Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Wedding Ceremony

After the jump, you can see the entire text of the wedding ceremony.  Again, we want to thank everyone who had a hand in this, especially Solemnizer Todd Polenberg, who helped to edit and shape our ideas into this final product, and who wrote the Charge for the Couple.  Also Sanjukta Paul, for her essay/reading which helped to ground this enterprise of marriage in an Aristotelian worldview.  And of course the rest of our wedding party - Josh, James, Albert, Claire & Julia - for being so game and reading (and, along with Leigh, singing) what we'd written or selected.



1.  Gathering Words

Todd: Good afternoon everyone.  My name is Todd Polenberg and, according to the State of California, I am The Solemnizer.  Welcome all to Liz and Jon’s wedding! After nine years of friendship, seven years of courtship, five years of co-habitation, four years of counseling, and two years of engagement, the time finally seemed right. 

Jon and Liz are exceedingly happy that you are all here.  Yet it still feels kind of crazy to them that in half an hour they will be married. You may be asking yourself, why is this so crazy? I mean, really, they’ve been living together for five years already. What’s this ceremony going to do, exactly? Why is it important?  They love each other, they’d probably stay together anyway without this.  And shouldn’t we be deeply skeptical of the idea of marriage in the first place?    

Well, rest assured everybody, we’ll be getting into all that later. Right now, Jon and Liz want you to understand how much less meaningful this day would have been without you here. Had you not come together to celebrate, to support, to witness, and to help formalize the commitment that Jon and Liz are making to each other, today would have been very different. What you’re about to see —which is gonna knock your socks off, let me tell ya —explicitly relies on your being here for it to work. You are not just witnesses, but participants. And we extend heartfelt thanks to all of you for joining them today. 

Before we begin, Liz’s sister Claire would like to acknowledge those who could not be here with us today.


2.  Remembrance

Claire: Let us pause to remember the family and friends who could not be here to share this day with us: those who were unable to travel, and those who are no longer with us. These people have been, and remain, important in our lives and have informed our notions of connectedness, family, friendship, love, and relationships. My family especially would like to take a moment to remember my brother Myles, the memory of whom we carry in our hearts every day. Let us celebrate the place of such people in our lives as part of Jon and Liz’s celebration.


3.  Reading I: Laura Kipness, Against Love

Todd: James Elmendorf will now read an edited selection from Laura Kipnis’ book, Against Love, which the author refers to as "A Polemic."  By that, she means that it is intended to be hyperbolic, overstated, not-measured, and tongue-in-cheek.  The reading is drawn from a chapter called “Love’s Labors.”

James: We all know that Good Marriages Take Work: we've been well tutored in the catechism of labor-intensive intimacy. Work, work, work: given all the heavy lifting required, what's the difference between work and "after work" again?

Somehow—how exactly did this happen?—the work ethic has managed to brownnose its way into all spheres of human existence.

When did the rhetoric of the factory become the default language of love—and does this mean that collective bargaining should now replace marriage counseling when negotiating for improved domestic conditions?

When monogamy becomes labor, when desire is organized contractually, with accounts kept and fidelity extracted like labor from employees, with marriage a domestic factory policed by means of rigid shop-floor discipline designed to keep the wives and husbands and domestic partners of the world choke-chained to the status quo machinery—is this really what we mean by a "good relationship"?

In the old days, work itself occasionally provided motives for resistance: the struggle over wages and conditions of course, and even the length of the workday itself. Labor and capital may have eventually struck a temporary truce at the eight-hour day, but look around: it's an advance crumbling as we speak. Givebacks are the name of the game, and not just on the job either: with the demands of labor-intensive intimacy and "working on your relationship," now it's double-shifting for everyone.

So when does domestic overwork qualify as a labor violation and where do you file the forms?

if private life in post-industrialism means that relationships take work too, if love is the latest form of alienated labor, would rereading Capital as a marriage manual be the appropriate response?

Could there be something about contemporary coupled life itself that requires all this hectoring, from the faux morality of the work ethic to the incantations of therapists and counselors to the inducements of the entertainment industries, just to keep a truculent citizenry immobilized within it?

