternally endure and continue to blossom.

A Dia de los Muertos Wedding

Themed weddings are always fun, and this bride and groom took the Dia de los Muertos theme and ran with it! Everything from the cake topper that is pictured here, to the customized wedding chocolates were permeated with the grinning skeletons of the Day of the Dead. Even some of the wedding gifts reflected the theme in their wrappings and decorations.

Vickie and Brian are two people who know what they like and their personalities were very much in force for this wedding, expressed in every detail of their ceremony and in the setting of the wedding. I did a handfasting for them, and since they are from Southern Utah, there was quite a bit more planning involved than the usual wedding held here in the Salt Lake valley. The bride and groom visited me at the Temple a few weeks prior to their wedding so that they could create their handfasting cord with me, and then I traveled to their home in Southern Utah for the ceremony.

There are several things which make this wedding very memorable, besides the theme!
Vicki is employed at the beautiful Cedar Breaks lodge, and since I normally request that the wedding party provide some form of lodging for me if the wedding is more than 100 miles away from my home, she arranged for my family to enjoy a beautiful room at the lodge for the weekend. We had never experienced the Cedar Breaks National Monument, and I can

highly recommend the experience! The lodge is located just a few miles from the entrance to the monument, and so it is a perfect place to stay and enjoy the surrounding environment. So besides having the honor of performing the ceremony, we had the great pleasure of exploring one of Utah's natural wonders!

The wedding was held in Vicki and Brian's beautiful back yard. The centerpiece of their yard was a huge, beautiful weeping willow tree, complete with a landscaped island containing benches, fragrant herbs and a small pond and water fountain. The ceremony was held under its sweeping branches, with most of the wedding guests seated in the ample shade it provided.

It was a bit windy that afternoon but with a little encouragement, the winds calmed down so that we could have a perfect ceremony. After the ceremony and dinner, we signed the wedding documents and then the newlyweds cut their beautiful cake and we lingered long into the warm summer evening, enjoying all of the decorative personal touches in their home and yard and getting to know the friends and relatives of the bride and groom.

One of the other most memorable parts of this weekend would come only as we were driving home from the ceremony on Sunday afternoon, when I received a texted photo showing that the beautiful tree had blown down on the night of their wedding. The feeling amongst all of the psychics and sensitives within Sacred Circle (and echoed by the bride as well) was that the tree was just waiting until the wedding was over, hanging on to be there for them just one last day. It was a bittersweet reminder of how quickly things can change, but I thank both Vickie and Brian for letting me be a part of their special day, and for the opportunity to explore a part of Utah that we had not seen before.

Summer Solstice Weddings

This year I was privileged to do two weddings around the Summer Solstice

The first one was a more traditional "white wedding" which turned out to be a most interesting ceremony. The wedding of Andrew and April was my first "joint" wedding with another Clergy person. The groom is from the Eckankar tradition, and so his clergy representative was an Eck clergy person.

The second Summer Solstice wedding was a private handfasting in a beautiful park, which was the location of the couple's first kiss.

Recent wedding photos

Here are just a few photos of some of my most recent weddings.

First up, a St. Patrick's Day wedding:

This wedding ended up being a little impromptu, but everything turned out great for the re-married bride and groom. They had been married previously and were giving it a new go. The bride wanted a "Cinderella" ceremony, complete with the groom putting on her "glass slipper".

This "gothic" themed wedding / handfasting was one of several that I have done for the same family over the years, and it is always wonderful to see everyone again. Since I've been friends with a member of their family for nearly twenty years now, every wedding I do for them is like coming back to a wonderful family reunion. Love you guys!

This beautiful fairy-themed Celtic handfasting was a joy and a delight to perform. The setting was perfect and the weather was beautiful. The bride and groom had put SO much thought and work into making the ceremony be exactly the way they envisioned, even down to building a custom crescent-moon shaped table for the altar.

Impromptu Weddings

Although they are called by many names, elopements, last-minute weddings, drive-through weddings, and many other terms both respectful and not so much, what I call "Impromptu Weddings" are more common than people may imagine, and actually have their own charm. There is often a sense of giddy excitement to an impromptu wedding, a charged atmosphere and a sense of elation when it is done.

This is not to say that the carefully planned and meticulously orchestrated weddings do not have their own charm, indeed they do. However, the sort of sparkling energy that comes in an impromptu ceremony can also be very appealing.

There are as many reasons for a last-minute wedding as there are couples on the earth. Some of the more common reasons include medical emergencies, military assignments, health insurance concerns, and yes, even death and taxes. Some long-term couples just "decide" one day to formalize a bond held for years, and some very short term engagements can result in a quick trip to the County Clerk's office. Despite the negativity often associated with impromptu weddings, I have seen little evidence that couples who choose quick weddings have any less of a chance long-term than a couple who have planned theirs out for a year or more. The main factor for success in my opinion resides in the ways that the couple can communicate and connect deeply.
As long as the couple truly love each other and are willing to work on everything else, an impromptu wedding is no curse.