The Ceremony
By Dan Thomas Small
Good afternoon, everyone.
I'm sure I speak for both Gene and Kristen when I say most sincerely:
Welcome, and thank you for joining us on this beautiful day and for this most wonderful, most solemn occasion.
Before I go on, I'd like to stop and wish Sean a happy birthday. Sean, where are you? Why don't you stand up. Sean, a double thanks to you for spending your birthday with us.
Everyone, let's all wish Sean a happy birthday. Here's to another 31 happy, productive years, at the very least. Let's sing.
"Happy birthday to you..."
For those of you now thinking, "What the hell are we doing singing happy birthday to someone at a wedding?" or even "How dare he?", let me say in my own defence:
Firstly, that nothing I say to you hasn't been combed through by Kristen in particular, and received explicit prior approval.
Secondly, and more importantly, Sean is an old friend; in fact we are all old friends; and above all else, this day is about friendship.
It is about the friendship we all share with Gene and Kristen, and which is being powerfully reconfirmed today by our coming together like this to witness and indeed hallow the profound step the two of them are taking.
It is about the friendship Gene and Kristen share with us---and who, I ask, tends the garden of friendship more assiduously, more generously, more seriously than they?
Theirs is a friendship which, in my own case, has spanned seventeen years and four continents, from the hot tubs of Pleasant Hill to the lonely hermitages of Mount Sinai, from the soggy banks of the River Thames to this lovely piece of forest here...
...from a blustery day in January '94 when I first spied the two of them lounging grungily atop the radiators at the back of Mrs. Brewer's drama class...
...to an evening at the Outback Steakhouse in September '99 when over a Bloomin' Onion I in my inimitable way casually explained to Kristen how Gene would always love her because she was, as was obvious, the external manifestation of his pre-eternal unmanifest soul...
...to an afternoon in the basement of a Soviet-era youth hostel in Bucharest, where surrounded by damp concrete walls and hordes of strange feral youths, Gene and I hashed it out and determined that shortly after returning to the U.S. he would finally pull his thumb out and make Kristen his forever....
...to the day they asked me to preside at their wedding. Thank you. Thank you for your friendship.
Most of all, this day is about the friendship Gene and Kristen share with one another.
Theirs is a remarkable friendship, an epic friendship---who can remember a time before Gene ampersand Kristen?
Even during the difficult years, when they were together then not together then maybe together, when they had moved on and then not and then had moved on and then not...
...Even then, who wasn't certain that theirs was a love to last the ages?
Who wasn't rooting for them to come out on top?
Who didn't know that Gene and Kristen were destined to stand here like this on a sunny day in June, surrounded by friends and family, to pledge their eternal troth?
In a few minutes, this man and this woman will promise to support one another along life's long and often difficult path. Despite anything.
Despite sickness, poverty, and misfortune. Despite disappointment, periods of boredom, and periods of temporary insanity. Despite all those things that in the old marriage service come under the baleful umbrella "worse". For better or for worse.
And all this quite naturally gives rise to a question:
Why do it? Why take this step at all?
After all, they have been sharing an apartment for almost six years.
They are each well and fully part of the other's family.
They share the same friends.
Their evenings consist largely of re-watching episodes of favorite TV sitcoms.
In short, they are already as good as married, right? Why this need to get a dress and buy a tux and send the invites and write the vows?
Well, that's the marvelous and miraculous thing. There is no need. There is no need for any of this.
Under no duress, free of all constraint, and through the frankly dumbfounding mixture of reasonableness, imagination and deep feeling that has always characterized their partnership, Gene and Kristen have decided that the marriage commitment is something more, that choosing marriage moves them into an entirely different category of relationship.
They believe this is so. And since they believe it, it is so.
It is a remarkable and mystifying truth of culture that we human beings experience sexual desire in the form of erotic love, an erotic love that aspires to and is fulfilled in marriage.
Two people, united in love, choose to make that union binding, choose to make a commitment whereby they consecrate their lives to each other.
Gene and Kristen are forming a family today. They are no longer just individuals with individual needs.
Their promise to each other is to put the needs of their new family above their own needs.
And this promise, this new commitment, extends to all of us as well. We are not mere spectators here. We are participants.
By our presence here today, Gene and Kristen are asking us, humbly and earnestly, to recognize the commitment they are making to their new family, and even more, to hold them accountable to that commitment.
This is serious stuff! Marriage is not something entered into lightly.
Because it is not insulated, not contained within a picket fence.
It is a contract a couple make with themselves, yes, but it is also a contract they make with their community.
Gene, Kristen, you are about to make a series of promises to each other.
First, you will promise to love. This is a powerful promise. It makes explicit the deepest truth about what love is, one that often flies in the face of received wisdom. This is that love, however or wherever it begins, is ultimately and most essentially an act of will. It is something you can promise to do.
Second, you will promise to comfort. What a splendid promise this is. Life and living are often spectactularly uncomfortable. What joy, what relief a devout comforter brings, and what a blessed test of love it is to be comforter to another.
Third and finally, you will promise to honor. To honor your lover is simultaneously to see her how she is and to cherish the whole reality of her; and to perceive the person he can be, the best self he will become, enabled by your comforting love.
Remember, my dear friends, never to elevate one member in your partnership at the expense of the other.
Remember that the positive qualities you bring to the relationship as individuals are equally indispensable, equally worthy of esteem.
Remember to revel in each other, to seek out the shared joy that only inattentiveness obscures.
And remember, always remember, how lucky you are to have found a truly beloved.
And now, the vows. After Gene and Kristen have taken theirs, I will invite all of us gathered here to take one too.
If you feel emboldened, if you are willing to do your best to help this couple make good on their promises to each other, then the correct response, at the specified time, is "We do".
Gene, do you take Kristen to be your wedded wife? Do you promise to love, comfort, and honor her, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful only to her, so long as you both shall live?
Gene: I do.
Kristen, do you take Gene to be your wedded husband? Do you promise to love, comfort, and honor him, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful only to him, so long as you both shall live?
Kris: I do.
Do all of you witnessing these promises vow do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?
People: We do.
These rings are a symbol of the commitment being made today. Kristen, place the ring on Gene's finger and repeat after me: With this ring I thee wed; and with my body I thee worship.
(Kristen repeats and puts ring on Gene's finger.)
Gene, place the ring on Kristen's finger and repeat after me: With this ring I thee wed; and with my body I thee worship.
(Gene repeats and puts ring on Kristen's finger.)
We have witnessed Gene and Kristen's consent to these marriage vows. They have declared their marriage by the joining of hands and by the giving and receiving of rings. Gene and Kristen, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.
Ladies and Gentlemen, friends and family, it is my great honor to present to you Gene Wood and Kristen Larson, husband and wife. And may I just add...
It's about bloody time!
