Here is the text of our wedding ceremony, which took place in Sakura Park in Manhattan on Friday morning. It was performed by Dan Epstein in the presence of our families. Dan sent us the text of some ceremonies he had used in the past, and we took some stuff out and added some of our own touches to create a ceremony that spoke to us.

I discovered beforehand that the introductory quote, provided by Dan, has actually been misattributed to Dr. Seuss over the years and is really from Robert Fulghum. But Dan said “Dr. Seuss” sets a better atmosphere, so we kept it that way.

* * * * *

Introduction

According to Dr. Seuss:

“We are all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness and call it love.”

This past June, the United States Supreme Court granted federal recognition of marriages of same-sex couples. This is a quote from Edie Windsor, the plaintiff in that case:

“I ask all gay couples who have lived together a long time and got married, ‘Was it different the next morning?’ And everybody says yes, and they don’t know how to explain it. Marriage itself, you know, it’s a magic word, everybody knows what it means, it means love and commitment and trust… but there’s this extra thing when it was always denied to you. But it’s profound. Whatever loving was there, it becomes really profound loving.”

Reading

Life isn’t measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of loving moments that take our breath away.

You can have those moments. You just have to get over the jitters and let the dreams show you the way. Tie your kite to reality… check your gut whenever it says “hey, wait”… take action when the time is right… remember and treasure what life shows you… but don’t ever stand in the way of what you really love. As far as we can tell, dreams are nothing more than love trying to take wing and soar. Imagine for just a moment, the thrilling, distracting, wonderful, odd, unusual sensation of new love. You immediately begin dreaming of life together… of where you will go… of what life will mean for the two of you. Live in that moment every day. Fall in love with new ideas, new opportunities, and new places all the time. Trust it, live it, don’t say no to love or crush a dream that wants to live. It isn’t that hard to give yourself over to it. You just have to say yes to life and love. Love will never lead you astray.

Jeff and Matt, before you are joined together in marriage, in my presence, and in the presence of these witnesses, I will remind you of the serious and binding nature of this relationship. The traditional right of marriage, as most of us understand it, is the voluntary, deliberate, and full commitment of two individuals to one another to become partners for a lifetime. Jeff and Matt, have you come here freely and without reservation to enter into this marriage?

[Jeff and Matt] We have!

Great! Then let us begin the celebration of love and life!

Welcome to the guests

We welcome you, the families of Jeff and Matt, who have come to share this wonderful morning. Nothing is as hopeful, as joyous as a wedding. Getting married is the supreme act of trust; it is as much a union and a move of independence. It takes an absolute confidence in oneself to be able to give fully to another. This partnership is not new; it has been a journey of ten years.

In fact they met ten years ago on this very day, October 4, 2003. It seems that Jeff, living in Jersey City, and Matt living in Kirksville, Missouri, had discovered each other’s blogs, and had each been reading the other’s, commenting, and corresponding for a couple of years. When Matt moved to New York City in July of 2003 it was only a couple of months until they realized that this friendship rooted in an online correspondence should progress to meeting in person. So they got together for coffee…and a relationship developed from there. It means a lot to both of them that as their relationship progressed both sets of parents enthusiastically embraced it.

And so today is the beginning of a different journey for Jeff and Matt as a married couple. It is so meaningful that you can share this day with them as they make public the commitment which they have already made to each other in their hearts. For marriage is more than simply an agreement between two people; it is a chance for us to embrace them as a couple, as a family and as part of a larger community. They have been inspired by all of you. You have touched their lives in ways that have changed them forever.

Reading

Matt and Jeff are big Stephen Sondheim fans. Well, as Jeff says: “I’m a fan; Matt is a huge fan.”

Sondheim in his song, “Being Alive,” describes what it’s like to have someone important in your life:

Someone to hold you too close,
Someone to hurt you too deep,
Someone to sit in your chair,
To ruin your sleep…

Someone to need you too much,
Someone to know you too well,
Someone to pull you up short
And put you through hell…

Someone you have to let in,
Someone whose feelings you spare,
Someone who, like it or not,
Will want you to share
A little, a lot…

Ellen Pontac and Shelly Bailes, who have been together for nearly 40 years, married in 2008. Ellen said this:

“Being married changes not only the fact that you can say, ‘I’d like to introduce you to my [husband or] wife, but it changes the way you feel inside, and the way the world perceives you.”

The Asking

Jeff, do you take Matt to be your husband, to love, honor, cherish and keep for as long as you may live?

