Skip to main content

The Country Celebrant: The Country Celebrant: Weddings

The Country Celebrant: The Country Celebrant: Christmas Weddings:

I was asked today whether I had ever conducted a wedding at Christmas.  It got me thinking .... I never have and I wondered why that might be.

What influences the choice of date?  Is it that we are most likely to have decent weather in the summer, or is that the choice of flowers and the comfort of a beautiful dress without the worry of being cold is uppermost in our minds?

Christmas is a time for family and couples often get engaged at Christmas, but actually if your family are all around you anyway - why not get married then.

I feel I posing more questions than I am answering; historically the short days of winter are a quiet time and what better way to spend a quiet time than celebrating your love for one another?

 A wedding dress in sumptuous velvet, red and gold and green decorations, such a panoply of light and delicious scents everywhere. 

The weather is expected to be dreary - if you were really lucky there might be snow, but a crisp frost and that wonderful clear light followed by inky darkness and the warmth of log fires and spicy mulled wines.

I am getting rather enthused by this plan ... possibly a little late for 2017, but for next year, why not!





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Weddings with a Difference! Mothers of the Bride and Groom filling the sand frame as part of the ceremony. This summer has been joyous, it has been all about weddings and the celebration of union.  Families brought together by the joining of couples with hand-fastings, sand and candle ceremonies.  There have been many different types of wedding, some quite traditional and others very definitely not. The cast has been roughly the same; the happy couple - often with little children, some with dogs, a pony and a very badly behaved parrot!  Proud parents and grand-parents, emotional bridesmaids in a rainbow of colour, best-men and in one case a best-woman who have delivered speeches that are funny, poignant and blooming cheeky. There have been wonderful impromptu moments that you could not script.  Sunsets and rainbows, a downpour so loud that it stopped proceedings momentarily. I have loved every second of it all - it is a huge privilege to shar...

Respect for the Bereaved

In the last year I have conducted all manner of funerals. There have been the timely deaths of beloved people where the ceremony has been one of quiet, or raucous, celebration of a life lived to the full and ended peacefully. There have been tragic deaths through suicide and illness, where the person has been snatched from those that love them in a way that is cruel and heartless.  A cold, bleak time when all you can do is hug the pain into some sort of temporary submission. There have been slow lingering departures where there has been time to prepare and say goodbye, to plan the ending and to tie up all the loose ends, so to speak. I have been in awe of the dignity and composure of both those leaving and those being left.  The stories that I have had the honour of retelling.  The poignant words written by children about their Grandparents. The gut twisting pain of listening to a husband talk of his wife and what she meant to him. The keepsakes that I ha...

The privilege of attending someone at the end of life | End of Life Doula Care

Currently I am supporting a lady as her life draws to a close.  My job is to reassure her through the night.  I arrive at 10 o'clock, she is courteous and appears pleased to see me.  We chat about how she is feeling and I share a few details of my life and what is happening in the world outside her room. I might read to her whilst she prepares to sleep.  Some nights we are up and down quite a bit, I doze on a blowup mattress beside her; it reminds me of sharing a room with a baby.  You relax to a point, but the changes in breathing somehow penetrate your somnambulant state. Last night was extremely peaceful, I find myself writing this journal as I sit beside her.  The room is bathed in the soft glow of a low light, a fan chunters away in the background, dawn is about to break and the day around us is starting. Before she went to sleep I massaged her shoulders and neck with a balm to soothe her pain and provide some warmth and the healing power of ...