Last Updated on September 6, 2021 by admins
The script is an important part of any wedding ceremony. However, some traditional scripts have become outdated. Having a feminist wedding ceremony script is a wonderful way to have a modern take on your big day.
Fortunately, there are many ways you can personalize your wedding ceremony to make it unique to you and your spouse. You can change any outdated script to have a feminist outtake that is more empowering. There are plenty of ways to modernize your wedding ceremony script that are still meaningful and respectful.
Making Your Wedding Ceremony Script Feminist
A lot goes into planning a wedding. From the venue, catering, dress shopping, and photographer, there are so many things you need to plan out. One of the most important things to plan out is your ceremony script.
Some people choose to keep traditional vows, whereas others opt to write their own. When deciding on the ceremony, it is important you and your spouse agree on how long it should be. Some people prefer a short and sweet ceremony, whereas others like something longer.
When planning your ceremony, there are several aspects you need to take into consideration. There are the vows, readings and some people even opt to also have poems as well. Prior to your wedding, you and your significant other need to plan what all you would like included in your ceremony script.
Feminist Wedding Vows
Whether you are writing your own or using traditional ones, you can easily put your own spin on your vows. By using empowering language, you can not only make it more feminist but also more meaningful.
Eliminate Non-Feminist Language
Traditional vows often contain language that is non-feminist and quite frankly outdated. For example the phrases “Do you promise to honor and obey your husband?” and “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” are not exactly feminist.
Instead of using “obey” opt for saying words such as support and encourage. This is something both partners can say that is meaningful and also a modern take on traditional vows. In addition, ensure the vows are balanced and do away with any implication of possession and power imbalance in the script.
Feminist Wedding Readings
There are plenty of feminist wedding readings you can add to your ceremony that are special and meaningful. They are a great way to instill the love and respect you have for your significant other.
Wedding Reading Idea One
“Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person … Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distance exists, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of seeing each other as a whole before an immense sky.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet.
Wedding Reading Option Two
“People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn’t know were there, even the ones they wouldn’t have thought to call beautiful themselves.” – Hilary T. Smith, from Wild Awake.
Wedding Reading Option Three
“Love is tricky. It is never mundane or daily. You can never get used to it. You have to walk with it, then let it walk with you. You can never balk. It moves you like the tide. It takes you out to sea, then lays you on the beach again. Today’s struggling pain is the foundation for a certain stride through the heavens. You can run from it but you can never say no.” ― Amy Tan, from The Hundred Secret Senses.
Feminist Love Poems
Poems are one of the most romantic aspects you can add to a wedding. They are a beautiful and also special way to express how you feel about your partner.
Love Poem Option One
“To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one’s self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one’s self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another–and to one’s inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon’s own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child’s scars
Or an adult’s deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are–and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide.”
“To Love is Not to Possess” by James Kavanaugh.
Love Poem Option Two
“Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.
Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.
Don’t even sew on a button…
Don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.”
“Advice to Myself” by Louise Erdrich.
Love Poem Option Three
“Search your profile
For a translation
I study the conversation
Like a map
’cause I know there is strength
In the differences between us
And I know there is comfort
Where we overlap”
“Overlap” by Ani DiFranco.
A Romantic and Meaningful Feminist Wedding Ceremony Script
There are many beautiful ways you can update traditional wedding vows and readings to make them more feminist. This can help make your wedding day more meaningful to you and your partner.
Do you have any questions about what to include in a feminist wedding ceremony script? If so, please ask any wedding script questions in the comment section.
Read more about Wedding Ring Tattoos Pros and Cons