Wedding comments

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Wedding Ceremony

Friends and family, Garet and Sierra, -

• Wow, what a wonderful day. And what a fabulous setting. This will be a day June 6, never to be forgotten. A day when we will witness the sacred union of Garet Bevan and Sierra Hansen as husband and wife. This is momentous. These two will enter into covenants of faithfulness and partnership, of love and unity that will last throughout their lives.
• My name is Bret Bassett. I’m the Stake President of the JN Stake where the Bevan family lives, and the couple has asked me to perform this ceremony. I am honored to be here as I've been able to watch Garet and his brothers and sister grow from their earliest years. I love this family and Garet, I'm so happy for you and the wonderful bride you've chosen. May you always remember the sacredness of this day and honor it, and your bride.
• Garet and Sierra, before I perform the actual ceremony, I want to take an opportunity to say three things about marriage which I hope will bring you perspective, joy and help you in your future lives together.
1. Marriage changes everything.
• When you say "I do" and I pronounce you "Husband and Wife" everything changes…for both of you. The most significant event in your life will have occurred. The hunt for a companion will be over…and the life you will share with your companion will begin!
• You will no longer be an individual looking out for what's best for "me". You will be a couple looking out for what's best for "us".
• This marriage changes so many things about you. It adds to you. It gives you another family. It adds a new family history to you. It adds a new set of friends, parents, and grandparents and great grandparents to each of you. In Sierra's case, it changes your name. None of these changes reduce you, they just add to you.
• And that is one of the great joys of marriage - it adds to you - makes you more significant, and you belong to a broader group of people.
• It is Marriage that changes you from being alone, to making you a family. And while you don't have children yet, still you are a family. Marriage allows you to create a permanent partnership where children can be born and raised with confidence and love. It gives you a chance to leave a heritage of yourselves for others to remember you by, through the raising of children.
• While it is marriage that links you together, it's love that gives you a companion, a friend with whom you can weigh the judgment and wisdom of all your choices and decisions. It's love within the protection and covenant of marriage which can grow and blossom, so that you have the most wonderful gift in the world. That of having someone else who cares about you, some who will be a witness of your life. Who will walk with you through the hard times ahead and the good times ahead. Who will care about you during your illnesses and rejoice in your successes.
• What a wonderful gift this person is giving to you. What a wonderful chance you are taking on each other. Make the most of it. And as a Stake President I feel to say, that once you've gotten marriage under your belts, you could look towards taking your marriage to the temple, where it can be solemnized for eternity.
• So when I say that marriage changes everything, what I really mean to say, is that it can change you in deep and wonderful ways, if you let it. It not only adds to you a new set of friends and family, but it adds to you a new set of concerns and goals and what you talk about. It adds to your long range goals. It changes what you do on the weekend. It changes who you are - in a wonderful powerful positive way. This marriage coupled with a deep love, will motivate you to do more and be more than you would ever strive to be if left alone.
• I hope you'll excuse the personal aside. My wife and I have been married 29 years, and it has changed us both. We start to think alike, we can almost finish each other's sentences. We are even starting to look alike. Well, that's not really so, but our relationship gets more remarkable every year. She has become over time my very best friend, no one else even comes close.
• 
  So, point #1 - let marriage change you. Let it add to you. And if you will cherish this person and this union, and you will become a better person. You will work harder. You will live better. You will laugh more often.
2. Marriage is sacred.

The proclamation on the Family states: The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. ...Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages... are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.

• Remember that marriage is sacred…treat it with respect, and it will become an anchor for your life. Treat it with disrespect and it will throw your life through a thousand loops and misery will be the likely result.
• The scriptures teach that we should be willing to give our lives for our spouse as the Lord gave his life for the church.
• In fact, many of Christ's parables were about marriages and the feasts that accompany them. The Lord on numerous occasions compared his love for the church, to a bride groom for his bride. Why? Because marriage is sacred. It isn't just a union between a man and woman, but when it is sanctified, it also includes a relationship with God.
• President Ezra Taft Benson said

Marriage is sanctified when it is cherished and honored in holiness. That union is not merely between husband and wife; it embraces a partnership with God (see Matt. 19:6)."

• I have found that when I am doing good, and honoring my marriage … being selfless and kind to others, serving others, paying tithes and offerings….that I not only feel closer to my Father in Heaven, but I feel closer to my wife. When I act my best, I feel closest to Wendy. And the opposite is true as well. When I am selfish, and mean-spirited, and non-obedient, then I feel most distant from Wendy.
• So what a wonderful day this is. For not only do we unite you together, but when you cherish this union, we are promising you that you will feel the partnership with God, and he will help you together to lead this family down paths of happiness and righteousness.
3. Finally, marriage is on the path to happiness.
• Notice I don't go so far as to say that Marriage IS Happiness nor did I say that marriage guarantees happiness. It's not. We are surrounded by far too many people who are married and miserable. Or who have divorced because they were terribly unhappy.
• But what I'm saying is that the path to happiness, true lasting joy, invariably includes among other things a strong, lasting marriage. We cannot receive the greatest promises God has for his children if we remain alone. Work cannot provide it. Friends can't provide it. Play won't bring it. The thing which God has ordained to bring us this kind of joy is a true companion to whom we are legally and lawfully married.
• There are lots of scriptures which illustrate the point, but let me try to illustrate with a simple story.
• About 10 years ago I had the opportunity to travel to Australia on a round the world business trip. I was in some of the most beautiful places in the world. I remember one night, my friends from work, with whom I was traveling, and I went to dinner. We were sitting in an outside restaurant that overlooked the magnificent bay in which sits the Sydney opera house and the Royal Botanical Gardens. The lights of passing ships and boats floated by. IT was spectacular. While we were waiting for our food, one of my friends said, "You know, this view is TOTALLY wasted on us. I wish I had my wife here." And it occurred to me that night, how right he was. If I had had my Wendy with me that night, we could still talk about how beautiful it had been, and what a hallmark moment we had shared together. It would have been a meaningful dinner. But as it was, it had little more meaning than a lunch with some coworkers in the cafeteria. Also one by one those friends left the company, and eventually I left the company, and have no association with any of those friends. That memory really means nothing compared to even the simplest memories I've had with Wendy around the house…why? Because my marriage is meaningful. And the experiences I have in that marriage are lasting. And when you have meaningful experiences which become part of your day-to-day make up, you discover you are on the path to happiness.

Let me conclude with 2 final thoughts by prophets of God:

• "President Spencer W. Kimball taught: 'Two individuals approaching the marriage altar must realize that to attain the happy marriage which they hope for they must know that marriage . . . means sacrifice, sharing, and even a reduction of some personal liberties. It means long, hard economizing. It means children who bring with them financial burdens, service burdens, care and worry burdens; but also it means the deepest and sweetest emotions of all.' (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball [2006], 194.)"
• Elder Bednar said -
• As a husband and wife are each drawn to the Lord (see 3 Ne. 27:14), as they learn to serve and cherish one another, as they share life experiences and grow together and become one, and as they are blessed through the uniting of their distinctive natures, they begin to realize the fulfillment that our Heavenly Father desires for His children. Of Ultimate happiness, which is the very object of the Father's plan, is received through the making and honoring of eternal marriage covenants."

May this marriage that you enter into today help you to grow together so that it may bring you great happiness.

Remember - Marriage changes everything because Marriage is sacred. And Marriage is on the path to happiness.

Now let’s make this official…and get you started on that path to happiness.

Please take each other by the right hand....