Wedding Certificate PDF by sarahrusin on Etsy
Ok, so we were legally civil partnered in England in April but you can’t tell me it didn’t sting to be in my home state of California and not have any legal binding elements of our ceremony. And before you get too ahead of yourself, no, we didn’t draft a will or power of attorney or domestic partnership application. Instead, we performed a hand-fasting ceremony and signed our own wedding certificate.
I was telling someone about our ceremony the other day and the initial response to my account of the most significant 45 minutes of my life was: “Isn’t hand-fasting a pagan ritual?” I’m not sure where she was going with that question but as our officiant said in the ceremony, it was a LEGAL form of marriage in Scotland until 1938. And, with the use of the Irish hand-binding ceremony we got as a starting point, it was a tradition I felt comfortable borrowing from. Thus, after our vows and ring exchange it was a physical contracting of our words, beyond promises and reminders, it was a binding (legal) act of bringing us together in a partnership of marriage before our 130 witnesses.
Having gotten the idea from an Irish couple we know and having seen it appear in straight and queer weddings across the blogs, we had an idea of what it could look like. Then, my best friend got married in May in California and her and her husband used the hand-fasting as their vows and promises. She told us about their creation process and how they’d braided the 6 cords from scraps of yarn in their house. For ours we made the cords from scraps strips of fabric from the DIY fabric hoops and had our dads, moms, and best friends tie the cords for us in the ceremony.
Directly following the hand-fasting, we signed the marriage certificate we had purchased from Sarah Rusin on Etsy (a last minute search delivered this theme-perfect wedding certificate, in PDF form, that we could print 7 days before the wedding–and Sarah was a gem and super fast to work with!). We signed it, I might add, still tied together–we’d worked it out at the rehearsal the day before to tie our hands as such so that Alex could with her left and me with my right. (You’re actually supposed to leave the cords in place until the marriage is consummated but we skipped that part…) once we had signed, our bridal party signed and our officiant announced that the remaining guests were asked to sign during the reception.
While the certificate signing was happening, we also had friends playing Patty Griffin’s Heavenly Day (our first dance in the UK)–and it was the moment where the ceremony really sank in for me, our heavenly day. And as our officiant proclaimed, the 130 of us there made our union ‘legal and binding.’
Photo by S. Kirkpatrick.
Full recaps to come when the photos are in…
Wooooo Hoooooo! My wife and I also used the hand-fasting ritual and signing of the wedding certificate in our ceremony. The reaction we received to it was so positive. Our guest saw it as a truly a “binding” contact of love between us. I’ve had more people tell us how special this made out ceremony when compared to all of the heterosexual wedding they had attended.
I love your marriage certificate! Since we only have our official one from the courthouse… I may have to borrow this idea! So great that you had everyone sign it!
And that pic of you with your hands fasted is adorable – I love how it kinda just looks like a big mess of ribbons between two glowing faces!!!!
queen4ya – I love that you did a hand-fasting ritual too! For us it slowed down the pace and really incorporated our parents and friends, and it was that ‘binding/contract’ part that really tied it all together (no pun intended!). Congrats to you, by the way!
Nicole, go for it!! We’re planning on hanging our legal and ‘non-legal’ certificates next to each other on the wall, and specifically had the place and date on this one to reflect each ceremony.