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Marriage ceremony?

S

starlit

New Member
My question is for couples and any singles out there who have gave this some thought and/or are already practicing plural marriage....

What act did you partake in or how did you signify you were marrying a plural wife? How do those not already practicing believe it will be done?

From past experience i will tell you that one religious group i know of has a special ceremony where the current wife takes the hand of the new wife in hers and places it in her husbands hand, signifying that she is "giving" her to him in marriage. The act itself is very significant and only certain people are supposed to be in attendance (think very hush hush and paranoia induced). There is a special way you are suppose to hold your holds and interlock your fingers and a certain script/prayer is read. Other couples wanting to practice plural marriage have told me they want to be out in nature and say a prayer together as their wedding ceremony. Some have found a "man of the cloth" to say a few words for them.

I ask because i have been giving this some thought lately. Most preachers/churchs may be wary of marrying a second woman to an already married man. So if you are not near/member of any special kind of plural community...how would you do it?
 
First, let me point out that there is no marriage ceremony specified in the Bible. I take this to mean that none is needed regardless of whether the woman is the first wife, second, third or twelfth. Because there is no marriage ceremony specified the issue is governed by the principles given in Romans 14:1, 4 & 13 which means that we are not to judge each other for having differing opinions.

I put this under the category of whatever strengthens the marriage is a good thing and whatever weakens the marriage is a bad thing. This means that the ceremony, if any, should be designed to be meaningful to the participants.

There is no single practice that will work for everyone. For instance, some might perceive the practice of the first wife putting the second wife's hand into the husband's as special and meaningful. Others might perceive it as demeaning to the second wife by appearing to put the first wife in a position of authority in that she apparently has the authority to give another woman to her husband.

As for what we do, my wife and I have a daily ritual that we go through where we reaffirm our commitment to each other. It is reminiscent of the original ceremony we had when we were married.

It is our expectation that we would work out a individualized ceremony, although not necessarily a daily ritual if there is no interest, that would be just as special to my second and subsequent wives.
 
I'm not in a PM - just to make that clear. But I am married. I was married in a rather large traditional wedding with 200 guests, in a church, with the organ playing.
Think of 'wedding' and probably the first thought that comes to mind is what it was like.
If Samuel gets married again, I want my SW to have the kind of wedding she wants. If she wants a large wedding in a church (not the same church we had as it fell down in an earthquake a few years ago :-( ), with heaps of guests and a grand reception then I want her to have that.
If she wants a tiny wee wedding on a beach with only a handful of people then I'm cool with that too.
I don't expect to be a part of the ceremony. She's not marrying me, she's marrying Samuel. But I would love to be included if she was ok with that.
I feel it's important that they make some kind of public declaration to each other. I think it makes it more 'real' that way.
What I am sad about in all honesty is the fact that a lot of the people that came to my wedding would not come to hers, simply because it's a polygynous relationship. I find that really sad, but it's the truth. I also imagine it would be hard to find a church to get married in as well.
I think about what Samuel and I had and I'm so sad that she really won't have the opportunity to have the same thing (if that's what she wants). But I hope that we can do the best we can to make the day as special as possible for the start of their marriage.
 
FollowingHim2 said:
If Samuel gets married again, I want my SW to have the kind of wedding she wants. If she wants a large wedding in a church (not the same church we had as it fell down in an earthquake a few years ago :-( ), with heaps of guests and a grand reception then I want her to have that.
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That's pretty much my take as well. I would actually prefer a largish (200 seems high, I don't know 100 people I'd invite personally) wedding, possibly an outdoor deal, but it would largely depend on her wishes.

GloryGirl and I talked about a "commitment" ceremony with the three of us, possibly the day before the actual wedding, but that her participation in the wedding itself, or lack thereof, would be largely be dependent on the wishes of the incoming wife. We'd prefer our pastor perform the ceremony, though not sure if he would yet. He did review my research notes recently, and fully admitted that it is our culture that is against PM, not the Bible, and that it's not wrong from a Biblical basis, which I consider a big win!
 
