Picking the Readings

My fiancé and I have been trying to choose our readings and prayers for the wedding ceremony. We’d left that task until we took our marriage prep course, as we weren’t sure what the options were. Now that we’re finishing the course, we finally looked up the options. Then the fighting began.

I liked Genesis and he liked Tobit. I tried to explain why the Genesis passage meant a lot to me. In the next hour or so, he asked me about five times why I wanted it. I gave up trying to explain. He tried to explain why he liked Tobit. I said I’d only read the book once and thought it was a weird story. Then the discussion deteriorated into an argument about creationism and whether Genesis is figurative or literal.

The next night he tried to find something we could agree on, so he looked at the prayers and asked which one I liked. “Prayer 2,” I said, after reading through them. Of course he liked Prayer 1. We both tried to explain why we liked our respective prayers. I thought we should be looking at the prayers in the context of the whole ceremony and the theme we wanted to have. He thought if we could agree on the prayer, then we could pick the rest of the readings to go with the prayer. So now not only were we not agreeing, we weren’t even approaching it the same way!

I told an older friend about our current dilemma. She laughed and said that’s why she’d thought, once, that she shouldn’t have asked for her husband’s opinion on wedding details. It must be easy for the woman who can just do it all herself without such debates. Perhaps. I think I’m happier, however, knowing he has an opinion and he’s going to share it with me, and that in the end, whatever happens on our wedding day will be something we worked out together that is important to both of us.

I’ve heard of women who had their whole wedding planned before even meeting the man. I didn’t want to be that sort of bride (maybe I knew I’d meet a man who would want to be involved in all the planning!). The only thing I had planned was my dress; I wouldn’t let myself speculate about the rest of the wedding.

So now we are going through all of the decisions together. Sometimes agreeing instantly. Sometimes agreeing after much discussion. Sometimes he has a great idea, sometimes I do. Sometimes something is important to me and doesn’t matter to him, or vice versa. Either way, what happens on that day is about and for both of us.

Last night we managed to pick a series of readings that we both liked (neither Genesis nor Tobit). We also agreed, without any problems, on the vows we wanted to say to each other. Now we just have to pick the prayers to match the readings and we’re ready to go… until we reach the next decision to make on the to-do list. 🙂