This book tries to cover all aspects of planning pagan handfastings
in less than 200 pages with chapters on history and legalities
of handfasting, picking a date, ceremony and reception planning,
tools and traditions, divination and creating sacred space, vows
and ritual. She covers a lot of ground, obviously none of it in
great depth. Her strength is in her suggestions of how to plan
a wedding with attention to symbolic details. If you are an experienced
pagan or witch, her
sections on ritual planning and tools may seem too simplistic.
On the other hand if you are real new to ritual planning and execution,
you will probably still want to get help from someone more experienced.
The history and legalities chapter could be useful for explaining
to concerned non-pagan relatives, or Dear Abby, I noted as I read
this at about the time she was dealing with the subject in her
column. Of course the specific requirements for a legal wedding
vary from locale to locale so if you want your union legalized
you'll have to check out the rules for your area. The chapter
does discuss that rather than necessarily being for life, handfasting
may have other agreed upon terms such as 'a year and a day' or
'as long as love shall last'.
Chapter 2 covers a quick bit of symbolism related to astrology,
sabbats, tree months, moon phases, days of the week, and planetary
hours to use in selecting auspicious dates for announcing and
performing your wedding. Interestingly she does suggest Beltane
(May 1) as an appropriate wedding time, some think that this is
the time for the union of the gods (and wild fun) and that human
weddings are more appropriate in June or August.
The ceremony and reception planning chapter has subsections about
clothing, party planning, invitations, ritual choreography, budgeting
and so on with lists of items to consider in planning, similar
to the lists in any other wedding planning book with the addition
of ritual tools.
In tools and traditions she discusses the execution and meanings
of handfasting traditions - broom jumping, hand binding, ring
exchange and of basic ritual tools. In the process there are meanings
of charms, colors, stones, incenses, and oils, recipes for cake,
bread, and mead. Her suggestion to take nice hot baths with relaxing
oils while preparing all this is a good one, this can be a frazzling
time.
She explains a bit about the creation of sacred space and includes
a suggested circle casting. That starts in the South 'in honor
of the fires of Beltane', and includes invocations to Aphrodite
and Adonis. Perhaps slightly more usefully the rest of the chapter
is a brief overview of divination methods with dice, pendulums,
and astrology - basically the useful part is the suggestion that
this would be a good time to do a lot of divination and make sure
that you really are doing the right thing.
The section on writing your vows is an important one. Here she
gives several different examples. With advice about how to phrase
them, what types of language to use to make these effective and
appropriate. She ends with a sample wedding script and a few suggestions
of variations.
The actual ceremony planning and execution is where the book
seems weakest to me. She suggests that if there are guests that
are uncomfortable with circle casting, perhaps that part can come
before the guests arrive. I've seen other ways of adapting the
ritual and making it subtle that would be nice to mention here.
She also doesn't mention much, if at all, about the symbolism
of any of the more common traditional wedding traditions other
than ring exchange.
I think that perhaps this book is just trying to cover too much
material in condensed form. I recommend it as a guideline to thinking
about vow writing and an idea sparker for making the symbolism
of your handfasting match your intentions and desires. The planning
checklists aren't bad.
For the actual ceremony - you should definitely assemble your
own, and don't use this book as your only ritual planning resource.