Clearly the couple form as currently practiced is an ambivalent one—indeed, a form in decline say those census-takers—and is there any great mystery why? On the one hand, the yearning for intimacy, on the other, the desire for autonomy; on the one hand, the comfort and security of routine, on the other, its soul-deadening predictability; on the one side, the pleasure of being deeply known (and deeply knowing another person), on the other, the straitjacketed roles that such familiarity predicates-the shtick of couple interactions; the repetition of the arguments; the boredom and the rigidities which aren't about to be transcended in this or any other lifetime, and which harden into those all-too-familiar couple routines: the Stop Trying To Change Me routine and the Stop Blaming Me For Your Unhappiness routine.

Is it the persistence of the work ethic that ties us to the companionate couple and its workaday regimes, or is it the ethos of companionate coupledom that ties us to soul-deadening work regimes? On this one the jury is still out. 

As Marx should have said, if he didn’t: “Why work when you can play?”


4.  Charge for the Couple

Todd: Hyperbolic or not, that was kind of depressing.  As a counterpoint, one can look at marriage not as another shackle to the capitalist grind, but as two intertwined journeys of self-discovery made possible through the growth and discovery of the other.  One of the greatest acts of trust in a marriage, as or more important as the trust in fidelity, is the trust in the dynamism and openness of one’s partner.   The most difficult task of a marriage is to stay truly open to each other,  to prevent the relationship from falling into patterns,  to be able to both desire and satisfy the other without losing one’s sense of self.   We have seen the effects of a lack a psychological and emotional vocabulary on many couples, and we like to believe that we are now better armed for the struggle.  A healthy marriage, indeed any healthy relationship, is a living entity with ebbs and flows that needs constant nurturing, which is simultaneously work and play, and with its risks, which are grave, come an transcendent understanding of what it is to love and be truly committed.   Jon and Liz, do you understand the profound gravity of what you’ve gotten yourself into here?

Jon + Liz:  We do!


5.  Declarations of Support

Todd:  We are, all of us, a part of many communities. Today we further embroil this interconnected network. Today is about Liz and Jon, yes, but also today is about Liz and Jon and all of you, as well.

Before the couple exchanges their vows, they would like to ask that you, a community of friends and family that has been newly forged through this act of marriage, make your commitments to them and to each other. 

We will not solicit objections. And to this end we ask that you each affirmatively opt-in to the commitment.  After each question, you are invited to respond aloud, and with gusto, “We Do!”

Julia:  Do you trust and accept this marriage and the decision that Jon and Liz have made in choosing each other?

[We Do!]

Albert:  Do you promise to accord Jon and Liz respect and status in the following ways, as appropriate: son-in-law or daughter-in-law; brother-in-law or sister-in-law; cousin-in-law; friend-in-law; ex-in-law; and/or my husband’s, wife’s, or partner’s friend-from-college-in-law?

[We Do!]

Julia:  Do you promise that you will treat Jon and Liz as two distinct individuals while still honoring and respecting their commitment to each other?

[We Do!]

Albert:  Do you pledge to offer your emotional support to Jon and Liz, because marriage – hell, any relationship – is really hard sometimes?

[We Do!]

Julia:  Do you promise to be aware of how your actions impact the community that, with this marriage, Liz and Jon are helping to create? 

[We Do!]

Todd: Thank you.


6.  Reading II: Aristotle on friendship and its relation to the good life

Todd:  Sanjukta Paul will now read a piece that she composed for today, drawing from Aristotle’s writings on friendship and the good life.

Sanjukta:  To help ground the enterprise that Jon and Liz are embarking on, and the ritual we are all participating in today, we look to an ancient philosopher whose perspective on the ethical life affirms the centrality of love and friendship in it. “Friendship . . . is an excellence or implies excellence, and is besides most necessary with a view to living. For without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods….” So begins Aristotle’s discussion of friendship and its place in the ethical life. Friendship helps one to move toward the aims and purposes that define one ethically, but it also has a hand in writing the very life-plan that is unfolding: friendship “structures the good life and extends and redefines its boundaries.”

Aristotle describes the highest and truest form of friendship –call it “character friendship”—in which the two individuals engage with each other at the level of their very essences, their very telos. True friends—character friends—love each others’ essences, not merely what is pleasurable or useful about the other. At least aspirationally, marriage entails the enterprise of character friendship.

