Michael and lacey’s wedding ceremony

Opening Remarks

Raise your hand if this is your first wedding. 

Not one of you? I can't’ say i'm surprised. We flock to weddings. 

Everyone’s in a generous mood. The amenities are usually free. All the singles held back by hesitation tend to collide with the thickness of love in the air. 

But a typical, run of the mill couple you’ll see getting married under a cross and church bells. 

Some pastor will talk about how although God loves all his children, this couple he’s marrying right here, God wants them to be especially prosperous. 

He says that to all the couples, but the couple doesn’t know that, and they probably don’t care. They don’t care that the pastor recycles ephesians 5:22 or ecclesiastes 4:9 or corinthians 13:4 over and over and over because weddings for pastors are just as commonplace as sermons. 

The two standing up at an altar, wherever they are, there’s only one word they care about. 

Love. A union of lives. Because to the two people up here, a wedding isn’t just a party. Its a public declaration they want everyone to see. Because that’s why we get married, right? That’s why we don’t elope, why we can’t forgo all the ceremony and formality, because the two joining their fates, they want a celebration, they want a memory. They want those close to them to see how much they complete the other. 

Because love is the absolute best thing about life, and where we find days ahead looking overcast, it’s a gift we need to share when we can. 

Even these reality tv weddings budgeted near six figures, their center pieces with mile-long bridal trains and guest lists just as long, the wedding industry trying to tarnish the day’s sanctity by bleeding the betrothed dry on those tables and these chairs and the newest in wedding tux fashion? even they can’t sully the beauty of a wedding, because the underlying motivation for those with a flare for the extravagant still holds true the same as it does here. The same reason we bashfully post selfies and shirtless pics. The same reason when we get a tattoo we’ll find any and every way to bring it up in conversation. It’s an advertisement to the world that says look at me! Look what I did! I’m proud of this. It’s means something to me. Come and see.

Come and see how these two found each other on a random river during a summer when the rest of their lives was the last thing on their minds. 

See how they were somehow in the same place at the same time when so many of life’s variables could have made us just miss each other. 

Look at all the beautiful coincidences that had to align for Michael to find opportunity enough to flip Lacey off her tube. Him using brilliant schoolyard flirtation to get her attention, Lacey undoubtedly taking the hint, I think today is testament it was a good call. 

Love was in the water that day, just as it is this day, the breeze blowing the ocean’s aroma around us as we see these two take their water-catalyzed relationship back to its roots. 

We don’t give it much attention, but we have this unconscious obsession with water. We’ve always lived near water, we need it to stay survive, to stay hydrated and raise our food, and since our species saw how the dugouts of hollowed tree trunks could float and transport people and product alike, we’ve always built our biggest cities next to water. Water is a vehicle for commerce, but so is love. 

You trade yours in exchange for another’s.

He’ll give you his love, if you just give him yours. 

Just like water, love creates paths between two distant points. It has the power to nourish or destroy if it’s not respected. 

Most of the world, more and more every day, is covered in the beautiful blue. If love covered half as much of the planet, we’d be enjoying better circumstances. It’s why when it catches our eye like the sun refracting off a quiet puddle, or an ocean’s gulf, we can’t help but stop and stare at the beauty.  

And a beautiful thing it is. Voluntary marriage is beautiful is most forms, but take the two in front of you right now.

They already live together. They’re not expecting a baby. They could support themselves financially. All the social pressures that push most couples into matrimony, they don’t sway these two. They stand here for us today because they know each other inside and out. They’re doing this because they know they want to, because they know they’re always going to be there for each other.

They know the warm kisses on the back of the neck when the other is doing dishes. 

They also know walking into the bathroom when the other forgot to flush. 

They know sharing a common lifestyle, working to eat better and move more and stress less by bettering themselves, constantly thrusting themselves into the uncomfortable unknown to grapple with ideas bigger than them. 

They know the other’s steady shoulder when one needs something to lean on. 

They know how to irritate each other better than anyone, and you all know better than me Michael and Lacey are no stranger to their conversational rumble royales. 

And this is what I like most about these two. I mean don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to like. They’re both sharp and kind, they care about themselves and know how to ignore the noise that fills up our lives. They know how to bicker without feeling personally attacked. 

And that’s what I like most, how they fight. The two take in a lot of information all the time. They’re the people who always have something new they want to share about these foods or this exercise or that lifestyle.. You can imagine the divergent information they come across also diverges their views. It invites argument. And they accept these invitations every day. Where most couples have this fuse that burns down to something explosive, harsh words being exchanged and ill thoughts being harbored, Michael and Lacey are the opposite.

They reach this point in a disagreement when where usually the fuse should detonate the charge, it’s instead doused in cold water. They fight to protect the other just as much as they fight to protect newly held beliefs.

It’s the most beautiful thing about the pushing and pulling of their relationship’s tide, because love is defined by those moments when it’s hard to find. It’s easy to love when the sun is out and everything's going according to plan. But that’s the thing about life. People make plans, and life laughs. 

It’s only those quickest on their feet who can constantly keep their eye on what’s important, those who love even when other choices would be easier, that survive the gauntlet of bonding your body and mind to another. 

I think the key to this is recognizing and appreciating how independently spirited the other is. Because as social animals what makes us us is how different we are from others. There are points to our lives because they can’t be carried out the same by any other person. It’s differentness that gives our lives meaning. Based on that I don’t know another pair who finds more meaning in being alive than these two scrappers.  

Vows

you're about to make promises to each other that you intend to keep. 

You're going to vow to take care of each other, to stand up for one another, and find happiness in the other. 

There's a simple premise to each of these promises: you're vowing to be there. 

You're teaming up and saying to the other, "Every experience I’ll have, I want you to be a part of."

You fell in love by chance, but you're here today because you're making a choice. 

You’re both choosing each other. 

You've chosen to be with someone who enhances you, who makes you think, makes you smile.

Someone who calls you on your bullshit

Exchange of Rings

You’ve both chosen to wear rings as a reminder of these vows you’ve made to each other. 

They’ve chosen to wear these physical symbols of their love, because just like these rings their love has no beginning or end.

The space inside a gateway to the future. 

But these rings did have a beginning. 

They were once raw metal, harvested from the earth, heated and shaped by a craftsman, and given value according to the market. 

That’s not value, that’s merchantry. 

Their real value is derived in this moment. 

Because the promises you’ve made give these bands their power. 

You name them as pieces of yourself that you give to the other, and as we know, naming something is one of the most powerful things we can do.

Now, you’re going to place these bands on each other’s left ring fingers.

For anyone who’s wondered, we do this to honor the Romans, who thought the strongest link to the heart was through a vein that ran the length of the ring finger.

So Michael if you’d take the ring from Name, and repeat after me. 

“Jen, I give you this ring”

--

“As I give to you all that I am”

---

“And accept from you, all that you are”

You may now place your immortal gateway on Lacey’s heartfinger. 

Lacey, if you’d take the ring from NAME, and repeat after me.

“Lacey, I give you this ring”

--

“As I give to you all that I am”

---

“And accept from you, all that you are”

You may now place your immortal gateway on Michael’s heartfinger.

Declaration of Marriage

Michael and Lacey.

Friends and fam.

By the power vested in me by the State of Ohio and the American Marriage Ministry, I now pronounce you wife and husband. You may now kiss the bride.

And now, for the very first time, I’m honored to present to you….. Mr. and Mrs. Schuster!