My 2015 Weddings Season, and my second decade as a celebrant began with a joyful first ceremony of September for my dear friends Suzanne Grant and Chris Halliday.
In between the Friday and Sunday rain and gloom, Saturday the 5th emerged with warmth and gorgeous sunshine. It was a big grass roots, community-based, home crafted, all hands on deck wedding that transformed the ordinary of Kariong Scout Camp into the extraordinary – a vintage bush festival of love. We did kitchen duties, before, during and after. There was flashmob singing, a BBQ and bonfire for millions of kids being being gorgeously feral and there was so much great food and wine, joy, music, laughter, dancing and feasting. We needed a few days to recover but it was all worth it and what a wedding should be…community, love, friendship, joyful connecting and celebrating and deepening the of bonds love among all present.
There was bagpipes and niece Hayley on keyboard, my hubby Andrew on bass and dear friend and performer Jen Viletic sang in top voice “Rome wasn’t built in a day” led us all in the musical flashmob, the JPY classic, “love is in the air”.
In addition to their amazing, funny, fully memorized vows that left not a dry eye in the gathering, Suz and Chris’s ceremony also included an original love letter Xmas present. They also requested I give a ‘sermon’ on love and marriage…..Suz said: “Sarah I’d love you to give a sermon on love….(lol!!! )… so basically maybe a little Deepak Chopra, Sarah Tolmie Love Wisdom, and a sprinkling of quantum physics…you know stardust, connectedness, consciousness”
And, there was an oldy but a goody…….good old Shakespeare.
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no, it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken,
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom;
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Here are some wonderful pics from a wonderful day:
