Creating Rituals For Your Perfect Wedding - A Cornucopia Can Transform a Wedding and a Marriage

A wedding ceremony is really a harvesting of the many joys of your relationship. That makes fall weddings perfect! So many wedding ceremonies seem to talk about weddings as the new beginnings of a relationship, but in fact they are the joyous end of a cycle that will begin anew with the exchange of wedding vows. Speak in your wedding ceremony (during the Statement of Intent) about the different things you've already harvested from this relationship, the things that will sustain your relationship.

So why not use that perennial favorite harvest metaphor, the cornucopia? The horn of plenty has graced many a harvest table, why not your altar table? Let the wild variety of this harvest vegetables and fruits spill out of it?

Or you could assign a meaning of characteristics you will need in your marriage and ask people or couples to bring them forward to fill your cornucopia. Honor those foods by putting them on your altar as friends bring them forward. As you make your wedding vows to one another, include those characteristics in the things you promise one another.

Then, here's where the wedding can get fun. Serve a pumpkin or squash soup and a cucumber salad. Fill a ripe red tomato with chicken or tuna salad (or couscous or orzo salad!) Print a menu for the meal that includes the meaning assigned to each of the fruits and vegetables. You may, if you wish (and may would be delighted) include a favorite recipe for each of the vegetables and fruits represented.

Finish off the meal with an apple, pear or a pumpkin pie instead of a traditional wedding cake.

Arrange for the left-overs from your wedding to be taken to a homeless shelter so that others can participate in the bounty of your love. Let people know that that's what you do with bounty: share it!

Over the years as you see these foods or taste them, you will be transported back to your wedding day. Any thing that reminds you of the promises you made to one another and the friends in front of whom you made them is a wonderful way to keep reinforcing the beauty of this incredible relationship.