Our Quaker Wedding @Quakerspeak

Uploaded November 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago

What's it like to be at the center of a Quaker wedding? We talked with 5 couples about their experience.

Thanks to this week's sponsor, Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting: https://fdsj.nl/chestnut-hill
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Filmed and Edited by Jon Watts
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Music by Jon Watts
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Transcript:

Barry Scott: If you would imagine the most comfortable you’ve ever been in your life, the most comfortable time you’ve ever had in your experience as a human being... that is the space of being that couple at the center. I felt loved, affirmed, held, challenged... and at the same time I was feeling that from a bunch of folks, I was also sharing that with the person that I was most caring about in the world. So it was like, “Oh please don’t have this stop! I don’t want this to stop. This could just go on.”

Our Quaker Wedding

Hannah Mayer: My name is Hannah Mayer, I live in West Philly, and I got married on May 26th, 2018 in a Quaker wedding.

Eric Peterson: My name is Eric Peterson, I live in West Philly, and I got married on May 26th, 2018. We had a Quaker wedding.

Ruth Morisson: We got married on September 21st a few years ago, 2013, here in Richmond, Virginia at the Richmond Friends Meeting and I think there were probably just over a hundred people.

James Hickman: Little over a hundred people in attendance.

Michael Crumley-Effinger: We were married on July 2nd, 1977. Our wedding day was at Stephanie’s dad’s church. She’s a preacher’s kid.

Barry Scott: We got married in the worship room at the Race Street Meetinghouse at Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting on May 26th, 2001.

Wendy Wadsworth: In the Fall of 1991 we decided we wanted to commit to each other at Richmond Friends Meeting, our home and we wrote a letter to our families stating that our oversight committee and we decided to commit to each other together on July 4th, 1992 at our spiritual home, the Richmond Friends Meeting.

Frances Stewart: I think she said it all.

The Quaker Approach to Weddings

Frances Stewart: The simplicity of it really spoke to me. You don’t have to have a big reception, you don’t have to decorate a huge hall. Those kinds of things I appreciated. But the heart of what we Quakers do in a marriage, in a memorial service, is we speak inspired by God out of the silence.

Hannah Mayer: I think there are a lot of different things that can set a Quaker wedding apart. The thing that is most exciting to me is that there’s nobody in charge. A Quaker couple is married by themselves and the whole community gathered there together. There’s nobody saying, “I declare you spouses.”

James Hickman: As we invited our friends and family to the ceremony, Ruth sent links to information so that they would understand a little bit of what was going on. I talked to some folks as they were reading it and they were really struggling to understand how this was going to be a ceremony without someone leading the ceremony. I think 90%, I would guess, of our attendees had no idea, had never experienced anything like it.

Inviting Friends and Family into a Sacred Space

Vanessa Julye: When we sent out invitations, for people who were not Quakers we got a little brochure that talks about Quaker weddings so that they could have some idea of what was going to happen in addition to the explanation that happens from the person who has “care of meeting” during the wedding.

Frances Stewart: We each wrote our parents and families a letter trying to explain what we wanted to do, where we wanted to do it, how the Quakers fit it and sent it around Thanksgiving time, expecting that we were going to have our wedding all the way around in July, July 4th… so we thought we would give them lots of time to get used to the idea.

More: https://fdsj.nl/our-wedding

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The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.

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$Do Quakers Believe in Heaven? QuakerSpeak is a weekly video series. New video every other THURSDAY! SUPPORT QuakerSpeak with a donation! https://quakerspeak.com/donate SUBSCRIBE for a new video every other week! http://fdsj.nl/QS-Subscribe WATCH all our videos: http://fdsj.nl/qs-all-videos Filming and Editing by Christopher Cuthrell Transcript: Rashid Darden: I would like to say heaven is a large bookstore and where all the books are free. I think of Heaven as returning to a singular consciousness with the Creator, the Divine, and with my friends and family who had the mysteries of the universe unveiled to them before me. Lucy Duncan: Early Quakers were not interested in heaven. They believed that it was all about focusing on the life that you had. And I believe that we can and our role as Quakers is to create heaven on earth. And what is involved in that is in transforming relationships, transforming the earth, transforming and moving beyond capitalism and white supremacy. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us delight in it and rejoice in it.” We can live as though were creating heaven in the way that we are with other Quakers, with the people that were interacting with in our families, that we can really think about our life as a as a fractal, a seed for the what broader heaven that were trying to create. Erin Wilson: I think the scripture context about heaven and the way that we picture it in society doesnt match. We create songs for children to learn about, you know, the mansion in the sky and, you know, in my fathers house, theres many rooms created into this fun song. I mean, weve taken so much of our understanding of what heaven is from a vision that one man had and wrote in a different language and then translated it.And also it had to pass through counsels of men who had their own opinions on things to even be put into the Bible. I dont think that it exists in the way that were taught that it exists, and I think it would be wonderful to live in a peaceful, beautiful society with people after we die. I dont know that I think the way Ive been taught is real, and Im okay with that. Not knowing is totally fine, but I think the certainty that were taught about what heaven will be like and the truths that exist in Scripture versus things that weve decided, our truths maybe dont align. Lynette Davis: I think that my background in the Baptist Church still forms a lot of my thoughts around concepts like Heaven and Hell. Im not so sure that I have sat with that from where I sit as a Quaker, but I will say this: I do believe that essentially we are energy and that energy is not really destroyed. And so, even when we leave this vessel, our flesh, that last breath that we take is spirit, our spirit, our energy evolving into the next level of who we are supposed to be, in whatever form that is. In that, there is a place, a container, for that spiritual energy to reunite with God, with the Oneness. And I feel that heaven is that oneness. Khary Bekka: I dont believe in the Theory of Heaven and Hell. It goes against common sense. And I don’t really prescribe to the tenets of the Bible, as people do. Do yourself a workshop, I call this a workshop, where you ask your self: Jealousy..is that a higher or lower human emotion? Higher means a righteous lower means not so righteous. A lower? Okay...discrimination? Higher or lower human tendency? Showing favoritism, is a higher a lower? Revenge? In the Bible, we attribute all these lower/higher characteristics to a higher power when it don’t make logical sense. Understand where I’m coming from? These are lower human characteristics, so how can you be attribute that to a higher power? It dont make rational sense. God feeling as if hes going to punish me, thats a tyrant, that don’t make rational sense. No, Heaven is a mentality that you make in your mind. You hear me? You work to create a heaven on earth, you hear me? That’s internally and you express outwardly till you get a community of people around you. But, as far as reward and punishment and spirituality...no. That doesnt make rational sense. Rashid Darden: Quakers really like the light and use that illusion a lot. But there is also a childrens book about Gods holy darkness that I want to sort of reference. I think of Heaven as a swirly darkness where all the colors, the people, the things, the institutions, all the knowledge of the universe is in one place together. And that its an infinite state of being where everything is perfect. I believe that I have dreamed of heaven at times. I believe that heaven is here. I think its with us. I think its in a sense something we cant see and cant know in our current state... The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.$

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