How serious should a wedding ceremony be?
I know: how long is a piece of string?! Everybody’s take on humour at a wedding ceremony is likely to be unique, so there’s never going to be a “one answer fits all” response. A wedding ceremony means such a lot – but there’s no compulsion for yours to be standardised, if you don’t want that.
Church
Of course, if you choose a full religious service, then you’ll have no options as far as content is concerned. There’s unlikely to be much humour. You know what you’re getting, and that suits plenty of people, so all well and good.
Register Office
Of course, you have the choice to have a secular ceremony instead. In each district the Registrars conduct their own service (although the core will be identical). So you will be at the mercy of geography when it comes to the atmosphere conjured up. Basically, you can expect about a 10-minute ceremony, plus time for signing the certificate. It may reek a bit of conveyor-belt. Maybe you’ll chance on a registrar with a sense of humour, but maybe you won’t!
Humour
What I’ve written so far seems to be suggesting that wedding ceremonies have to be serious after all. But, remember, there is a third way.
You can opt for another type of ceremony: a civil ceremony. Your civil celebrant builds a service that will be personalised to you, so the tone (as well as content) will normally be made to suit you precisely.
But how light-hearted do you want such an important ceremony to be? Of course, that depends entirely on you. However, there’s a good chance that you’ll include some serious elements. For example, I might give an address on the meaning of marriage; there could be a serious final blessing; exchanging the rings may be accompanied by fairly serious words; so might the vows.
Equally there is the potential for humour, and even laughter.
You may want to tell your story (how you met etc.), and that usually involves a funny anecdote or two. If you write your own vows, you can include humour, although most of it will probably be serious. The readings or poems can be amusing. I do enjoy this one by Pam Ayres:
Yes, I’ll marry you, my dear,
And here’s the reason why:
So I can push you out of bed
When the baby starts to cry.
And if we hear a knocking
And it’s creepy and it’s late,
I hand you the torch, you see,
And you investigate.
Yes, I’ll marry you, my dear,
You may not apprehend it,
But when the tumble-drier goes,
It’s you that has to mend it.
You have to face the neighbour
Should our Labrador, Jackson, attack him,
And if somebody makes me sad,
It’s you that has to whack him.
Yes, I’ll marry you.
You’re virile and you’re lean,
Our house is like a pigsty
You’re amazing – you keep it clean.
That sexy little dinner
Which you served by candlelight,
As I cook canned soup,
You can cook every night!
It’s you who has to work the drill
And put up curtain track,
And when I’m feeling moody,
It’s you who gets the flak.
I do see great advantages,
But none of them for you,
And so, before you see the light,
I do, I do, I do!
If you’re of a surreal inclination, you may even include readings that have nothing to do with marriage, but that you simply love. Neil Gaiman’s “The Day the Saucers Came” is a lovely example!
That Day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and
stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed, to find out what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn’t notice because
That day, the day the saucers came, by some some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because
On the saucer day, which was zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-men’s nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold,
and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because
On the saucer-zombie-battling-gods
day the floodgates broke
And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true
brave hearts and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across
the land and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because
That day, the saucer day, the zombie day
The Ragnarok and fairies day,
the day the great winds came
And snows and the cities turned to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
Computers turned, the screens telling
us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes and arrival of
the Time Machine day,
You didn’t notice any of this because
you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.
So if you want a bit of humour at the altar, there are quite a lot of possibilities. In order to explore this further, please give Michael a call (07931 538487) or send ane-mail (celebrant@vowsthatwow.co.uk).
