Ceremony Readings

Choosing our readings was my favorite part of planning our ceremony, although it was tough- there's so much great wisdom in the Bible that it was hard to narrow down just two passages to share with a group of people who most likely never pick the book up. If I had my way, there'd be like eight readings (and an audience that actually pays attention).

We used the collection of standard Catholic readings, and did one Old Testament reading, something that would appear in the Torah to represent Mr. B's Jewish heritage, and one New Testament reading to rep my Catholic heritage. 

I wanted to avoid the beautiful but overused 1 Corinthians, so I decided to hunt down a reading that would explain the type of lifestyle Mr. B and I would strive to live with each other and within our community. I had options from Hebrews, Colossians, Phillippians, but we finally settled on Romans 12:9-18, text below:

Let love be sincere;

hate what is evil,

hold on to what is good;

love one another with mutual affection;

anticipate one another in showing honor.

Do not grow slack in zeal,

be fervent in spirit,

serve the Lord.

Rejoice in hope,

endure in affliction,

persevere in prayer.

Contribute to the needs of the holy ones,

exercise hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you,

bless and do not curse them.

Rejoice with those who rejoice,

weep with those who weep.

Have the same regard for one another;

do not be haughty but associate with the lowly;

do not be wise in your own estimation.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil;

be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all.

If possible, on your part, live at peace with all.

Mr. B made the final call on our Old Testament reading, and chose the classic Genesis 2:18-24:

The Lord God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a suitable partner for him.”

So the Lord God formed out of the ground

various wild animals and various birds of the air,

and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them;

whatever the man called each of them would be its name.

The man gave names to all the cattle,

all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals;

but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man.

So the Lord God cast a deep sleep on the man,

and while he was asleep,

he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

The Lord God then built up into a woman the rib

that he had taken from the man.

When he brought her to the man, the man said:

“This one, at last, is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

This one shall be called ‘woman,’

for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken.”

That is why a man leaves his father and mother

and clings to his wife,

and the two of them become one body.

I'm glad he picked this, as the idea of us leaving our families and becoming a unit is a lesson we've been learning firsthand as we settle into living together. I like that the reading is directly applicable to us.

Okay, and I'm including a bonus reading (woo hoo!), this was my favorite from the OT. It's Tobit 8:4-8:

On their wedding night Tobiah arose from bed and said to his wife,

"Sister, get up. Let us pray and beg our Lord

to have mercy on us and to grant us deliverance."

Sarah got up, and they started to pray

and beg that deliverance might be theirs.

They began with these words:

"Blessed are you, O God of our fathers;

praised be your name forever and ever.

Let the heavens and all your creation

praise you forever.

You made Adam and you gave him his wife Eve

to be his help and support;

and from these two the human race descended.

You said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone;

let us make him a partner like himself.'

Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine

not because of lust,

but for a noble purpose.

Call down your mercy on me and on her,

and allow us to live together to a happy old age."

Isn't that what we all want? To live with each other happily until we're old as hell? So nice!

 Did you go secular or traditional with your readings?

Our Ceremony Plan

I am sure I've shared this before, but Mr. B and I are having an interfaith Catholic/Jewish wedding, which basically means that we have to create our ceremony plan from scratch. It can be kind of overwhelming- not only do you have to learn your own traditions (which, let's face it, most of us don't know those in quite as much detail as we should), but you have to learn someone else's. And then you have to combine them in a way that is fair to all religions, doesn't offend your officiant or old fashioned relatives, and works for you as a couple.


Sticking to tradition made things easier for us. I used a book called Celebrating Interfaith Marriages to figure out the most important elements of a Catholic wedding and the most important parts of a Jewish wedding, and different ways to order them. We structured everything like a Mass, got everything approved by our officiants (a Catholic deacon and Jewish cantor), and now we're good to go.


For other interfaith Catholic/Jewish brides, here's what we chose to do:

Processional

Opening remarks

Opening blessing

Acknowledgement of Separate Faiths

This is a short statement that will acknowledge that we're bringing together two different religious traditions- just in case anyone doesn't know. 

Blessing over wine
This is a standard Jewish tradition.

First Reading, Old Testament 

Second Reading, New Testament

Remarks

Our version of a homily. Still working out which officiant will do this, but whoever it is will give some personal remarks about us as a couple and hopefully relate them to our readings.

Prayer of Faithful/General Intercession

For you Catholics, this is the "Lord hear our prayer" part. I'll include the text of this since I really like it:

For leaders of Church and State, for heads of institutions, for heads of homes and households… that they will lead us and guide us in the search for goodness, joy, and love among us- Let us pray to the Lord.