[Jeff] I do.

Matt, do you take Jeff to be your husband, to love, honor, cherish and keep for as long as you may live.

[Matt] I do.

The Vows

[Jeff]

I, Jeff, take you, Matt, to be my husband.

I promise to share your joys when you are happy,

to lift your spirits when you are down,

to laugh with you and cry with you,

and to love you in good times and bad.

I give you my hand, my heart, and my love, from this day forward.

[Matt]

I, Matt, take you, Jeff, to be my husband.

I promise to share your joys when you are happy,

to lift your spirits when you are down,

to laugh with you and cry with you,

and to love you in good times and bad.

I give you my hand, my heart, and my love, from this day forward.

The Ring Exchange

May we have the rings please?

Matt, as a token of your promise to Jeff, place the ring on the fourth finger of his left hand and repeat after me:

Jeff, I give you this ring as a symbol of my love and commitment and as a token of the promises I have made here today.

Jeff, as a token of your promise to Matt, place the ring on the fourth finger of his left hand and repeat after me:

Matt, I give you this ring as a symbol of my love and commitment and as a token of the promises I have made here today.

In his Supreme Court opinion this past June, Justice Kennedy described marriage as

“a far-reaching legal acknowledgment of the intimate relationship between two people, a relationship deemed by the State worthy of dignity in the community equal with all other marriages. It reflects both the community’s considered perspective on the historical roots of the institution of marriage and its evolving understanding of the meaning of equality.”

Pronouncement

Jeff and Matt, you have proclaimed your love for one another. You have agreed to share your lives and hopes and dreams together. In this circle of community, in this embrace of spirit, you have created a union marked by taking vows and exchanging rings. As a civil celebrant, authorized by the state of New York, it is my honor and my joy to pronounce you married.

You may kiss!

Final Reading

Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be the shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other.
Now there will be no loneliness, for each of you will be companion to the other.
Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before you.
May beauty surround you both in the journey ahead and through all your years
May happiness be your companion and your days together be good and long upon the earth.

[Followed by the ceremonial breaking of a glass]

At long last, this Friday, October 4, Matt and I are getting married. It will be the tenth anniversary of our first date.

Matt and I were aware of each other for quite a while before we first met in person. For a couple of years we read each other’s blogs. Matt was living in Kirksville, Missouri, and I was living up here in the New York area. The gay blogging circle was pretty small back then in 2001, small enough that most LGBT bloggers were aware of each other. Then, in the summer of 2003, Matt moved up to New York to take a job, and after a couple of months we decided we should finally meet in person, since we were living in the same area. So we got together for coffee at the Starbucks at Astor Place in Manhattan. It was Saturday, October 4, 2003.

Technically it wasn’t a date; it was just a meetup. But I thought Matt was cute, and more importantly, I felt immediately comfortable with him. I remember that he pulled out his phone and started showing me something cool on it, and there was something so cute and charming about his enthusiasm for gadgets. I just found him really appealing. We just kind of clicked.

After we left Starbucks, we walked around for a while, and then we parted ways but planned to meet up again soon. We had our first real “date” the following week. But we’ve always considered that first meetup to be our first date in retrospect, and we’ve always celebrated it as our anniversary. So we thought it would be special to get married on the same day. (It also means we get to keep the same anniversary, which is a nice benefit.)

Matt would have been happy to just go down to the Manhattan Marriage Bureau and get married by ourselves. But I wanted something a bit more celebratory. So we’re doing something in between: a small ceremony in the park with just our families, and then a somewhat larger party that night, although still not big by most wedding standards (though Matt might beg to differ). The wedding planning has made me very anxious over the last few weeks — I’ve been worried about what could go wrong, worried about my sleep, and so on. The planning has been rather, er, hit or miss (pardon the pun), and it has kept changing over the last few months. Toward the end of last year we decided we’d get married in 2013, since we predicted the Supreme Court would overturn DOMA Section 3 and our taxes would be easier this year. We thought we’d do it this past spring, but we decided we needed more time to plan and that it would be nice to get married on our anniversary. I think it was last February that we settled on this date. Back then it seemed so far away. Now it’s almost here.

So ten years later, here we are. Matt started as my online acquaintance, then became my friend, my boyfriend, and then my partner, and soon he’ll be my husband. We’ve both grown and changed a lot over the last decade, and we’ve learned a lot, too — about relationships, about ourselves about each other. Our relationship grows richer by the year.

It’s been a decade, but it’s just the beginning of our life together.