FollowingHim2 said:
.....I don't expect to be a part of the ceremony. She's not marrying me, she's marrying Samuel. But I would love to be included if she was ok with that.
I feel it's important that they make some kind of public declaration to each other. I think it makes it more 'real' that way.
What I am sad about in all honesty is the fact that a lot of the people that came to my wedding would not come to hers, simply because it's a polygynous relationship. I find that really sad, but it's the truth. I also imagine it would be hard to find a church to get married in as well.
I think about what Samuel and I had and I'm so sad that she really won't have the opportunity to have the same thing (if that's what she wants). But I hope that we can do the best we can to make the day as special as possible for the start of their marriage.
Click to expand...

I dont know if its a weird quirk or not about me, but i have never envisioned having a big wedding. I was never interested in looking thru wedding catalogs or watching shows on cable about wedding dresses. I think having a special day would be great, but i have no idea what it would be like. The church i came from would definitely have nothing to do with me...especially all my former church friends. They would be warned to stay away from me. My family would come if it was local. But i dont know if having the regular wedding vows would be appropriate? And what church would we (family unit) approach to see about doing the vows? I would like to have some sort of photographer to memoralize the special occasion and a big dinner would seem appropriate. Just a little fuzzy on the details. Imho, having some sort of recognition would be important to me on a personal level. So yes Sarah i agree...it may be harder as a plural wife to have the same experience, but then im not looking for the average monogamous relationship! :) Just basically some type of recognition that i am part of the family and some symbolic gesture of getting married.
 
UntoldGlory said:
I would actually prefer a largish (200 seems high, I don't know 100 people I'd invite personally) wedding, possibly an outdoor deal, but it would largely depend on her wishes.
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Samuel has a very large family. Huge! I didn't know half of the people there lol! Over the next few years I got introduced slowly to people that were at my wedding.
He did review my research notes recently, and fully admitted that it is our culture that is against PM, not the Bible, and that it's not wrong from a Biblical basis, which I consider a big win!
Click to expand...
Huge win! That's wonderful!
 
Vows is an interesting one Starlit. When Samuel and I were engaged we spent a lot of time studying the bible and also tradition to find the right vows. We spent hours and hours working it out. In the end we still got it wrong because Samuel promised to remain faithful to me.
I've released him from that vow with great happiness. But it just goes to show that you have to be really careful what you're saying.
 
FollowingHim2 said:
Vows is an interesting one Starlit. When Samuel and I were engaged we spent a lot of time studying the bible and also tradition to find the right vows. We spent hours and hours working it out. In the end we still got it wrong because Samuel promised to remain faithful to me.
I've released him from that vow with great happiness. But it just goes to show that you have to be really careful what you're saying.
Click to expand...

Are you saying that you released him from that particular vow due to plural marriage? But in my opinion he wouldnt be unfaithful to you if he marries another woman. Imo he could vow to stay faithful to you and still marry another woman and not be committing adultery because hes making a vow before God and your in agreement and are aware. Now if he vowed to only love you or some variation of that i can see how that might conflict.

Does anyone else agree or disagree with me?
 
Would you really need to release him from that vow? I mean, is taking a second wife breaking faith with you? I don't think so. Now if it was the "forsaking all others" wording then I could see that. I'm kind of annoyed because we wrote our own vows, and nothing in them clashed with pm, but during the ceremony after those vows the pastor doing the ceremony had us do the standard ones anyway! Oops.
 
FollowingHim2 said:
I'm not in a PM - just to make that clear. But I am married. I was married in a rather large traditional wedding with 200 guests, in a church, with the organ playing.
Think of 'wedding' and probably the first thought that comes to mind is what it was like.
If Samuel gets married again, I want my SW to have the kind of wedding she wants. If she wants a large wedding in a church (not the same church we had as it fell down in an earthquake a few years ago :-( ), with heaps of guests and a grand reception then I want her to have that.
If she wants a tiny wee wedding on a beach with only a handful of people then I'm cool with that too.
I don't expect to be a part of the ceremony. She's not marrying me, she's marrying Samuel. But I would love to be included if she was ok with that.
I feel it's important that they make some kind of public declaration to each other. I think it makes it more 'real' that way.
What I am sad about in all honesty is the fact that a lot of the people that came to my wedding would not come to hers, simply because it's a polygynous relationship. I find that really sad, but it's the truth. I also imagine it would be hard to find a church to get married in as well.
I think about what Samuel and I had and I'm so sad that she really won't have the opportunity to have the same thing (if that's what she wants). But I hope that we can do the best we can to make the day as special as possible for the start of their marriage.
Click to expand...

