From One to Another

This is a piece I wrote for our wedding ceremony. We got married after a very long engagement and three kids. Lots of people asked why we bothered with a wedding after making such a commitment. This was my attempt at describing what marriage means to me. Feel free to use it, with attribution.

It takes some time to know oneself. But I know you. After getting this far together, I know you. And you know me. We’ve been through loss, and sadness, and frustration, through uncertainty, and indecision, through wonder, and such great, great joy in what we have created together. Only you and I could have made these things, as they are. Isn’t that something? Of all the world, only you and I.

I want to marry you now, not just to say I’ll be there when times are hard, or challenge you when choices need to be made, but to watch, just watch, when you are happy, when you experience that elation of feeling loved and of giving love to another.

We know that life can be cruel and inconstant. That tomorrow can be so different from today, and that nothing can prepare us for what may come. That a relationship can be tested or might need to change and adapt to cope with what the world may throw at it. It is not something to be done alone, but which sometimes needs the help of those close to us, who give us counsel, or care, or kindness.

Marriage is about including all of those we love in our relationship. We are not just two now, but a family, and a family needs the wit and wisdom of so many others, for what is life but the relationships we have, the things we learn from every person, good or bad, the things we give and take from others.

Our marriage is one small union in the billions of unions that drive on this complicated, wilful, restless human race, but to us it is massive. The union that makes us more than we are, and that says to the world, this is us, together, we’re greater than the sum of our parts. And we bring with us, into that union, the lessons from every small interaction. One more link in the great chain of human experience, held strong by the connections around it.

We are so fortunate to be able to choose, not just to survive, but to make something of our time, to be curious, and creative, and to question how things are, in order to change how things will be. So let us do it together, for as long as we can.