For all married people:  for those who married yesterday, for the new couple Tracy and Brad, married today, for those who will marry tomorrow… that they may savor the joy of being together, warm love and children, a long life, friends, and a new day, every day- let us pray to the Lord.

For our relatives and friends who walk with us on life’s journey, and for those who have gone before us to the other side of life.  For the fulfillment of all their unfulfilled desires- let us pray to the Lord.

Vows

We'll be using standard "Do you take...in sickness and in health, etc" vows.

Exchange of Rings
In the Jewish faith, this is the part where you are really bound before God.

Pronouncement of Marriage

Kiss

Closing blessing

Glass Breaking

A Jewish tradition that marks the end of the ceremony- Mr. B will stomp on a glass, everyone will scream Mazel Tov, and we'll recess on over to the partay.

The big thing we left out was the Sheva Brachot, or seven blessings. I think it's a good thing to do if you have a lot of family or friends that you want to include in the ceremony, but we left it out in the interest of keeping the ceremony to only 30 minutes.

So that's our interfaith mix. Other interfaith brides, how did you design your ceremony? Were your officiants laid back about things?

Program Planning

Mr. B and I are in the process of planning our ceremony, and it's got me thinking a lot about programs. I really want to create something useful and elegant, even though I know 90% of the guests will leave them on their chairs after the ceremony. 

To avoid the black hole of craziness that I hear occurs in the month before the wedding, I'm compiling my program inspiration and brainstorming the project now. I'll share the progress with you guys in the hopes that maybe it helps with your own program design.

I know there's lots of cool programs out there, from fans, to trifolds, to those little origami fortune tellers we all used to make in fourth grade, but I'm into square booklets, like below:

 

 Source

There's so many ways to make these look elegant and beautiful, from messing around with cool font layouts:

Source

To fancy ribbons to bind the booklet together:

Source

I ordered some sample folded cards from Cards and Pockets, and loved the quality and color, so that's the cover stock game plan. Turns out C&P also prints, and provided it's not prohibitively expensive, I'll have them print the cover too. I'm all about convenience. 

I don't have to tell you that I'm obsessively debating between these two near-identical colors, right?

(Personal Pic)

For the inside, I'm using Mrs. Corn's incredibly helpful template, adjusting her margins to match my 6 x 6 folded cards. I plan to print on resume paper, to give the inside of the booklet a nice heft and a classier appearance over normal printer paper. 

And I'm also brainstorming the content, right now planning to include:

• Order of ceremony
• List of ceremony participants (bridesmaids, groomsmen, etc)
• Explanation of traditions, since it's an interfaith crowd
• Secular love quote (unless I can break down Mr. B, in which case I'm totally using this awesome quote from CS Lewis, a recent favorite author).
• Thank you to guests and parents
• A line remembering our deceased grandparents

So that's the start of the program project! What did you guys do for yours, and what kind of content did you include?

The Jewish Parts of Our Ceremony

Ketubah, the traditional Jewish wedding contract (Source)

Last night, we met our cantor for the first time. I’ll admit I was a bit nervous for this; I had heard through the grapevine that he might hassle us on the religion of our nonexistent kids, but luckily that didn't happen. He does seem stricter than our deacon in terms of adherence to rules and tradition, but I think we'll all be able to work together. 

One thing I did love was how our cantor went step-by-step through the elements of a Jewish ceremony, everything in insane detail.  I have only been to two weddings in my life, so I don’t even know the elements of my own faith’s ceremony, let alone someone else’s. His full on explanation really helped me begin to picture the actual ceremony, which as of yet I have not done (I know, I know it’s the most important part).

Some traditions we’ll be including:

A Chuppah (Source)

Chuppah: wedding canopy that we’ll get married under, believe it represents our future home. (I’ve been working with our florist on it, and it is going to be AWESOME).

Kiddushin: blessing and drinking of wine, followed by the exchange of rings, the “biggie” part of a Jewish ceremony. We take turns reciting an Aramaic phrase, followed by its English translation, and place the rings on each other’s hands. The cantor had us practice this; my Aramaic needs work.

Yihud: 5 minutes of privacy with my groom immediately following the ceremony. I think this will be a nice opportunity to make out reflect on our ceremony.

Tzedaka: this is a charitable donation we give in honor of our marriage. It won't be mentioned at our ceremony, but I thought at a time when we're spending boatloads on a wedding, it's nice to remember and help others too.

We’ll be skipping some other traditions, such as having our parents under the chuppah with us- that’s just too many people up there. We also won't have a traditional ketubah, though we will have a similar type of document that displays the Hebrew text of our Old Testament reading.  And I’ll be rocking a diamond wedding band, rather than the traditional unadorned band (I’m into working with other traditions but I have my limits, and a lack of diamonds is one of them!)

So now we just have to figure out how to combine everything...