Well said Sarah. You and I said approximately the same thing in different words but I think you said it better.
 
UntoldGlory said:
Would you really need to release him from that vow? I mean, is taking a second wife breaking faith with you? I don't think so. Now if it was the "forsaking all others" wording then I could see that. I'm kind of annoyed because we wrote our own vows, and nothing in them clashed with pm, but during the ceremony after those vows the pastor doing the ceremony had us do the standard ones anyway! Oops.
Click to expand...
That is so similar to what happened to us! We planned our own, and he gave those to Sarah, but he gave me his standard ones... But both versions had "forsaking all others". We'd done the research and we still got that wrong. It's put me off vows entirely - next time around I'd want to promise to treat her as the scriptures required, which leaves you open to coming to a better understanding of the scriptures later on.
 
FollowingHim said:
UntoldGlory said:
Would you really need to release him from that vow? I mean, is taking a second wife breaking faith with you? I don't think so. Now if it was the "forsaking all others" wording then I could see that. I'm kind of annoyed because we wrote our own vows, and nothing in them clashed with pm, but during the ceremony after those vows the pastor doing the ceremony had us do the standard ones anyway! Oops.
Click to expand...
That is so similar to what happened to us! We planned our own, and he gave those to Sarah, but he gave me his standard ones... But both versions had "forsaking all others". We'd done the research and we still got that wrong. It's put me off vows entirely - next time around I'd want to promise to treat her as the scriptures required, which leaves you open to coming to a better understanding of the scriptures later on.
Click to expand...

Thank God that the only church wedding I've ever had resulted in the priest using the vows that we wrote instead of the standard ones. I've never heard of a preacher/priest substituting standard vows when the couple wrote their own. I don't know what I would have done if he had inserted the "forsaking all others" line into my vows without my consent.
 
Well that was waaaaaaaaaaaaay before poly had ever crossed our paths, and likely before I consciously registered it as a thing that happened in the modern world, so we just went with it.
 
UntoldGlory said:
Well that was waaaaaaaaaaaaay before poly had ever crossed our paths, and likely before I consciously registered it as a thing that happened in the modern world, so we just went with it.
Click to expand...

I guess it's true. I guess God really does turn all things to our good.

I've been poly since I was thirteen. Of course I hadn't found Christ at that point in my life so it was a sinful version of poly. I was polyamorous and at one point I was even part of a polyandrous V relationship. (A girl with two boyfriends and he and I were friends.)

The benefit was that by the time I was ready to stand before a preacher/priest and say wedding vows I already knew what I wanted so I never made a vow "forsaking all others" or "above all others" or any of the other phraseologies that the legalistic monogamists like to use. I negotiated the issue with my (then) prospective wife and we wrote our own vows. We didn't tell the priest our intentions but we made it plain that we did not want the traditional vows. Evidently we both made it plain enough that he actually listened. Until I saw this thread I didn't know that not all preachers/priests listened when people wrote their own vows.
 
In our case it would have been a genuine mistake. He copied the vows into an order of service booklet that he made, which was probably a standard document for him that he then tweaked for each wedding, and probably just forgot to copy-paste my section. These things happen, I could imagine myself doing something like that quite easily...
 
FollowingHim said:
In our case it would have been a genuine mistake. He copied the vows into an order of service booklet that he made, which was probably a standard document for him that he then tweaked for each wedding, and probably just forgot to copy-paste my section. These things happen, I could imagine myself doing something like that quite easily...
Click to expand...

That makes sense. We all make mistakes.
 
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