All You Need Is Love

Your wedding day is supposed to be one of the happiest and most memorable days of your life. Yet for many Pagans, planning a wedding presents a unique set of challenges. You don't want to alienate your friends and family by freaking them out with your "alternative" religion, but you want to declare your love for each other in a way that honors your beliefs.

Maybe you're Pagan, but your beloved isn't - how are you going to come up with a ceremony that honors both of your spiritual paths? Perhaps you want to incorporate some Pagan elements into your ceremony, but don't want to ruffle the feathers of your conservative family. Or maybe you want an all-out ritual, but you just can't find many good examples to give you ideas.

Help has arrived in the form ot two Pagan authors who have performed dozens of handfasting ceremonies. Handfasting and Wedding Rituals has everything you need to plan the perfect Pagan wedding. You'll find advice and examples to help you with planning the basic wedding, writing the vows, and constructing the rituals, along with practical tips and great ideas about everything from low-cost wedding favors to candle and bonfire safety. Handfasting and Wedding Rituals also includes sixteen full rites honoring a wide variety of Pagan traditions. Rituals can be used exactly as printed or modified to fit your needs, whether you are interested in a faery wedding, tarot handfasting, peasant tradition handfasting, Druidic handfasting, Celtic sacred grove handfasting, heathen marriage rite, Grecian wedding, warrior's wedding, or even a Pagan handfasting vow renewal. There are also three examples of handparting rituals if you and your partner wish to formally part ways. Rituals are labeled level one, two, or three depending on their level of overt Pagan content and degree of participation expected from your guests.
All you need is love - and a little planning - to have the perfect Pagan wedding.:*

*Excerpt from the back cover


From the Preface

Why ask the blessing of Hera, the Greek goddess of marriage, on this book? Most of us who studied classical mythology saw her as a jealous harridan rather than a sweet, positive goddess. And yet...even leaving aside the idea that her anger may be a later addition to her character (once she was deprived of most of her power and kept on solely as the consort of Zeus), Hera is still a power to be reckoned with. Every time someone weeps because they have no permanent partner, or desperately wishes to be married, or gnashes their teeth all night with jealousy because their mate is off with another, they invoke the energy of Hera into their lives. Conversely, every time people make commitments or dream about a wedding or wade into a counseling session with the clear faith that this can only make them stronger together, they are also invoking her power.

Marriage, like all things worth doing, is an ambivalent situation. It's not easy to make a commitment to someone, promising that you will hang in there, not run away, keep working and fighting and sharing, not give up until it seems hopeless, thinking of her every time you make a decision, putting her needs first yet not stinting your own. It's not easy at all. In fact, it can be grueling (though rewarding) work, and that's why half of all marriages end in divorce. Yet we still keep on doing it, again and again and again. The dream is too attractive, and the eventual reward down the road in nothing to be sneezed at. Marriage is a crucible within which people find out more about themselves, their upbringing, their brainwashing,, their demons, their strengths, their challenges, and their true paths. It's almost impossible to commit yourself to that kind of close connection with another human being, even if only for a while, and not learn something deep about yourself.

This we come back to Hera. She is not an easy goddess, though her gifts are great. She demands attention, perhaps more than is convenient - like a marriage. She provokes arguments and questions entitlements - like a marriage. She does not want to let go, or be put second in any way, or be told to be quiet and decorative and supportive. She makes you work for her blessing, sometimes requiring truly heroic acts, which is the real secret of marriage. Thus we ask for her blessing on this book, even though it deals only with the positive part of wedded life - the beginning.

Hera traditionally was a triple goddess with three forms: bride, married woman, and widow. This book is dedicated to Hera the Bride, but we are always aware that the other two forms go with the package. It's the hardest thing about marriage, the part that no one talks about - no matter how much work you put into the relationship, sooner or later it is going to end, like all things. Either you will get divorced or someone will die. This bitter thought, hovering just outside of view at every wedding, simply makes the joy of the moment more intense. It's the way life works; you take the challenging with the harmonious. Hera understands this.

In September 1999, I married Bella, who is now my wife. I had just gotten a gender change from female to male, and I was getting legally married again, this time as the bridegroom and not the bride. It felt pretty strange, although we knew it was right - we'd been together for seven years and were still deeply in love. However, while we were planning the wedding, Hera kept calling me to talk to her. Since I'd reviled and rejected her while I lived as a woman, I felt even more uncomfortable about facing her now as a man, but she would not be denied. Strangely enough, she seemed less forbidding now that I was on the other side of the equation. I wrote this poem as tribute for her, and she approved in spite of the ambivalence that it expresses and blessed our union. Sometimes I think the gods are perfectly happy with any kind of tribute, even if it is suspicious, or fearful, or even negative, They just want acknowledgement of their power, whatever it inspires. Thank you, Lady.

For Hera
Lady, I am getting married
This autumn, we will stand
Before the people and swear oaths
And you will watch, and laugh at me
That I ever scorned you, ever thought
To flee your sphere. I followed wilder gods
Whose thoughts did not range past a day, a month,
Perhaps a year, for such bonds as you bank on
Seemed more chains to me than webs of love.
I've seen how you'd treated my companions
Of childhood, sitting on your couch
With your prim pursed glance, your pride
In your stubborn faithfulness,
Your bitter vengeance wreaked on the wrong targets -
The battered wives, the hangdog husbands,
The obsessed and their restraining orders, the children
Cowering from the rage in the next room, these
I laid at your doorstep, horror in my heart -
I would not be loved for what I had sacrificed.
And yet her I am, reluctantly
Burning much-grudged incense at your altar
Glancing from side to side, as if afraid
That someone might see me kneeling for Hera,
Great Lady of Heaven, Queen of All the Gods,
Revered by all in ancient times,
Whose Juno lives in every woman - you deserve better,
Lady, than my awkward suspicion.
I ask you, choking out the words,
For that gift you give above reproach -
To live in love with one who loves you
All the days of your lives on the Earth.
Say you believe in Hera, you fool,
Say
I do.*
- Raven Kaldera 1999