What's The Meaning Of All This????

"Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates."

Mark Twain - Life on the Mississippi

When Mark Twain wrote these words, he was talking about the whimsical desires of youth. They come and go, we reassess and move on. Thanks to the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, the world of pirates became popular again in the culture. And then, as if with the tides, it's popularity subsided. If you said the word "pirate" several years ago, Johnny Depp came to mind. Today, as I write this, the word will evoke thoughts of recent news items surrounding Somali Pirates and the daring rescue of Captain Richard Phillips. While these real life crimes on the sea are important, I hope they don't take away any affection for the romantic notion of pirates to which Mark Twain was alluding.

When we chose to have a pirate wedding, our thoughts were focused on the mythic and romantic notion of pirates from movies of the past and from literature. We did a fair amount of research into the real pirates of history, and understood the complicated nature of the theme we had chosen. But we made great efforts to remind people that while historical pirates indeed have a dark shadow, we were more interested in the romantic and whimsical ideas that surround them. The historical origins of traditions found in "traditional" wedding ceremonies have equally complicated backgrounds. If you do a little digging, you find references to warring families, evil spirits, or armed kidnappings of brides. Usually people planning weddings don't think much about the traditions they are including in their ceremonies, nor do the guests, they just include them because "that's how weddings are done." Since we were attempting to create a ceremony from the ground up surrounding a complicated theme, we wanted to consider all the parts and their meanings. We felt that for us, this was the only way we could really imbue the ceremony with both fun AND heartfelt meaning.

As you are planning your wedding, I encourage you to really look at its parts. You don't have to re-invent the wheel, but by planning your wedding in a way that embraces all the meanings that surround it, you create a deeper experience for yourself and your guests.