Jerry Chasen's Blog

This is the balance of the commitment ceremony. There are an odd number of vows. In the service, Mark and I alternated reading sentences in the vows, starting over again when we’d gone thru it once. That way, we each said all of the vows.

When Mark and I decided to have a commitment ceremony, it was immediately clear to me that I couldn’t recite anyone else’s words. So we explored what we wanted the ceremony to say, and then I wrote it. Written in rhyme (natch), the ceremony explores the nature of relationships, looking at traits common to none, some, all and specifically, ours. The entire ceremony was originally presented in a program book, and posted here are two posters made from the program book. The audio for this is done individually, so each section of the ceremony is recorded separately.

A good friend was celebrating his 60th this year, and shared that he had a year’s worth of celebrations in store. It got me thinking about “what if” we always celebrated a birthday for the year, and “what if” other things.

Passover’s all about order–and so is this poemograph.

Mark and I had a commitment ceremony three days prior to this Valentine’s day. I wrote the entire ceremony, and so this Valentine seemed almost redundant! Still, I wanted him to know how happy I was that we’d had the ceremony.