Aristotle tells us that character friends do something for each other that one alone cannot do; they engage in a kind of reciprocal mirroring, in which one benefits both from seeing and being seen: “Since then it is . .  a most difficult thing…to attain a knowledge of oneself… and that we cannot do so is plain from the way in which we blame others without being aware that we do the same things ourselves… as then when we wish to see our own face, we do so by looking into the mirror, in the same way when we wish to know ourselves we can obtain that knowledge by looking at our friend. For the friend is, as we assert, a second self.”  In this reciprocal mirroring, the friends develop a kind of sympathetic awareness of one another: a form of empathy that conduces to the ethical life generally.

If this all has started to sound too aspirational, it should be noted that none of it comes easily, or is guaranteed; nor is it unmoored from the practical realities of a life together: “It is natural that such friendships should be infrequent; for such men are rare. Further, such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have ‘eaten salt together’.” 

Ultimately, Aristotle tells us that in a character friendship, one opens oneself to nothing short of a soul-revising relationship. For while both parties to this enterprise must be good, they need not be good in the same way. In a character friend, one encounters another who is aimed at the good—but at the good in the form of her own telos: her defining mission, way of being, and, well, character. So character friendship is not just about an aid to being “good” in an abstract, generalizable sense—although it is that too. It is also, at its deepest level, an interaction between different sets of ends, values, and ways of being. Indeed, the ultimate telos of friendship itself seems to lie in opening oneself to a profound possibility: an alchemical interaction between two unique, distinct characters—together aimed at the good—the  outcome of which cannot be predicted or calculated ahead of time, and which is instead embraced on the strength of the conviction that by knowing this other self, and letting her know one, one may aspire to more fully be the “man he is.”

Todd: Thank you, Sanjukta, for that reading.


7.  Marriage Address

Todd:  In Jules Feiffer’s 1971 film Little Murders, Donald Sutherland’s Reverend Dupas, exasperated and weary right out of the gate, begins the wedding ceremony over which he is presiding: “You all know why we’re here. There’s often so much sham about this business of marriage. Everyone accepts it: ritual.”

And it is true that Liz and Jon have asked you here because they, too, accept the ritual, and the institution, of marriage. And, as you have just affirmed, you accept it as well.

Why? Why did you? Why do they?

Liz and Jon love each other, I think we all know that. And those of us who know them well—or who have known one or the other of them for a long time—well, we also know that they are actually good together. They make each other happy, and they also make each other better. This is indeed a cause for celebration. But is it a cause for marriage?

Because, let’s face it: there are reasons—valid reasons—to reject the institution.

Marriage is a state-sponsored enterprise for the purpose of creating stability. Sometimes this is benign: it is often easier, legally speaking, for the state to treat a household as a household, rather than as various individuals. Sometimes the state’s motivation is less benign, however, as when the courts articulated that a key function of marriage is creating “stable households, which in turn form the basis of a stable, governable populace” in order to facilitate “public order.” Hmmm. Liz, Jon, are you standing here today, ready to affirm a commitment to state stability and public order along the lines of the status quo?

Liz: Well…

Jon: Um…

Okay, put a pin in that one. Maybe we can come back to it. 

But this really highlights that the institution of marriage is problematic.  Marriage comes with some 1,138 legal benefits, rights, and privileges, but are these benefits, rights and privileges equally available to all? Only six states (and D.C.) issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Sadly, we are not in one of those states today. And even for those lucky enough to be in one of them, the federal government still doesn’t accept same-sex marriage. Is it ethical to be the recipient of benefits that others cannot receive for spurious reasons? What does it mean to be participating in an institution whose aims have historically served the patriarchy and the normative?  If we do not subscribe to the dominant paradigm, College, Job, Marriage, Kids, culture will not make room for us, and the messages we receive will tell us we are failures.  The expectations that surround marriage are oppressive and omnipresent, both for how we should live our lives, and for what kind of ceremony we should throw.

So yes, There’s baggage to this whole enterprise—some of it beautiful, some of it ugly. Let’s be conscious of it. But let’s not allow it to cloud what today is about.

Is today about Liz and Jon moving forward in their lives together? Actually, no; that’s already been happening, and would have continued even without these words, these symbols, this legal document, and this celebration.

Today is about drawing attention to their commitment and making it real in the eyes of their community—your eyes, as well as the eyes of the larger community, who may not understand how fraught the institution is. For better or for worse, the idea of marriage has a very specific social meaning. Kristin Perry, a plaintiff in the case against California’s Prop 8, stated it simply: “I’m a 45-year-old woman. I have been in love with a woman for 10 years and I don’t have a word to tell anybody about that.”

