 Hi, my name is Danny and welcome to Esoteric Moment. Today I am doing a video about planning my own hand fasting and wedding. So I'm going to do this in two parts. One video will be about the ritual and one part will be about the reception. This week's video is all about the ritual and what we're doing to make it a druid wedding, but still, you know, welcoming and acceptable of all of our guests and Brad as an atheist. When we getting to plan our wedding, we each sat down and thought and wrote about what our main goals would be for this. So for me it was to have a small druidish ceremony that showed how much we cared about each other and to make sure that our guests had a really relaxing and fun party afterwards where stories could be told and just good times could be had. Brad's were to marry me soon and that we kept in mind, you know, like the cost and that we wanted to have a farm soon. We also really wanted to have our wedding in the winter. Winter is my favorite season and we were really hoping for snow. Now as I record this, it is a ridiculously warm February day. So who knows if there will be snow or if it will even feel like winter at the end of February, but crossing our fingers. We used a Google doc to kind of write the ceremony out and then as we asked for volunteers to say something or do something during the ceremony, it was really easy to share this with them online so you could see the whole script. If they had any questions or edits, we could do that. Our officiant had some ideas and changes that we incorporated and it really made it very simple and not stressful at all to write our own ritual and probably one of the smaller tasks that we did when planning for the wedding. Obviously, most rituals for jewellery and many pagan paths are done in a circle. So I wanted some way to incorporate that into our ritual as well. What we decided to do is to have four elements. These four elements are friends of ours who have volunteered to say a few words at the ceremony and they will be standing in our cardinal directions with the guests kind of filling in around that giant circle. The officiant, us and our bridesmaids and groupsmen will be in the center of this circle. Our officiant will be kind of starting the ceremony and guiding people through. He is not a practicing pagan. In fact, I tried to work with someone from Circle Sanctuary and communication wasn't so great. I sent a few emails and got a few responses back and then when I was able to confirm the date and the location, I never heard back. I waited until after the holidays and tried again and still never heard anything. So that would be my first piece of advice as a pagan planning a wedding. If you are trying to reach an officiant who is a priestess or a leader in your community and you don't hear back from them, we follow a path where everyone is empowered to be their own leader and to connect to divinity themselves. So find a friend, do it yourself. It kind of depends on your local laws and rules about who can and who must be present at a wedding. But there are usually ways around that like online officiant certifications, that sort of thing. So our officiant will be doing the traditional druid opening for calling the quarters. That means representing the different animal guardians of the directions. After that line, then the volunteer who's representing that element will respond back with an item that kind of represents the element, but also a relationship. So when they're in the east and speaking about air, the response back is all about good communication. After the circle opening, we're doing a brief offering to the spirits of place and to our ancestors. My mother's maiden name is Dunphy and there is a Dunphy's Irish whiskey that you can only get in Ireland or in limited locations, not in the Midwest of the US for sure. And so we'll be dropping a swig of that onto the ground as an offering for our ancestors. Following this offering, Brad and I will listen to the officiant give a brief reading, I guess, of what our vows mean and what a wedding and marriage mean. And then we say together at the same time kind of pre-written vows that we're both going to do our own handwritten vows that we're keeping private until that day. This is to kind of make it more personal and about us because every relationship is different and ours will certainly be unique. At that point, we're doing a ring exchange and we got our rings off of Etsy for a very reasonable amount and also really unique beautiful rings which is probably more important. So my engagement ring is a tree stump with vines over it and it has a Pareto stone in it and then from that same artist, Brad's wedding band will be a tree trunk of similar designs. My wedding band is kind of like a tree branch with ivy leaves. It's very pretty and quite excited about how well everything coordinates. After that, we'll do a closing of the circle kind of going in reverse and having the officiant do most of that closing part and then letting our guests leave. Now we're really lucky because we're doing our ceremony in a public park and we have so few guests that we didn't need to pay to use the space. We're not renting a building and it's in the middle of February so there aren't any conflicts of other groups using the space. The park that we're using in the space in which the ceremony will be held is a little island and there are two bridges over a small kind of pondish stream area and this is the same place that Brad proposed to me. So it's a place that's close by that we both know and enjoy and it hosts a whole sentimental value to us already. I would recommend calling a parks department if that's what you're going to be using or if you have any friends who own land perhaps asking them. And you know the elements will have props and will have a hand-fasting cord but really we're keeping the props and decorations and items down to a minimum so that it's easy to get into the park and out of the park and that the words and space that we're creating is what's most important. So those are some of my favorite details about our hand-fasting ritual and if you have any questions below definitely let me know in the comments. It would also be great to hear where you had your wedding ritual at or if you aren't married yet any places that you've really been like oh that would be perfect if I ever do this. Thanks for watching and as always may you find peace in the sacred grove.