How can anyone bring themselves to affirm that they will care for another person twenty years from now?  It is one thing to promise your girlfriend that you will pick her up at eight o’clock; it is quite another to give her your pledge that you will love her for the rest of your life.  The marriage vows are simple ones, but remarkable both for the extremity of their selflessness, and also for the fact that in most cases they turn out to be the only true vows either partner will ever make, let alone hold to, in their entire lives.

On behalf of the couple…and on behalf of all those who have thought and planned and worked to make this fantastic event possible, it is my pleasure to welcome you this Sunday afternoon to the NOT wedding.

Let’s make no mistake about it: this is a party, a celebration. And today we celebrate not just all that which goes into making the wedding occasion unique among all others, but also marriage itself. For the NOT wedding celebrates both essence and experience…beauty and virtue.

We celebrate flowers and music and apparel and décor and dance and fine food. And we honor the pledge that couples make as they throw all natural caution and defensiveness to the winds and put themselves entirely in the hands of love by an act of the will. The NOT wedding celebrates falling in love…as well as marching into it boldly.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I now present to you for the first time…

MR. AND MRS. NOT COUPLE!

photo: Callie Murray