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"Your gift to each other for your wedding day was your wedding rings - which shall always be an outward demonstration of your vows of love and respect; and a public showing of your commitment to each other. You now have the most honorable title which may exist between a man and a woman - the title of "husband" and "wife."
Today your gift will be a single rose. In the past, the rose was considered a symbol of love and a single rose always meant only one thing - it meant the words "I love you." So it is appropriate that your gift - as husband and wife - be a single rose.
Please exchange your gift as husband and wife.
In some ways it may seem that you have done nothing at all. Just a moment ago you were holding one rose - and now you are holding one rose. In some ways, a marriage ceremony is like this. In some ways, tomorrow is going to seem no different than yesterday. But in fact today, just now, you both have given and received one of the most valuable and precious gifts of life - one I hope you always remember - the gift of true and abiding love within the devotion of marriage.
Dick and Rose, I would ask that you go home and both pick one very special location for your roses; so that on each anniversary of this truly wonderful occasion you both may take a rose to that spot both as a recommitment to your marriage - and a recommitment that THIS will be a marriage based upon love.
In every marriage there are times when it may be difficult to find the right words. It is easy to hurt the ones we love. And it is easy to be hurt by those who love us. It may be difficult to say the words, "I'm sorry" or "I forgive you"; "I need you" or "I am hurting". If this should happen, if you simply can not find these words, leave a rose at that spot which both of you have selected - for that rose then says what matters most of all and should overpower all other things and all other words. That rose says the words: "I still love you."
The other should accept this rose for the words which can not be found, and remember the love and hope that you both share today. Dick and Rose, if there is anything you remember of this marriage ceremony, it should be love that brought you here today, it is only love that can make it a glorious union, and it is by love that your marriage shall endure." |
