Ceremony

Officiant: Tiffany Newman

Matron of Honor: April Gimenez

Best Matron: Norah Griffiths Johnson

Flower Teen: Margaret Heath

Flower Girl: Samantha Heath

Processional

"Build a Little Birdhouse in Your Soul" (Vitamin String Quartet cover of They Might Be Giants)

Remarks

Tiffany Newman

Reading 1

Excerpt from Goodrich v. Department of Public Health, by Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall

Read by: Louis Thompson

Marriage also bestows enormous private and social advantages on those who choose to marry. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. "It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects." Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition.

Reading 2

Excerpt from The Irrational Season, by Madeline l'Engle

Read by: Sam Rosenblum

But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that together we become a new creature.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.

Vows

Sylvia and John

Reading 3

Rainer Maria Rilke From Letter 24, to Emanuel von Bodman (English translated from German)

Read by: Kate Culpepper

For me, Marriage is not a question of tearing down and demolishing all walls and partitions in order to create an instantly indivisible union: a good marriage is far more a marriage in which each is appointed the watchman of the other’s solitude. And to appoint your partner to be your guardian in this way is to show the greatest trust which you have to bestow. To make one person out of two is an impossibility: where it appears to be possible, it is merely a restriction and a mutual pact which robs either one side or both of their complete freedom and development. And yet, if one can accept the knowledge that even between the most closely joined souls there still remain distances without end, then a wonderful living ­side-by-side can grow provided that both parties learn to love the expanses which divide them. For it is these expanses which make it possible for each to see the other as complete and fully formed against the backdrop of a vast firmament.

Recessional 

"Walking to Do" (Ted Leo and the Pharmacists)