I am newly engaged and planning a wedding for October 2010. My fiance is uncertain of his religious beliefs, I am pagan, both of our families are very Christian. I just don't know what to do about our wedding. Naturally, I'd love to have a traditional hand-fasting, but I think that might be a bit much for our families to endure and I don't think it's really what my fiance wants right now. I know we have almost 2 1/2 yrs to sort it through, but it's really been stressing me out. No one knows I'm pagan except fiance and a close friend. I'm solitary and don't really know any other pagans, I hope to meet some soon as I'm moving to a much larger city. (The cow population outnumbers the human one where I live now).

We were hoping to be married by a friend of ours who is Christian and ordained and I'm almost certain he would be ok with my religion, but I don't know how his wife would feel about it. I feel it would only be right to let them both know. For now we are planning to have a non-denominational ceremony but we want to do a hand fasting and jump the broom - we aren't African American, so I'm not sure how to explain that one to our families. . . Do you think it would be possible to do a non-denominational hand fasting? Also, do you think it would be ok to have our friend mary us, or would it be better to be married by a pagan priest/ess? I'd rather be married by someone I know, but I don't know how to have everyone be ok with the situation.

I'm sure a lot of you have experienced similar situations.

We are having a Disney wedding and plan to have the ceremony in the morning at our home and the reception at Disneyland after park hours. As my fiance is currently wavering religiously and is ok with my religion and in participating in pagan ceremonies I was wondering if we could break up the handfasting to perform the more blatantly pagan aspects alone or with a priest/ess before or after the ceremony. Or maybe something like a lesser commitment ceremony we could perform alone with a priest/ess and still have our friend marry us (assuming he will want to).

Has anyone done anything like this? I know I should talk to a priest/ess one on one, but I just don't know any!

Thanks so much, I know I'm just a blabbering nervous wreck right now, so please forgive me.

edit: I just wanted to ask too, if it would be appropriate to have a private pagan hand fasting before the larger, non-denominational wedding.

Hi wisdom-seeker,

Congratulations on your upcoming Handfasting/Wedding!

If you go to our BOS (on the sidebar to the left and also on top of the home page) we have an entire section devoted to Handfasting and Marriage...

http://www.paganliving.org/modules.php?name=Topics&file=topic&topicid=85

Hope that helps....

ok first wisdom-seeker, deeeep breath...  

I'm in a similar boat, where my fiance and I will be getting married within a year and my family is severely Catholic.  Lady E's got awesome information in this castle, I think her info will help ease your mind (but probably not your nerves lol).

I've decided that our handfasting/wedding will have tons of information about where some of the traditions originated from, and why, starting with where "tie the knot" comes from.  Who knows how they'll take it, all I know is that we will not be the uncomfortable ones at our own wedding, and knowing that I took the time to inform and educate them about the ceremony and even aspects of their own culture (which they'll probably view as cute trivia), I'm free to enjoy our ceremony and every little thing we decided to include in it, for whatever reasons we wanted to.

I still have a lot of planning to do  

Thank you so much. I'm a little embarassed.  

I checked out the BOS and I LOVED the ceremony suggestions there. I haven't told my family or his that I'm pagan and I don't know if I will. I really want to, but I think it would really hurt my family and make his mad. Add to that the fact that some of my family is really weird about weddings.

Anyway, I was really freaked out but after reading the BOS I'm feeling much better. We've decided to get a legal marriage before the wedding so we don't have to worry about who marries us, it could be a friend who isn't ordained or a hobo or whoever.

I do think it would be wonderful to talk about the origins of the traditions we'll be using. My family knows I'm really into my Irish heritage, so I don't think it would be too big of a stretch.

Thanks a lot.