Hello and welcome. I presume you are all here because you know M & E, right? I just wanted to make sure we were all in the right place.

Today we get to participate in a modern day fairy tale. When people write love stories about getting to grow up with and marry the right person–they are writing about couples like M&E. Precious few people get it right so young. I have been lucky enough to know these two since almost the beginning of their relationship. I hope you will all bear with me as I ramble at them about the commitment they are making.

Marriage has existed as a word in our language for at least 700 years and as a concept it is much older than that. Anthropological records indicate that people have been engaging in monogamous pairings for 20,000 years. That’s a long time of people deciding, “Hey I’m sure I like you more than I like any one else.”

In Ancient Rome there were two kinds of marriage the poor people kind where a father deposited his daughter with a groom and they shacked up and the official kind with merging property. The merging of property is what made you someone of status and someone deserving a proper wedding ceremony. From there, a few hundred years later, the Church of England was kind enough to offer couples a choice between merely “loving and cherishing” their partner or “loving, cherishing, and obeying”; I know which one I would choose.

It feels presumptuous for me to tell you anything about relationships. You two have been together longer than I have been married. Luckily for you I have never let my lack of complete authority stop me from speaking.

Marriage is one of the hardest and best things you will do with your life. In picking this person you are saying, “I am good on my own but I am better with you.” You are consciously choosing someone to be your helper and partner in life. It is a great honor and a great responsibility.

Marriage has changed a great deal over the multiple millenium that such unions have existed. I feel like we live in an exciting time for marriage. At no point in the past did couples have as much freedom to define their roles as we do right now. You do not need to have a marriage that will make someone else happy or satisfy their needs. You need to have a marriage built on mutual understanding of your unique quirks and desires. No other marriage will look exactly like yours.

In this marriage you are both focused on how you will grow together. You have been together so long that you have a good idea how you want the larger curves of your lives to go. You have already supported one another through transitions from one life stage to another. You have this built in advantage over most people who get married these days.

Every year on your anniversary you need to sit down together and reflect on how your marriage is progressing. Time will pass–that is inevitable. Growth is not. The only people who can evaluate whether or not you are progressing in the directions you want to progress are the two of you. If you do not stop and consciously take stock you will not be able to determine if you are doing the things that are important to you. Don’t drift through life. Make goals. Make lists of goals for one year away, five years away, ten years away, twenty years away. Make them together and separately. Then check them off one right after another.

Do you know how to be happy and how to make goals? The first and most important step is to give and receive love. Check.  After that you sit and carefully think about what area of your life you want to see difference in. Then you try to decide what that area of your life means to you. How do you want it to look? Write all of this down. Then you organize your results. Then review the options for how to change what you don’t like. You can’t just “stop doing” something you have to replace the behavior with something you are moving towards.

Whether what you dislike is your current brand of makeup or your current employer the process is the same. Notice that you are having a whole set of reactions to a situation or trigger. Then you have to consciously decide what that part of your life means to you. Find a way to make categories as you evaluate. Divide up your thoughts make them patterns. Eventually it will be clear what you need to do. Maybe you will be yelling at your kids too much. Maybe you will be frustrated by deciding who needs to clean the bathroom. It literally doesn’t matter what part of your life the situation is in. Just do the process.

There will be conflict and unrest in your life. It is as natural as breathing. What will determine your strength of character and the strength of your marriage is how you adapt, how you change. Life is change, Princess, and anyone who tells you different is selling something.

We live in one of the most exciting times in all of human history. At no other point in time did humans have the option of changing as dramatically as we will in the next twenty year period. The next twenty years of your life will involve technology that was completely unthinkable even five years ago. Your children will be technology natives. You live in a time and a place where change is happening faster and faster. Being adaptable is one of the most important survival traits our species has to master right now.

I am standing here because I believe in you. Because I have watched you two support one another through massive life changes good cheer and love and kindness. You don’t need a lecture on how to be good to one another–you are already there.

The people who are here with you now are the witnesses for this new marriage. This change in your life and your identity. In choosing to get married you are choosing to say, “The good of us together as a family needs to come before our individual wants.” That will mean hard choices sometimes. That will mean having to bite your tongue when you are feeling impatient. It will mean needing to learn how to express your wants and needs so that they can be met–if your needs aren’t being met then your family is not actually functioning. No one can be a martyr. I say this to both of you. No martyrs.

