Forming the Marriage Hexagon
The Design of our queer wedding ceremony
I’m sure it surprises none of you that our wedding ceremony is designed from scratch, full of quirks, an embodied reflection of our deepest-held values, and anchored in powerful friendships. We knew that it would only work if it felt authentically us when we got to the front of the room.
So, let’s take a look at this strange creation.
Bride: Avery Alder
Darling: Milo Offerein
Celebrant: Samuel Stevenson
Channeler: Autumn Strom
Entrusting Our Vows
Our marriage will be founded on six vows that we hold to be sacred: healing, intimacy, queer possibility, community, permission, and family. These are the six sides of our hexagon.
Relationships don’t exist in isolation, and so we want to tag in key friends to help us keep these vows alive and flourishing. Each vow has an appointed Vowkeeper – members of our wedding party who will safeguard our vows and hold us accountable to them over time.
These vows were shaped by important works of art and writing, which is why each one will be framed in response to a reading given by its Vowkeeper.
Our vows are not a back-and-forth transactional exchange of things we wrote privately. Instead, they’re promises that we wrote together, to our relationship, and that we’ll be entering into together.
Once made, each vow is placed within a vessel and entrusted to its Vowkeeper.
Vows and Vowkeepers
Healing
To us, healing means safety, nurturance, growth, reciprocity, and futurity.
Vowkeeper Pragya
shall read from
Parable of the Sower
by Octavia Butler
Intimacy
The nervous rush of romantic anticipation, the soothing familiarity of one another’s smell, and everything in between.
Vowkeeper Sharang
shall read from
This is How You Lose the Time War
by Amal El-Mohtar
and Max Gladstone
Queer Possibility
Queerness is about more than just love and gender – it is a worldbuilding project that emerges from within us and shapes new futures.
Vowkeeper Ivy
shall read from
Uses of the Erotic
by Audre Lorde
Community
Sharing food, making meaning together, passing care back and forth between us.
Vowkeeper Laurel
shall read from
The Dispossessed
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Permission
A commitment to being surprised by one another, to polyamory, and to exploration.
Vowkeeper Hannah
shall read from
You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For
by Richard C. Schwartz
Family
Building a life together, weaving together the families born, found, and chosen.
Vowkeepers Lou and Clover
shall read from
The Velveteen Rabbit
by Margery Williams