Being married—being a wife—being a husband—these words communicate a seriousness. And while no single word will ever encompass the particularities, the uniqueness, of a given relationship, we are human and we work with what we have.  There is no doubt that the institution will continue to be flawed and problematic after today is over.  Not everyone will know what we mean when we use these words of marriage.  But today Liz and Jon are claiming them as their words, and want you to know what they mean.

Liz and Jon are making plans. They are building a shared life. They want you to understand, even with our imperfect words and our imperfect structures, what they mean with this plan-making and this life-building. This is what they are committing to and what they are asking you to commit to. And we are here to witness and support, yes, and also to celebrate it.


8.  The Drinking of the Soda

Todd: One of the first conversations that Liz and Jon ever had—probably their first bonding moment—was about a shared love of Coca Cola. It is fitting, then, that they mark today’s passage with a ceremonial drinking of the Coke. Plus, we’ve been standing up here for a while, and I just did a lot of talking, and Liz and Jon could use a refreshing drink.

[Todd opens the bottle: a satisfying sound. He holds it while talking.] 

Together, we will drink this Coca-Cola, which tells us of the sweetness of their life together. Its pure cane sugar—no high fructose corn syrup here, this is the Mexican version—reminds us that it is important to go to all reasonable lengths, in all aspects of life, to strive for something better than the processed, packaged, marketed stuff that we are supposed to want from love, work, and life. (At least in so far as that sentiment makes sense in the context of the most recognized brand on the planet.) The pure cane sugar also reminds us that it is kosher for Passover.

Its caramel color and its umami remind us of the richness and fullness of the years that Jon and Liz have had together, and that they will have together.

Its carbonation reminds us of the fizzy excitement of all of their adventures to come.

Coca-Cola, like the love that Jon and Liz share, is both generic and specific. Commonplace and ubiquitous, there is really no substitute for it. It is instantly recognizable, and yet also very mysterious and essentially nonreplicable, formula-wise. Are we so bold, so hubristic as to claim that just as Coke is to the Platonic ideal of the cola, Liz and Jon are to marriage? No, but we do know that the love that Jon and Liz have for each other is “The Real Thing.”

Let us drink.

[Todd pours the Coke into one glass.  Liz drinks, then Jon.]


9.  Reading III: Stephin Merritt Song “Forever and a Day”

Todd: Best Man Josh Kamensky and Leigh Bardugo will now perform the Stephin Merritt song, “Forever And A Day.”

[Josh on ukulele and Josh and Leigh singing]

Forever and a day
We’ll dream our lives away
Our love is here to stay
Marry me

I’ll give you every color of the rainbow
They’ll say it can’t be done but what do they know

You’ll never be alone
You’re my sine qua non
And I’m a baritone
Marry me

I’ll gaze into your eyes and say “I love you”
There’ll always be a rainbow right above you

Forever and a day
We’ll watch our children play
I know it’s a cliché
But I’ll love you come what may
Forever and a day

Forever and a day
We’ll dream our lives away
I know it’s a cliché
But I will love you come what may
Forever and a day


10.  Wedding Vows

Todd:  For the state, marriage is a piece of paper whose existence you all will simply take on faith.  For Jon and Liz, marriage exists in the promises they make before you here today. Now the couple will exchange their vows. 

Jon, please repeat after me:

Liz, I love you very much and I want to be your husband. 

I am excited about our life together. 

I promise you: I will be faithful and honest.

I will deal in good faith and assume you are doing the same. 

I will be kind and loving.

When I listen, I will pay attention, even if you’re talking about the various Real Housewives.

I will fight fair.

I will treat you as the whole person you are.

I will let you be yourself.

I will take responsibility for my mental and physical wellbeing.

I will, in short, tend to our relationship.

[Todd, alone, not repeated]  Now, here’s the harder stuff.

I will try to be more chill when driving and will keep my mouth shut when you drive.

I will try not to be prematurely dismissive or frustrated when facing uncertainty.

I will try to remember that we are not, in fact, George and Martha.

I will try to remember that there are other ways of approaching the world, and that sometimes some of them may be valid.

I will try to like that place.