Whenever you feel like you have nothing else to give you have to find a way. You have to ask for help. You have to find love and compassion and generosity no matter how tired you are, no matter how frustrated you are, no matter how angry you are. You are on the precipice of one of the most grueling stages of your life together. You need to treat the next five years as an investment in the next fifty years. The more kind you are to one another during this stage the more happiness, love and generosity you will experience over the whole rest of your life. Be selfish. Think of the future. Be nice to your partner.

It is about finding balance.

If you do not prioritize your needs and talk about them and insist on them being met then you will not get what you need this lifetime. I say this to both of you. If you do not ask for what you need then you will almost certainly not get it. You have to ask. You have to be brave. You have to take risks. You have to say things that scare you and make you feel vulnerable and weak. Otherwise you will not be able to grow as a unit. Vulnerability is part of the whole process.

You also have to say “no”. You have to say, “I wish I could support you in this way because clearly this is a need for you but right now I can’t.” Don’t be sorry or mean when you have boundaries. Just have them. There are reasons we as a species have extended clans and communities. You are not meant to be an island deriving all of your support from one another. You must be vulnerable and you must ask for help when you need it. First from your partner and then from other people in your life who can help. They want you to be happy but they can only help meet your needs if they know what they are. (This is not an open invitation for people to meddle. People should only show up to help if you want them too–otherwise it is a boundary incursion.)

(Obviously addressing crowd.) Everyone here is a witness to this new marriage. You are here because you love these people. I charge each of you with being a friend to their marriage. Help them grow together instead of apart. Being married is not always easy. It takes community and support and love from a lot of people to make a really great marriage. I say that we are all here for a modern fairy tale because these two have all of the elements for a great marriage–they are so lucky to have all of you.

M, when you are feeling frustrated and overwhelmed and you aren’t sure how to find more patience you need to close your eyes and think of E laughing. You need to think about how much you want to hear that laughter every day of your life. You want that to be the sound track of your life. You want to make E happy. You want to hear her laugh. As long as you can make E laugh everything will work out ok in the end–right?

E when you feel disrupted and like you don’t know the route forward you need to trust the process. M helps you feel safe. I can tell you right now today that you will not always be safe. M will not always be able to keep you perfectly safe. But you will always be able to return to safety. Within your marriage you have the ability to choose to make your home a place of comfort and calm away from the turbulence of the world. Your home is not about a building it is about the place of safety and love within your heart that you share only with M. As much as you love your parents and your siblings and your children you will always be one flesh with him. Your home will be with him.

Both of you need to consciously balance your own mental health. You need to develop new passions. You must never stagnate. Even when you feel completely overwhelmed because you have too much on your plate, you still need to learn new things every year. You must change. You must grow.

I tell you that the two most important things you must think about as you go forward with marriage is: how to constantly change on a personal level and how to support your partner through all of the dramatic changes that are coming. It is going to be hard for both of you. Both of you will have days that feel so overwhelming that you want to quit.

On those days stop and take deep breaths and remember that you have already spent most of your life loving this person. You have already given so much of yourself that you can never truly sever the bond. No matter what you two are entwined. Doing life as a married couple will be infinitely easier than as former partners. You are bound permanently. Find empathy for one another. Find compassion. Find love. When you are upset think about it from your partners point of view. Be selfish but not too selfish.

I have faith in you. I know that you two will find a way through hard moments and days and maybe even years. You will not allow life to stop you from making forward progress on the things you want. I have seen you come too far to allow any other road block to stop you.

It is time for you two to make some promises. Please repeat after me: {Insert personal vows that they have not given me.}

I, ____, take you, ____, to be my lawfully wedded(husband/wife), to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

I give you this ring as a token of my esteem and promise. So that at any moment if you need a reminder of how much I love you all you have to do is look down.

The state of California says that I have the honor of pronouncing you husband and wife. You may now kiss your bride.

I now pronounce you husband and wife.

 

Maybe. Ok, now I email it and ask for feedback. I talked to the bride on the phone yesterday and I got the distinct impression she is hoping I will be on the brief side and this is ~nine minutes of talking.