Avowed

On October 13, 2017, I married one of my best friends in the world and started an exciting new chapter of my life. Just like everyone told me, it was weeks of hard work and planning for a blur of a day that we’ll mostly remember through photographs. Even the next morning, as my new wife and I sat eating breakfast beside the bottle of Scotch my best men and I shared only a handful of hours earlier, our wedding day seemed like a distant memory.

It was worth it to us, however, to have our closest friends and family witness our formal commitment to each other. Stripping away various religious takes on marriage, or old customs of women as a commodity to be given away, the heart of the wedding for us were the solemn words our union was built from. From the ceremony to the vows to the toasts at the reception, all of the words shared at our wedding reflected unity. Our officiant explaining the significance of our union, us making our lifelong promises to each other, and our closest friends welcoming our new spouse to the families we had built around each other.

When you talk about planning a wedding, those promises lose some of their gravitas. They become timeslots you have to fill and boxes you must check. There are so many details to contend with that, at least in the beginning, it becomes just another event. But luckily, it doesn’t stay that way.

For me, the hectic haze of last minute details and organization and rushing around evaporated when my best friends stood by my side and my new wife walked down the aisle. None of it felt real until that moment, a memory that was underscored by the words my uncle wrote for our ceremony.

They were words for us. Not just my wife and I, but our two families coming together as one. I’ve read thousands of my uncle’s words through his poetry and stories, but the ceremony he delivered for us will always be my favorite. I’d forgotten how truly powerful words could be when they hit a pure vein of inner emotion and connect to the outside world.

His ceremony led perfectly to the vows we had written for each other. They weren’t tried and true or traditional, but they were sincere reflections of our relationship. And although one of us couldn’t get through theirs without choking up (definitely me), we managed to make real all of the inner thoughts we had about our future. We were making vows to each other in the strictest sense of the word, pledging ourselves to our life together in front of those closest to us. Witnesses with the most agency to hold us to those promises should we ever waver.

Chief among those witnesses were her maid of honor and my two best men. At our reception, all three delivered amazing speeches. None of the Hollywood-style embarrassing tales or long-winded diatribes, all three spoke very directly to what we meant to them, both separately and as a couple. They are our families of choice, so it was a fitting cap to the night to have them bless our union with their welcoming words. We couldn’t have asked for better toasts from any of them.

I’ve played with words for most of my life, from writing to acting to debate, but nothing I’ve done or am likely to do will surpass the words we all shared that day. Objectively there is nothing remarkable about them. If you read them here you’d smile and nod, but they wouldn’t shift any paradigms or reshape your worldview. They were, in a word, simple.

There is power in their simplicity, though. They were bespoke to us and the moment — concentrated feelings designed for a specific instance in time. Direct, honest and raw. They would mean very little to anyone else, but to us they mean the world.