A rough copy of our ceremony

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Originally uploaded by jjdrury81

Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to share with Joe and Lauren a very important moment in their lives. In the years they have been together, their love and understanding of each other has grown and matured, and now they have decided to live their lives together as husband and wife.

I would like to take this time to read to you a quote about love from CS Lewis.

Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can lst, habits can last; but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called 'being in love' usually does not last. If the old fairy-tale ending 'They lived happily ever after' is taken to mean 'They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married', then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense - love as distinct from 'being in love' - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, reinforced by the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else. 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.

Will you please face each other and join hands?

Joe, will you take this woman, whose hands you hold, choosing her alone to be your wedded wife? Will you live with her in the state of true matrimony? Will you love her, comfort her, through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, honor her at all times, and be faithful to her?

Lauren, will you take this man, whose hands you hold, choosing him alone to be your wedded husband? Will you live with him in the state of true matrimony? Will you love him, comfort him, through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, honor him at all times, and be faithful to him?

As you take these vows I would have you remember:

To love is to come together from the pathways of our past and then move forward...Hand in hand, along the uncharted roads of our future, ready to risk, to dream, and to dare.... And always believe that all things are possible with faith and love in God, and in each other.

Will you repeat after me?

I Joe, take you Lauren to be my wife, to love and cherish, from this day forward, and thereto pledge you my faith,

I,Lauren, take you Joe, to be my husband, to love and to cherish, from this day forward, and thereto pledge you my faith.

I understand you have brought rings as a token of your sincerity?

Bless O God these rings, that each gives, receives, and wears as a token of the covenant between them and God, and may they ever abide in thy peace, living together in unity, in love, and in happiness, and with good purpose do thy will. Amen.

Joe, will you repeat after me: With this ring, I thee wed. Let it ever be to us a symbol of our love.

Lauren, will you repeat after me: With this ring, I thee wed. Let it ever be to us a symbol of our love.

In as much as you, Joe, and you Lauren, have consented together in the union of matrimony and you have pledged your faith each to the other in the presence of God and this company, now by the authority vested in me as a minister, I now pronounce you Husband and Wife!

You may kiss your Bride!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I now present Mr. And Mrs. Joseph John Drury, Jr.

This is not the Berkshires

I do not have a terrible amount of time. But there is at least one thing I would like to get out into the open.

Portland Public Schools and all surrounding suburbs have been closed this entire week due to inclement weather. We have received, in total over the week, a whopping 4 inches of snow. The worst hit areas had a total of 3 inches of accumulation at times.

In addition to schools, businesses have been closed, city governments have been shut down and entertainment facilities have been all but forgotten. The weather has been the center of local news attention. It is all anyone is talking about in the city.

This is how God does things...

Lauren and I are to be wed on Christmas Eve of this year.  This is much sooner than we had anticipated.  We spent much time thinking about this.  It was only through significant conversation, discussion and reflection that we were able to come upon this decision.

After I initially proposed both of us assumed that we would have a wedding sometime next summer in Pittsfield.  We talked about what this would look like quite a bit.  We always had money at the forefront of all of our discussions.  We knew that things would be tight.  We also knew that we could invite no fewer than 100 people.  Furthermore, Lauren had certains standards that we had to adhere to if we were to drag those invited people to lowly Pittsfield.

And so we discussed and we dreamed of our wedding day.  Sometimes we would make minor compromises about where the reception could be held or what level of catering we could have.  But, to be honest, we never fully explored what the day would look like.  More importantly, we never fully explored where the money would come from.  Even a modest wedding of this size would cost an easy $8,000.

I think both of us naively assumed that the money for the ceremony would fall from the sky.  Traditionally speaking, Lauren's parents were supposed to pay.  That didn't seem very likely.  They never really offered.  They did mention remortgaging their house house.  That just sounds terrible.

Eventually, Lauren and I were forced to sit down and look at the facts.  We wanted to get married by the end of next summer.  As I have already mentioned in another blog, we are both in agreement that the time for marriage is already upon us.  In order to make a summer wedding happen we needed to start booking halls and caterers immediately.  Yet we were stalling.  We were holding out for money to magically fall from the sky.

We ended up having a good talk about it one night a few weeks back.  It was not an easy dialogue to get through.  Lauren had some very hard set ideas of what she wanted.  I was stubborn and unappologetically refusing to look at anything other than the cold hard facts of our situation.  But we made it through it.  And we are the better for it today.

We came to the conclusion that the choice was solely in our hands.  We could pay for a wedding or we could choose not to have one.  We have been putting our all into saving over the past year.  We have managed to put away about $8,000.  This could quite easily pay for a wedding.