Most of all, I promise that I am and will remain committed to us.


Liz, please repeat after me:

Jon, I love you very much and I want to be your wife.

I am excited about our life together. 

I promise you: I will be faithful and honest.

I will deal in good faith and assume you are doing the same.

I will be kind and loving.

When I listen, I will pay attention, even if you’re talking about poker.

I will fight fair.

I will treat you as the whole person you are.

I will let you be yourself.

I will take responsibility for my mental and physical wellbeing.

I will, in short, tend to our relationship.

[Todd, alone, not repeated]  Now, here’s the harder stuff.

I will try to be better with money.

I will try to retain simple information like appointments and our home phone number.

I will try to put lids back on things and close cabinet doors and not leave a tornado of clutter as I move from room to room.

I will not try to force you like that place, if you really don’t like it.

Most of all, I promise that I am and will remain committed to us.


11.  Ring Exchange

Todd: Now, Jon and Liz will exchange rings, which they have chosen to wear as a public sign of the commitment they are making to each other. 

Jon: Liz, I give you this ring as a symbol of my commitment to you. When you wear it (which should be all the time, just so we’re clear), be reminded that I am always with you and for you, even during those moments when I’m so mad I can’t even talk to you, or when I go to Vegas with Albert, James, and Matt for three days and forget to check in. Wear this ring as a reminder, a celebration of our marriage and as a sign of my love for you.

[Jon puts ring on Liz’s finger]

Liz: Jon, I give you this ring as a symbol of my commitment to you. When you wear it (which should be all the time, just so we’re clear), be reminded that I’m always with you and for you, even during those moments when I’m so mad I can’t even talk to you, or when I am out all night drinking with Holly Myers and forget to check in. Wear this ring as a reminder, a celebration of our marriage, and as a sign of my love for you.

[Liz puts ring on Jon’s finger]


12.  Breaking of the Glass

Todd: In Jewish tradition, a wedding ends with the breaking of a glass. Jon, like many secular Jews, is tied to his Jewish heritage less through belief than through such symbols and traditions.

There are many ways in which this tradition has been interpreted. Some of the interpretations are silly: the loud noise scares away demons; or the breaking is symbolic of the breaking of the hymen. Some explanations are more literal: the act represents a dramatic breaking with the past; or the hope that the couple’s happiness will be as plentiful as the shards of glass. And since this is, after all, a Jewish tradition, we can’t keep from getting a lame joke in there: that this is the last time the groom gets to put his foot down.

And while, in some part, we’re doing this today because breaking shit is just fun, the interpretation that many of us find the most resonant ties into the Jewish notion of tikkun olam, or “repairing the world.” Even today, a day of happiness and celebration—indeed, especially today—we should remember that our world is broken, that our world needs mending, and that we must commit ourselves, in part through our relationships with each other, to doing what we can to repair it. Let us all join in the hope, faith, and knowledge that Liz and Jon, working together, have the power to mend, in some small way, what is broken. Let this be the work of all of us.

Jon?

[Jon breaks glass]


13.  Pronouncement and Benediction

By the power bafflingly vested in me by the internet, from the Universal Life Church, by Los Angeles County Clerk Dean C. Logan, and most importantly by Liz and Jon, I now pronounce you husband and wife.  Congratulations, mazel tov, and please, kiss each other.

[Liz and Jon kiss, embrace each other & Todd]


Now Liz and Jon are going to go collect themselves for a moment.  Jon will probably have a cigarette, and Liz will probably be all “Ohmygod did that just happen??!”  Please wait until they recess, and then gather in the other room for a drink. 

[Liz and Jon recess]

3 comments:

  1. i sent the bit about coke to my (coke obsessed) family. Here's my aunt's comment: "Ah, how the world is changing. Folks now honor what IS important in their lives rather than what others think SHOULD BE important in our lives. Thanks, Sarah. Way cool." there was more positive feedback in that direction, and a general call for Mexican coke to be more widely available in the midwest.

    xoxo

    ReplyDelete
  2. I cried as I read this (looking for non-traditional vows that will fit my non-traditional second marriage). I don't know Liz and Jon, but I wish them every happiness possible.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I cried as I read this (looking for non-traditional vows that will fit my non-traditional second marriage). I don't know Liz and Jon, but I wish them every happiness possible.

    ReplyDelete