The Greeting
(There are 6 Greeting Examples to choose from.)
Your Wrangler Guide will spend a few minutes to set the tone: warm, calm, relaxed, joyfully solemn. He or she will read any of the following (or substitute your own):
Greeting Example #1 Apache Blessing:
Love is the reason we are here. In marriage we not only say, “I love you today”, but also, “I promise to love you for all of our tomorrows.”
Wrangler Guide:
____ [Groom] ____ and ____[Bride] ___, in your journey of life together, remind yourselves often of the love that brought you together. Give the highest priority to your love. When challenges come, remember to focus on what is right between you. In this way, you can ride out the storms. And when clouds hide the sun in your lives – remember, even if you lose sight of it for a moment, the sun is always there.
Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth for the other. Now there will be no loneliness, for each of you will be companion to the other. Now you are two persons, but there are three lives before you; His life, Her life and Your life together.
Greeting Example #2 (semi-Buddhist) Greeting:
Stubbornness is a great Virtue!
Compassion and love, when cultivated over the years, gives rise to hope, courage, determination, inner strength, and yes, even to enlightenment!
Compassion is not the emotion of sympathy. It’s not an emotion at all. It is the wish for another to be free from suffering.
Love can be a noun – an emotion marketed by Hallmark and Disney, a fantasy. But love is also a verb – is the desire for and cultivation of anothers happiness.
How do we cultivate life long compassion and love? There are a number of ways. Here’s just one:
First, we can set aside love as a noun – the Disney and Hallmark card package of hormones. Somewhere we have fallen for the fiction that people “fall” in love and then they “fall out” of love. What nonsense!
Set aside the noun, and look at the verb form of love. Love is an action, not a feeling. A dedication to doing things, like listening, even when you are dead tired. Like being courteous, even when really angry. Like caring for your spouse before yourself.
Compassion and love are actions that relieve suffering and create happiness in the other; sometimes with wonderful warm feelings, and sometimes with no feelings at all, just the dedication of a vow. It’s very simple, but it isn’t easy to do! The vows you take today are a life long commitment. The circumstances of your lives will change, your feelings will change, most aspects of your lives will change over time.
But your commitment to each other, if you are stubborn, can carry you into old age together with a of joy that you cannot even imagine now.
Yes, stubbornness is a great virtue!
Greeting Example #3
There is no greater gift than the love that makes two people one. To see this love blossoming between two hearts is a joy. To witness the vows of lovers as they take to each other, throughout all of the changes of life, is a delight. In a world where faith can fall short of our expectations, it makes us glad to see you joining hand and hearts in your faith in each other.
Greeting Example #4
Love is the reason we are here. In marriage we not only say, “I love you today”, but also, “I promise to love you for all of our tomorrows.”
____________ and ____________ , in the days ahead of you, there will be stormy times and good times, times of conflict and times of joy. I ask you to remember this advice:
Never go to bed angry.
Let your love be stronger than your anger.
Learn the wisdom of compromise, for it is better to bend than to break.
Believe the best of your beloved rather than the worst.
Confide in your partner and ask for help when you need it.
Remember that true friendship is the basis for any lasting relationship.
Give your spouse the same courtesies and kindnesses you bestow on your friends.
Say “I love you” every day.
Greeting Example #5
Love is patient and kind; Love is not jealous or boastful;
Love is not arrogant or rude; Love does not insist on its own way;
Love does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices with the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
Learning to love each other and to live together in harmony is one of the greatest challenges of marriage. Marriage is not to be entered into lightly, and we are to hold it in high honor at all times.
__________ and ________________, remember that love, trust, and loyalty are the foundation of a happy and enduring marriage. No vows are more sacred than those you are about to make. If these vows are kept unbroken, [and as you endeavor to do the will of your Heavenly Father,] your lives together will be full of joy and love.
Greeting Example #6
ON LOVE
by Thomas Kempis
Nothing is sweeter than love,
Nothing stronger,
Nothing higher,
Nothing wider,
Nothing more pleasant,
Nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth; for love is born of God.
Love flies, runs and leaps for joy.
It is free and unrestrained.
Love knows no limits, but ardently transcends all bounds…
Love sees nothing as impossible,
for it feels able to achieve all things….
Love is not fickle and sentimental,
nor is it intent on vanities.
Like a living flame and a burning torch,
it surges upward and surely surmounts every obstacle.