The saving of that money is so vital and integral to who we are and how we envision our relationship.  To spend it on a wedding ceremony and reception is to cut at the very core of who we are as a couple.  We saved that money while paying very high rents and working very low wage jobs.  We saved that money with the intent of having enough to put a down payment on a house today.  This goal, of buying a house, is absolutely the most importantly material goal that we have.  It towers above all the rest.

Lauren and I are not getting married simply because we love eachother.  We are not getting married because we get along well or we think it will be good fun.  We are not merely trying to avoid loneliness.  We have a shared vision of our future.  That vision, that future, involves a family.  We want to have children.  We have sat down and discussed this matter thoroughly and we have come to the conclusion that it is vitally important to our future family that we own a home.  We have avoided trappings in this matter.  We both agreed that if we are unable to purchase a home that should not stop us from having a family.  But we are firmly convinced and dedicated to making owning a home reality.

To pay for our own wedding would be to deplete all of the funds that we have saved up towards this endeavor in just one day.  We labored over this decision greatly.  We both take marriage and the ceremony there of very seriously.  We want to celebrate our love.  We want to celebrate the massive commitment that we are making to eachother with our friends and family.   We want to sing and dance and have a good time.  It just was not possible.

We are to be married on Christmas eve at Park Square in Pittsfield.  We are going out to get a suit and dress tomorrow.  We have already ordered wedding rings.  They will arrive shortly before we leave the area.  We are inviting our immediate family and maybe a friend or two.  We want it to be small, intimate and meaningful.

We also want to celebrate with all of those loved ones that will not be there on Christmas Eve.  We are in the midst of planning a less formal wedding like reception in the summer.   This will be thousands of dollars cheaper than a wedding ceremony and reception.  But we will still have the same opportunity to sit down and celebrate with our 100 or so friends and family.  We are looking at potential halls to rent out in Pittsfield for the event.  A relatives house is also an option.  Family members are willing and much more able to help out with this event.

This is a decision that we laboured over for many hours and truly came together on as partners; as a couple.  Both of us had our hopes and our concerns.  Ultimately, it was the shared vision of a family and future together and how we would like that to look that pulled us through this very hard decision and brought us closer together.

I know that I prayed over the decision.  I assume that Lauren did as well.  We very rarely talk about such things.  That works for us right now.

It is a funny thing, these blogs.  I thought out what I imagined as a beautiful piece of writing last night.  It was all about how no one had ever told me that Jesus was the son of God before.  Everyone that I had heard just went around ranting about how he loves you or that he said do this and don't do that.  I was never impressed.  Plently of people love me.  My mother loves me.  Plenty of people tell you what to do.  Some I respect.  Some I do not.

This is what I intended to write about.  Things do not always work out as you plan.

Change

There is alot going on right now. I am high on nerves by nature. I can thank my father for that. My mother did not help any either. It is always the end of the world in my head. But I'm ok with that. It doesn't really affect me. I keep chugging along.

I just learned that a worker at Wal-Mart was trampled to death on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving. Over 2,000 broke down the doors early and stomped over his body. The man had been with Wal-Mart for about a week. He was about 6'4", 270lbs and black. They thought he would make a good "security officer". He had never worked a day of security in his life.

The people stayed in the store after they announced his death. They kept at each other for the lower prices. I wonder how it must feel to be one of the ones that were at the store that day. I wonder what it would feel like to receive a gift on Christmas morning if you know that it can from that Wal-Mart on that day. I wonder if it would be life changing.

My initial reaction, and the easy thing to do, is to admonish those 2,000 people that trampled over and killed the man. I want to blame Wal-Mart for allowing this to happen. I want to blame them for putting him there. I want to blame them for creating this frenzy. I want to blame them for being a pioneer in this new economy. After all, they did pave the pathway for this new economy where budgets are tight and consumer goods reign supreme.

I want to do all of that. And I am right to do so. But does that mean that those outside of that Wal-Mart are free from blame? Were they particularly nasty people there in Nassau New York? Am I any better than them? Do I not do the same things? Am I not an active participant in the same culture?

These are my thoughts on this Wednesday afternoon. Anything to get my mind off the layoffs. Word on the street is that Yahoo! will layoff 1,500 on December 10th. Everyone is nervous. I have been busting my ass here in response. There is no way that I will get laid off due to a lack of effort or skill. I have done everything I can. It is in gods hands now.

I am getting married soon. I am getting married very soon. Plans are nearly all set. More info to come.

The Portland Holiday Ale Festival is this weekend.
http://www.holidayale.com/index.php