So I put out a calling to the universe to fill me up with wedding traditions and now I am overflowing with ideas. Here are some of the things I am thinking of doing for my wedding.
First off, we are both half Viking, I am Norwegian/Swedish on my dad’s side and my fiance is half Icelandic. So now my fiance wants to exchange swords. I am terrified of swords and so mine will be a small dagger. How will we acquire these? That is yet to be determined. For our wedding photos and wedding party, we are thinking of making fake swords with sledgehammer handles and rainbow electrical tape and ribbons that we will pose for in our fake abduction photos.
I’m not sure where the abduction ritual comes in, but I’ve come across in several of our cultures and also in “Welcoming Hera’s Blessing: Handfasting and Wedding Rituals” – personally I love the idea of a fake abduction. I plan on posing in the trunk of a car before our ceremony
Yep, we are doing our photos before the ceremony, which is apparently common in Sweden and other places. It takes the pressure off hiding from each other before the ceremony which is just as well because our wedding celebration starts days before our public ceremony.
It was customary in the old testament to have long multiday weddings with no honeymoon, so we are choosing to have 10 days of wedding, most of which will be private and include a day for an Icelandic love letter ceremony, where we won’t talk for several hours and instead craft letters for each other to seal into a memento box.
This also works out because we want to get married on 4/20, 2020 (a Monday) but the venue we want is only available on Saturdays. So we are having our public ceremony on the Saturday to be followed by a rave-ception. We want to get married under the stars in the planetarium at Telus World of Science, though can’t officially book until this coming July. It’s hard trying to plan a wedding early!
We did get in contact with an officiant though and have chosen to do our legal 4/20 wedding ceremony privately, outdoors, at the Alberta Legislature grounds and do a handfasting then (which is traditionally best done outside).
For our indoor public ceremony, we will honor all the elements and the directions North, East, West & South. We will also do the ceremony ourselves, reading blessing to Hera & Freya as we are getting married under the Milkyway in her honor. We will chase each other like lovers around the stage, sharing a mic as we follow a script to honor the elements and say our vows.
For our outfits, this starts to get ridiculous. My fiance designed a custom tartan to honor his mixed Scottish heritage from two sides of his family, blended together to make a purplish kilt. Overall though we will be wearing we each other’s favorite colors, with him having touches of yellow (including a cape!) and me wearing blue (which is also an Irish tradition). I also have Scottish heritage so I will wear pants with my family’s tartan. I’m genderqueer and so I am wearing a dress that is super short such that I can wear pants under it, but still has a long frilly skirt in the back that scratches my bridal itch. I will also pair that with a suit jacket for ultimate gender fuckery.
One detail that I was struggling with was what to do with my shoes. I have bad knees and so heels are out of the equation. I decided, however, to honor my Dutch heritage with white wooden clogs. Because I want to add my own flavor I will paint sigils on them in silver, for a chaotic magick spiritual flair.
For our RAVE-ception, we have DJ friends who play for us all night, as well as we will do a potluck for some simplicity and cash saving. We will even have multiple cakes and desserts, including a traditional Scandinavian Kransekake cake.
Next up is food sharing. I want to get a traditional Norwegian wedding spoon, which is two spoons carved out of wood and linked together. I have one in mind but it will be a while before I can afford to order it. We will also get an Irish quaich (a shallow drinking cup with two handles), that we will drink from together.
It’s still two years away (long engagements are traditional in Iceland!), and it will take a while for us to gather all the necessary tools and be able to afford them, overall though, with the skipping of a honeymoon until our one year anniversary and doing a potluck dinner, it will hopefully stay affordable (I’m currently saving up to cover costs).
