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From The Prophet (1923)
Kahlil Gibran

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
 

From Wind, Sand, and Stars
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Love does not consist in gazing at each other

     but in looking outward together in the same direction.

There is no comradeship except through union in the

     same high effort.

 
Marriage
Duncan Howlett

Most of us have far too many illusions about life, and a vast number of those illusions are concentrated in marriage. We think it should be all joy and gladness, all wonder and delight, and we are disappointed when it turns out not to be. We forget that life is not like that� Marriage is whatever life is, except that it thrusts the landscape of life into much sharper relief. The terrain is the same but the heights are far higher and the valleys are much deeper. The plains are much broader, the woodland and fields much greener and more lovely. But the deserts are broader, too, and the heat more intense, the thorns are thicker, the briars sharper, the storms of wind and weather blow much harder. If the sunlight is brighter and the landscape more lovely, the nights are darker and more lonely.

If you would keep your emotions safe from harm, if you would banish from yourself all danger of fear and anxiety, if you would protect yourself from a desolating sorrow, keep your emotions on the surface. Do not let the love that stirs within you deepen into the commitments of marriage. Keep your sexual relationships at the casual level. Do not let children come into your home. For if you do you will never be safe again. If you do you will expose yourself to the possibility of anguish your soul may not be able to bear. But know this, too: you will also expose yourself to a depth of feeling, a richness of emotion, to joy and happiness which will reduce the life you previously knew to the dimensions of the flickering shadows on your television screen. Marriage, when it is right, is like a secret society. Cynics on the outside will scoff. But the initiates within will know that I speak the truth.  

 Guy's
Introduction

Good afternoon everyone and thanks for coming out all the way to the Westcoast to celebrate this special day with us.

This day marks a new chapter in our lives but it is by no means the first one. As many of you know, Christa and I met in the summer of 1990 in Punakaiki on the Westcoast of the South Island. Christa was enacting her vision of a 'woman alone' solo bicycle tour of New Zealand. That was the theory. However, her journey was not to remain solo for much longer. I myself had been exploring the South on a tramping holiday with Glen. Glen had departed a day or so earlier back to Auckland due to the demands of work and the precipitous Westcoast weather had stopped myself and other travellers from moving on.

It was on January 13, 1990, that Christa and I first spoke together. On the morning of this rainy day Christa joined me in front of the map in the Punakaiki Campground kitchen and we discussed what walks or journeys the other was intending to embark on - a lovely moment of symbolism, I feel, because although at that instant we could not know, from that day onwards we were to walk the same path beside each other even to this very day.

So as you can see, January 13 is a special day for us both and over the years we have celebrated it as our anniversary. For this very reason we chose the day of our 9th anniversary to get legally married. Yes, while we were on the South Island at the beginning of this year, we had a brief but moving ceremony in the Queenstown District Court. Indeed, the photo on our wedding invitation was taken in a little park opposite just beforehand. The venue of Queenstown was equally symbolic, for it was there that - having returned to Auckland and equipped myself for a bicycle trip - I rejoined Christa to travel together.

As you can imagine, at that time, having only known each other for three weeks, we both looked forward to this reunion with an exciting mixture of butterflies in our tummies and anticipation of joy.

For some people marriage is mainly the promise of what is to come. We, however, see marriage as a confirmation of the way in which we have lived our lives for the past nine years and as an affirmation to continue doing so. We invited all of you today to be part of our spiritual act of confirming and renewing, and we are honoured that our true friend Glen will be the one leading us through our marriage ritual.

Would you please all form a circle around us now.

 Glen is leading us through
the vows

I would like to open the ceremony with some beautiful words by Robert Botley:

In the quiet of this very special moment we pause to give thanks for all the rich experiences of life that have brought Guy and Christa to this high point in their lives. We are especially grateful for the values which have flowed into them from those who have loved them and nurtured them and pointed them along life's way. We are grateful that within them is the dream of a great love and the resources to use that love in creating a home that shall endure. We are grateful for the values which they have found by their own strivings.
And now as they go through their marriage ritual together, may they do this with the deepest insight into its meaning and with their fullest sincerity. May this relationship grow and mature with each passing year until the latter days become even more wonderful than the first.

Leading into the vows:
Now I would like you all to share in Guy and Christa's marriage vows.
Guy and Christa are saying their vows.

Including friends and family:
Of course Guy and Christa's relationship is not just built on each other, but also on the care of their friends and families. Therefore they would like to give thanks to their friends, both on the other side of the world and here in New Zealand. Above all, they would like to express their special thanks and appreciation of the love bestowed upon them and the never-failing help offered to them by Guy's parents, Jo and Bill, here in New Zealand, and by Christa's family, Erna, Hugo and Uli, over in Germany. I would like you now to all hold hands and give a moment of special thought for these two and their little one in their future lives together. It is to you that they will look for your continuing support in the years to come.
 

"Ein Hurrah auf das Brautpaar."

"A big cheer for Guy & Christa."

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Guy and Christa's
marriage ritual

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