Adrian Panopio Dacanay

Invocation:

Good evening, friends and family. We are gathered here tonight to witness and celebrate the union of Marc and John. In the years that they have been together, their love for each other has deepened and grown. Now, they are ready to take that next important step, and spend the rest of their lives together as husband and husband.

 

Brief Words:

I would like to say a few words about Marc and John. I promise, they will be few!

I have the privilege to say that I introduced them to each other back in 2005-2006, during one of many weekend nights barhopping. At that time, I just wanted Marc to get out more and meet more friends. Little did I know that it would be the start of a journey of love. Throughout the years, despite distance, career, and circumstance, they would always find their way back to each other. They are indeed, soulmates.

 

Marc and John, a true marriage begins well before the wedding day, and the efforts of marriage continue well beyond the ceremony. A brief moment in time and the stroke of the pen are all that is required to create the legal bond of marriage, but it takes a lifetime of love, commitment, and compromise to make marriage durable and everlasting.

 

I would like to quote:

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

“For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person — it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distance…

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.”

 

 

Declaration of Intent:

Marc and John, I now invite you to declare your intent to marry.

To BOTH: With this wisdom, and love, in mind, I now ask you.

1.) Marc, do you take John to be your husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do you part?

2.) John, do you take Marc to be your husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do you part?

 

Vows

Your wedding vows are an outward sign of your love and commitment. While there is a legal aspect of this wedding, a signed document does not create a marriage. What creates a marriage is the promises made and kept in your hearts. As you look lovingly at each other, you’ll speak the promises that you’re pledging for a lifetime.

 

Rings

The wedding ring serves as a reminder of the promises you make today to each other.

The circle is a symbol of an eternal bond -- there is no beginning and no end. That means you two are stuck with each other!

 

Pronouncement

Now that you have joined yourselves in matrimony, may you strive all your lives to meet this commitment with the same love and devotion that you now possess. By virtue of the authority vested in me by the State of California and American Marriage Ministries, I now pronounce you husband and husband.