Welcome to Divining Weddings. My name is Mary Campbell. I serve as a guide and wedding officiant to couples as they craft a Berkshire wedding ceremony and the foundations for a life-long love affair that reflects their individual and unique spiritual identities.
The act of wedding, of bringing together two people into one unified expression of love, like a divining rod that finds water deep inside the earth, is the process of creating your wedding in order to allow you to source what most completely defines the love you share… and how you’ll express that in the elements and words spoken in your vows and ceremony.
This is a delicate creation, a chance to bring all the beauty that the two of you are and that you envision for your future together into the crafting of a ceremony worthy of that love.
In times past, couples relied on a priest, minister, imam or rabbi to perform the traditional service of their own religion. Intermarriage was discouraged, so most couples followed a proscribed ceremony and had little say in its form or language. When the bride and groom came from differing traditions, one had to convert or be married by a Justice of the Peace.
But we live in a new time. 42% of marriages in 2013 melded different religious traditions. And even when histories are similar, many now consider themselves more spiritual than religious. The religion of our youth, if we had one, might not resonate so completely as we’ve matured. Now we might love the poetry of Rumi, practice some form of meditation or yoga, or find God in Nature as readily as in a house of worship. And yet the beauty of those traditions may still call to us.
When couples come together to create a ceremony to publicly acknowledge their union, they usually want their vows — and everything about the ceremony itself — to authentically reflect the deep commitment and vision they hold for their marriage. Whether they choose a simple statement of their love or a ceremony that involves various rituals from other world traditions, most know they want to avoid the uninspired cookie-cutter wedding. But how do they honor their varying traditions and families’ desires and yet remain true to themselves?
This is why many couples choose an experienced and thoughtful guide.