Anonymous asked: What inspired you to choose a handfasting for your wedding? Does the ritual have significance to you beyond being an alternative to a traditional church-type ceremony?
Curtis had no religious beliefs or attachment at the time, but I was and remain Pagan. He wanted to honor that, and neither of us felt comfortable with a traditional religious or church ceremony, so a handfasting was ideal for a number of reasons.
It was an incredibly intimate and personal ceremony for us and we put a lot of work into it. It took months to find the right wording for the ceremony, we wrote everything ourselves (some we wrote from scratch, other parts were borrowed from other handfasting ceremonies we found in books or online that were posted for sharing). We very carefully made the cord ourselves and that took about two weeks of daily work with braiding and twisting. Curtis even learned how to braid specifically for that task. We researched the colours of threads we used (fertility, longevity, health, love, family, healing), used charms and important artifacts from our personal collections as well as buying a few new ones that had specific meanings. For us the handfasting represented a merging of more than just the lives two people, but also joining two histories. The cord was woven with hopes, prayers and memories and wrapped around our hands as we held each other and said our vows to infuse those things into our future lives together. It meant a great deal to us to do it that way, and a year and a day later we reaffirmed our vows privately (handfastings generally are only intended to bond a couple for a year and a day, at that point they may either bond for life or part ways).
That’s why we really, really wanted to do our tenth anniversary party at ten years and one day - it was also about reaffirming everything after all we’ve gone through together… but unfortunately it wasn’t in the cards this year, so we’ve postponed it for next year instead.
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comeinto-my-world likes this
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inclementine said:
This is extremely interesting to me. I have never heard of hand fasting before.
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babyslime posted this