Pagan Weddings

For those of you that do not know, I plan weddings, for those of you that did, well good for you for paying attention lol

The question I set forth is what is a pagan couple (or person) that wants to get married but has been informed by their family that they will not attend if it is to be a ritual and handfasting?


Personally, I had a non-denominational ceremony and reception and a ritual and handfasting 7 months later with a smaller group in Lake Superior (yes IN the lake). What do the rest of you purpose as the "right" way to handle this situation or get married?

I will inevitably be in the same situation if I ever find someone crazy enough to want to spend the rest of their life with me. I think your suggestion is what it will have to come down to. Weddings are about family and if the family refuses to go to a hadnfasting ceremony it will have to be a non denominational wedding with a handfasting sometime after.

As far as the idea of it being in the lake -- totally steeling that, of course I have to find someone crazy first.

Star, i found mine out swing dancing and he thought I was someone else, someday i am sure you will meet him

E and I planned, off the cusp after almost a year and a half together, to elope. We then decided that we should tell our mothers, then some of our coveners, and when it finally happened shortly thereafter, we had the ceremony (ritual) in the backyard of an HP, with over fifty Pagans, community elders and family members in attendence, our daughter Hemunset was the HPs at the ritual and one of our coveners, Paul, was the practicing minister (we pushed through his credentials and registration with the state).

As some of you may know, I am LCMS ordained and registered in the State of Minnesota. I have performed many weddings and handfastings. If there are family who have a difficult time with a Pagan ceremony, the ritual can be 'Christianized' to a point that many would not recognize it as Pagan unless they knew and understood what true Paganism is. I write marriage rituals for just such circumstances.

I also do pre-marital councelling, which brings down the price of the license and also allows time to placate family members or work around objections. The ceremonies I perform are not cookie-cutter dogma, they are written to the specific needs and desires of the couple. I have done weddings in churches, living rooms, on lakeshores and in city parks. It gets a bit interesting when the ceremonies are clothing optional.

I guess that the question I have, based on your original post, is this: Who is really getting married? The bride and groom or the family? If the couple has to cowtow to the family at the very start of their lives together, their relationship is doomed, for they are giving up their free will and choice to pressure from others, a poor way to stand together and show strength of character and purpose.

Ari- I am speaking hypothetically, it is a little bridezillaish to say you don't like my choice of religion so even though you are family I am going to do what I want and have none of you at my wedding just because I want to have my way. Should a wedding not be about family and celebrating a relationship? I chose to have the 2 different ceremonies as my wedding would have had no one but Dracos at it if I had made it be Pagan as my family is unwilling to accept that I am not christian and Vern's family thought I was Satan before they knew I was pagan. Al I am asking, is what is the line that needs drawn by the bride and groom as to a "traditional" ceremony and a pagan one? This is a wall that I have been faced with a few times now as many in their 20's are turning away from standardized religion and wanting to go a more natural route.

I am a High Priest, yet I can put on a black shirt and collar and perform a Pagan wedding in a Christian church, I have found that I do not burst into flames. I can make Pagan vows acceptable to Christians, without forcing the Pagans to cross spiritual lines that they disfavor. The Christian guests at our wedding did not, and some still do not know that we are witches... even with fifty Pagans in attendence. You plan them, I perform them. I can make both sides of the equation happy when it comes to non-conforming spiritual paths.

Again, the choice will and should lay with the couple.

That is what I am asking, what should the couple choose, religion or family? No matter how acceptable a ceremony can be made, someone is giving up their beliefs, possibly all involved, who should be made to betray their own choice just to be with family and friends?

When all is said and done, the bride and groom, their desire to be together, their spirituality and beliefs should come first, last and always. They will not (hopefullly) live with the families, they will live with each other. They are not marrying the families, but are marrying each other. If they give in to family pressure, then the family pressure will increase multifold over the years until the couple are completely controlled, or can no longer stay together or true to themselves for fear of crossing some family taboo.

We do not live in a culture of arranged marriages. Why adopt the stigmas attached to such marriages?

Even the Xtian bible says, "A man shall leave his family and a woman shall leave her home". Nowhere does it say that in leaving, one must carry the weight of those families on their backs, or in their souls.

So you propose that they do the wedding without their families there to support their choice to be wed?

Exactly. If family cannot accept the choices of the couple, spirituality included, then it is their loss. The couple should move ahead with their lives together, and perhaps when the families recognize their own bigotry and perhaps distancing from grandchildren, they will eat crow and crawl on their knees back to the couple to beg forgiveness. If not, no loss.

You have not yet had to deal with a momzilla for a wedding have you, I had one that went crazy when the bride chose to replace the candle lighting with sand for an outdorr wedding. Well, I suppose someone needs to think the world is better than it is, I am just not going to be that person, i deal with the world as it is not, as it should be,