Jon & Marisol Windham, NH, USA 23 May 2004
Hosts
of the Matrimonial Celebration — Windham, NH
Speakers
at the Matrimonial Celebration
While most people conceive of a matrimonial celebration as one big day, for us, it was one big two weeks from 14 to 29 May. It started with picking up parental units in Chicago, bringing them back to Wisconsin, touring, Marisol’s Masters graduating, and our flying to New Hampshire. There we toured some more while Marisol flew back to Chicago to get stuck there, miss her appointment in Wisconsin, and fly back to New Hampshire. We got united two days later. Then we were off to Foxboro, Boston, New Haven, New York City, and finally for a pleasant all-nighter in O’Hare, and a morning Greyhound jaunt back to Stevens Point. That, for us, is a matrimonial celebration!
What’s in a Matrimonial Celebration?
You might notice that we are not calling this event a “wedding.”
To do so would evoke images of weddings past and present with white gowns,
cakes topped by small plastic people, cut and exotic flowers, religious
folk, wasteful receptions, plates of fattening jubilee, and debt-provoking
pomp and circumstance, most of which has no place in Marisol and Jon’s
life. Thus we choose a more neutral term indicating that most conventions
will not be upheld, instead sculpting the celebration to the theme and
wants of the newlycelebs.
The Mediation of Opposites illustrates the union in perception of things
most often seen as separate. For hundreds of thousands of years, indigenous
humans saw the world as one integrated place. That ended with the birth
of civilization and especially with science that breaks things up, destroys
union, and sees the behavior of one thing as separate from another. This
separation, this reductionism has led in part to our problems in the world.
Our celebration will make the mildest of efforts to show that such separations
are a product of culture. On this day we will see the separation of people
from people, of people from food, of people from spirit, of people from
their surroundings are not true separations, just perceptions. Having
said that, we have invited only family members to a local celebration
(with three Costa Rican family members as well) that will overcome our
apparent separation in time and space and spirit.
See our list of specific
ways we tried to design our celebration with this principle in mind.
Links
