Sheri Lynn Drumm

Joseph & McKinzie,

Today we are gathered here to celebrate the love you have discovered in each other and support the commitment you are about to make.

In the two years that you have been together, your love for each other has grown, turning you both into the couple that stands before me, your family and friends today. Today you are announcing that you are ready to spend the rest of their lives together as husband and wife. A true marriage begins well before the wedding day, and the efforts of marriage continue well beyond the ceremony. Marriage is more than two people standing here, repeating vows. There is a lifetime ahead of you with many lessons to be learned, and memories to be made. A brief moment in time and the stroke of a pen are all that is required to create the legal bond of a marriage, but it takes the continuance of love, commitment and compromise to make a marriage durable and everlasting. Today you declare your commitment to each other before family and friends.

I’d like to read a small excerpt from Neil Gaiman’s “All I know about Love”:

This is everything I have to tell you about love: Nothing

This is everything that I have learned about marriage: Nothing

Only that the world out there is complicated, and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain, and the only that that makes it okay, sometimes, is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze, and not to be alone.

The bride and groom will now exchange a few words that they have written:

McKinzie, will you please now share yours now?

Joseph, will you now please share what you have written for McKinzie?

Please join hands:

Do you, Joseph, take McKinzie to be your wife? To have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish, from this day forward until death do you part?

Do you, McKinzie, take Joseph to be your husband? To have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish, from this day forward until death do you part?

The wedding ring symbolizes perfectly the never-ending love you two have for each other. By exchanging these rings, you solidify a lifelong commitment to one another. The rings serve as a welcome and constant reminder of the bond you’ve formed with your partner.

I Joseph, give you McKinzie, this ring as a symbol of my love.

I McKinzie, give you Joseph, this ring as a symbol of my love.

Joseph and McKinzie, you have come here today of your own free will and, in the presence of your family and friends, have declared your love and commitment to each other.

By the power vested in me by the internet and the State of Indiana, I now pronounce you husband and wife, sealed together today in both law and in love before your family and friends. You may kiss your bride.

Ladies and gentlemen, I now have the privilege to present to you for the first time Mr. & Mrs. Richards!