“I Am So Not Charmed By the YouTube Wedding Dance Sensation,” harps on that crazy wedding procession you have probably seen, and then in my favorite part extrapolates to writing your own vows:
For my own wedding, I no more want to write my own vows than I would want the president to write his own oath of office. To do so saps the words of meaning, of that sublime feeling you get saying something you never thought you’d say to that person you most want to say it to. Vows are meant not to be a reflection of a couple’s individual love, but an intonation of a promise made countless times before. That is their power.
Richard Clark (Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief) has spent his entire life writing, reading, listening, and playing. He has a Bachelors in Theology from the Baptist College of Florida and has a Master of Arts in Theology and the Arts from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He lives in Louisville, KY where he is the classroom technology manager at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition to writing at Christ and Pop Culture, he is also a staff writer for 
Wait. To speak a vow that reflect your particular intention for what is to be your future somehow saps your vow of its meaning? Must be that new math.
Lesson to be learned here: promises only hold meaning if someone else makes the promise and then you agree to it.
Apologies* but this is the stupidest thing I’ve read this week. Granted, it’s still early in the week but I have a feeling that this may be the horse to bet on anyway.
*note: Did I sound disingenuous there? Because I kind of maybe was.
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I think the real lesson of that rather fun way to celebrate the marital union of two people was this: if you only have four friends who can actually dance or perform well in front of a crowd, make certain that they are the ones who lead off the procession. If they can generate enough excitement, everyone** will forgive (or even forget) that those following in the processional couldn’t dance their way out of a wet paper sack.
**note: Well, everyone except people like J. David Goodman who exist seemingly both as enemies of fun and enemies of sense (if the bit you quoted, Rich, is any indication).
Oh, and full disclosure: we didn’t write our own vows, but instead used a more traditional formula (since it was good enough). Really, to me, the vows were just ceremony. There is only one necessary thing that happens at a wedding: the declaration of matrimony. Everything else is fluff. Fluff that may have personal meaning to the participants, but fluff all the same.
“Really, to me, the vows were just ceremony. There is only one necessary thing that happens at a wedding: the declaration of matrimony. Everything else is fluff. Fluff that may have personal meaning to the participants, but fluff all the same.”
So with that line of reasoning then the vows become part of the “fluff” associated with one’s wedding day. Really?!?!? And what exactly is your definition of “the declaration of matrimony”? Why can’t the vows be part of this declaration? Moreover, why must you resort to insulting remarks about the post? I don’t know you but what you have stated raises many red flags for me about your view of marriage.
@Jose:
Yes. That’s pretty much exactly what I said. I also said that such fluff may have personal value to the participants—which is plainly the case for many of those who get married.
The key is twofold: a) realize that by “fluff” I mean that a thing is not necessary to the marriage of the two individuals, and b) realize that when I say “fluff” I don’t mean “useless.” As to my own view, of which you express a marked skepticism, perhaps an explanation will help.
I believe that marriage is the state by which two individuals come into unity with each other and, at least by the understanding of the last few thousand years, enter into a social contract. The terms of this contract are very much similar to those elucidated in the most common versions of the Wedding Vows. Though such vows can never be expansive enough to fully cover what a marriage is and one partner’s responsibility to another.
With that, the Important Thing in a wedding is that the couple actually gets married. Spoken vows or no, most of us understand that being declared man and wife means everything that’s in those vows and more. When you see that I am married, your immediate presumption should be that I have promised to have and hold, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, et cetera, until death do us part. Why? Because that’s what I mean when I say that I’m married to the woman who is my wife.
The wedding vows were never important to me, why? Because they were always a redundancy.
Sure, they can be a nice sentiment even though they’re so very inadequate to the task of explaining what’s going on, but it’s kind of like saying, “I enjoy your company” while also saying “I simply just LOVE being around you!!” It’s not offensive, but its unnecessary and kind of gets in the way of the eloquence of the event.
But if you have some personal stake or importance tied up in the wedding vows, then sure, have at it! That’s why we gave our pianist sheet music from Cinema Paradiso‘s love theme, why we sang hymns as a gathered unity, and had our pastor and our fathers (both of whom are pastors) officiate our wedding: because that stuff added to our enjoyment and celebration of the day. It was all fluff compared to the purpose of the event, but it was fluff into which we invested meaning. Hope that helps.
Because it was a terrible post, that’s why. The author, Goodman, says something flatout out untrue (and logically so)—that the writing of one’s own vows saps the meaning out of the vows (as if the vows are some immutable force that lose all strength upon reformulation)—and he uses this unfortunate reasoning to demean the marriages of the countless people who are exactly as married as you or I (presuming that you are as married as I) but chose to use vows that they felt better fit their occasion.
Look. The wedding vows that we commonly hear in old movies and in weddings of a particular taste aren’t some unchangeable tradition handed down from ancient times. They’ve, in English, been worded and reworded as long as we’ve had English words.
And look, I can in this moment make an addition to the common vow that adds valid personal value to the thing despite breaking Goodman’s no-alteration view. “I, The Dane, take you The Monk, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to endeavor by the hand of Christ to love you even with the love with which he lavishes his church; from this day forward until death do us part.”
Goodman, I feel, deserves to be taken to task for what comes off as little more than a diatribe of taste masked in language of ethic. Do I go too far when I suggest that he is an enemy of fun? Possibly. Maybe he’s only an occasional rival of fun. Do I go too far when I suggest that he’s an enemy of reason? Perhaps. It may be that he’s only here acting as a pawn of such an enemy.
One thing is certain though. The point in his post that Rich quotes was, in fact, stupid. This is not to say that Goodman is a bad person or that his writing, generally, is stupid. It is only to say that this one thing he said in this one instance was an abomination against common sense.
Friends?