The sophistication of a wedding ceremony

Seth Godin, a business inspiration writer, recently wrote about the sophistication of truth, the complexity of just being honest, and how the most common form of complexity is fear:

Long words when short ones will do. Fancy clothes to keep the riffraff out and to give us a costume to hide behind. Most of all, the sneer of, “you don’t understand” or, “you don’t know the people I know…”. “It’s complicated,” we say, even when it isn’t. We invent these facades because they provide safety. Safety from the unknown, from being questioned, from being called out as a fraud. These facades lead to bad writing, lousy communication and a refuge from the things we fear. I’m more interested in the sophistication required to deliver the truth.

I read this and instantly thought of a wedding. In my humble opinion the outright best wedding ceremony, well the outright best any kind of ceremony, is a true, honest, authentic one.

You can tell that it’s an awesome ceremony because it’s simple, beautiful, honest, real, aware, it’s fearless.

Seth further writes on simplicity and beauty:

(they) take fearlessness. (They say) “here it is, I made this, I know you can understand it, does it work for you?”

This is exactly what I want to do in a wedding ceremony. I want it to be fearless, understood, understandable. We’re not “gathered here today” to impress anyone or to do any other thing than marry two people. It’s simple, beautiful, real, authentic.