These are a few of the quotations, meditations, and other bits that we feel express something about our relationship or this celebration. Click here or on the link at the bottom to submit your own words. Enjoy!

The following will be available for signature at our ceremony & reception.

We, through our own
Experience, Reflection, and Understanding,
recognize that the soundness of a body depends upon the health of its members.
We therefore pledge our
Strength, Love and Forgiveness
to each other, undertaking
to Bestow and to Recieve,
to Challenge and to Defend,
to Preserve and to Surrender;
and neither to withold from one another our
Abilities, Support, or Gratitude,
that our separate paths may alike lead to
Joy.

Commitment, by its nature, frees us from ourselves and, while it stands us in opposition to some, it joins us with others similarly committed. Commitment moves us from the mirror trap of the self absorbed with the self to the freedom of a community of shared values.
--Michael Lewis, Shame, The Exposed Self


A word about names.
I've been left with a photo, drops of juice dissolving us together
in acidic unity our colors blend
the way our names never did. Yours was hung on me
Like a Christmas sweater from a relative whose cheek I kissed
Sometime in my childhood, whose name escapes me
As my shape escaped her
I mean that at some point I was shapeless
Reverting to an earlier evolution
Absorbing the soft expectation.
But I like my shape
And I like my name
Despite, or because of, the tenacious brass sheen.
Thank you for the Christmas sweater and Thank you for the acid
They remain internally mine.
--- SJH, "Hoover." 05/1998


Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations.
[discussion of Masssachusetts Constitution omitted]
Barred access to the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage, a person who enters into an intimate, exclusive union with another of the same sex is arbitrarily deprived of membership in one of our community's most rewarding and cherished institutions. That exclusion is incompatible with the constitutional principles of respect for individual autonomy and equality under law.
--from the majority opinion, written by C..J. Marshall, Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court for the case "Hillary Goodridge & others Vs. Department of Public Health & another", Nov. 18, 2003

If my dear love were but the child of state
It might for Fortune�s bastard be unfather�d,
As subject to Time�s love or to Time�s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather�d.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-number�d hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
     To this I witness call the fools of time,
     Which die for goodness, who have liv�d for crime.
--"Sonnet CXXIV", Wm. Shakespeare

i'm ok--if you get me at a good angle
you're all right--in the right sort of light
we don't look like pages from a magazine, but that's all right
we get a little further from perfection
each year on the road
i think that's called character, i think that's just the way it goes
but it's better to be dusty than polished like some store window mannequin
why don't you touch me where i'm rusty, let me stain your hands
when you're pretty as a picture they pound down your door
but i have been offered love in two dimensions before
and i have discovered that it's not all it's made out to be
so let's show them all how it's done
let's do it all imperfectly
 --ani difranco, "imperfectly"
Other songs from Ani that are highly applicable:
"buildings and bridges"(lyrics)
"Freakshow" (lyrics)
"Looking for the Holes" (lyrics)
Imagine That"(lyrics)
"Bliss Like This" (lyrics)
"Millenium Theater" (listen)


If you will love what seems to be insignificant and will in an unassuming manner, as a servant, seek to win the confidence of what seems poor, then everything will become easier, more harmonious, and somehow more conciliatory, not for your intellect--that will likely remain behind, astonished--but for your innermost consciousness, your awakeness, and your inner knowing.
You are so young; you stand before beginnings. I would like to beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. Perhaps you are indeed carrying within yourself the potential to visualize, to design, and to create for yourself an utterly satisfying, joyful, and pure lifestyle. Discipline yourself to attain it, but accept that which comes to you with deep trust, and as long as it comes from your own will, from your own inner need, accept it, and do not hate anything.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet


Onion soup sustains. The process of making it is somewhat like the process of learning to love. It requires commitment, extraordinary effort, time, and will make you cry.
--Ronni Lundy, "The Seasoned Cook".


Contact us at [email protected].
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