Shane Gerlach

Carrie and Matt wedding

Processional: special music

Invocation: Family and friends we are gathered here this day to unite Matt and Carrie as partners in life. This contract is not to be entered into lightly, but thoughtfully and seriously, with a deep realization of its obligations and responsibilities. Please remember that love, loyalty, and understanding are the foundations of a happy and enduring home.

Declaration: Matt-Do you take Carrie to be your spouse for life? Do you promise to have and comfort one another, honor and keep each other in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, for better or for worse for as long as you both shall live? If so answer “I DO”.

Carrie-Do you take Matt to be your spouse for life? Do you promise to have and comfort one another, honor and keep each other in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, for better or for worse for as long as you both shall live? If so answer “I DO”.

Readings: Matt and Carrie have each chosen a reading that has a special meaning for each of them. Logan Culhane will be reading a passage for her father and Delaney English will read for her mother.

Logan: An important life lesson: When you stop paying attention to everything that’s important, when you lose sight of the happiness that’s right in front of your face, when you search for it through supposed accomplishments and accolades and recognition, it’s not appreciably different from searching for happiness through material things. Happiness doesn’t work that way. When the pursuit is ill-conceived, life loses its magic, loses its purpose, and you lose everything that matters. The truth is, you can skip the pursuit of happiness altogether and just be happy. I’m reminded of an old Iraqi fable I once read in which a merchant in Baghdad sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions. Soon, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells the merchant that in the marketplace he was jostled by a woman, whom he recognized as Death, and she made a threatening gesture. Borrowing the merchant’s horse, the servant flees at top speed to Samarra, where he believes Death will not find him. The merchant then goes to the marketplace and finds Death and asks why she made the threatening gestures. Death replies, “That was not a threatening gesture; it was only a movement caused by surprise. I was astonished to see the servant in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.” This fable mirrored my life. For a long time I ran toward the place where I thought happiness was, when happiness was actually waiting in the place I was running from. I know this now, but only after the fall. Sometimes the best teacher is our most recent failure.

Delaney: From The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams “What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?” “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Message: Play dough (Choose a color of play dough for each child and Matt and Carrie and then combined them into a giant colorful ball and placed into a sealed jar for them)

Vows/exchange of rings-Carrie and Matt have chosen to share with one another their own thoughts and feelings as they exchange rings.

Matt:

Carrie:

Pronouncement: If there is anyone present who may show just and lawful cause why this couple may not be legally wed, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.

By the authority vested in me by American Marriage Ministries and the State of South Dakota I now pronounce you both husband and wife.

Recessional-Live Music.