My Wedding Script
Anyone getting married out there? Below is the final script my wife and I and Patti (our celebrant) used for our wedding. Feel free to copy and plagiarize.
[Processional completes. Music stops.]
[Everyone assumes seated, standing positions after processional.]
Patti: Family and friends of the bride and groom – welcome – and thank you for being here on this important day. We are gathered together to celebrate the very special love between Jeremy and Janna, by joining them in marriage. Jeremy and Janna, your marriage today is the public and legal joining of your souls that have already been united as one in your hearts. Marriage will allow you a new environment to share your lives together, standing together to face life and the world, hand in hand.
Jeremy and Janna commit themselves today to each other in sacred trust. If any one can show just cause why they should not be lawfully joined together, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.
Patti: Who gives this woman to be married to this man?
Janna’s Parents (Kris and Bill): We do.
Patti: And who gives this man to be married to this woman?
Jeremy’s Parents (Myrdith and Dale): We do.
Patti [to Jeremy]: Jeremy, do you take Janna for your lawful wedded wife? Will you love, honour, comfort, and cherish her from this day forward, keeping only unto her for as long as you both shall live?
Jeremy: I do.
Patti [to Janna]: Janna, do you take Jeremy for your lawful wedded husband? Will you love, honour, comfort, and cherish him from this day forward, keeping only unto him for as long as you both shall live?
Janna: I do.
Patti: Janna and Jeremy have prepared additional personal vows and will now declare them to each other publicly.
Jeremy [to Janna]: Janna, you’re my dream girl. I promise to be your partner and your lover until I’m dead. I promise you’ll live out your dreams with me, and I promise to live out my dreams with you.
Janna [to Jeremy]: Jeremy, you’re my dream man. I promise to be your partner, and your lover, as long as I am living. I promise to leave nothing unsaid between us, and I promise to have a great life because I am with you.
Patti [to Jeremy]: Jeremy, please repeat after me.
I, Jeremy, take thee, Janna, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, honour, and cherish, ’til death do us part.
Patti [to Janna]: Janna, please repeat after me.
I, Janna, take thee, Jeremy, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, honour, and cherish, ’til death do us part.
Patti [to Dale]: Dale, may I have the rings?
[Dale hands rings to Patti.]
Patti [handing Janna's ring to Jeremy]: May this ring be blessed so he who gives it and she who wears it may abide in peace, and continue in love for eternity.
Jeremy [placing ring on bride's finger]: With this ring I thee wed. Wear it as a symbol of our love and commitment.
Patti [handing Jeremy's ring to Janna]: May this ring be blessed so that she who gives it and he who wears it may abide in peace, and continue in love for eternity.
Janna [placing ring on Jeremy's finger]: With this ring I thee wed. Wear it as a symbol of our love and commitment.
I looked for something that would be my personal self-expression of how your relationship is for me. I found the poem, by e.e. cummings, called:
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
Every person present here represents an opportunity for love and support of this newly married couple. You each carry an obligation to be an advocate for their relationship. Now that you have heard Jeremy and Janna exchange their vows, do you, their family and friends, promise to encourage and support them in creating a strong and vital marriage?
“WE DO”
Patti: May this couple be prepared to continue to give, be able to forgive and experience more and more joy with each passing day, with each passing year. Jeremy and Janna, are now beginning their married life together, we hope that they may have loving assistance from their family, the constant support of friends, and a long life with good health and everlasting love. In so much as Janna and Jeremy have consented to live forever together in wedlock, and have witnessed the same before this company, having given and pledged their troth, each to the other, and having declared same by the giving and receiving of a ring, I pronounce that they are husband and wife.
Patti [to Janna and Jeremy]: You may now seal the promises you have made here today with a kiss.
Patti [to everyone]: Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the loving couple Jeremy and Janna Osborne.
Free-dom = Open Source Software
As we advance beyond the 21st century, the idea of freedom might sound cliché. I mean, there is freedom, and there is freedom, and there is freedom. Recently, I’ve been more and more interested about the third in the list, as in, “Freedom of information.” In February of this year I bought an Acer laptop with Windows Vista installed on it. Best Buy didn’t have a single laptop available without Windows Vista. Soon after buying it, I turned off everything that made Windows Vista an upgrade from Windows. I removed Norton, deactivated the annoying, “Let me help ya massa,” Vista Security features, installed some of my favorite open source software, and have been quite happy running Windows not-really-Vista for the last 6 months.
I love open source software. Commercial software has it’s place, but I believe even Adam Smith would appreciate the efforts made by Open Source software development groups.
I’ve decided to run a short series of articles on my favorite open source software. Maybe it will be useful to you, at least I hope it will be useful to you.
Stay tuned. The first one = How to kick Microsoft off of your Microsoft.