The unity candle ceremony is a powerful and flexible wedding ritual that you can incorporate for a personal, meaningful touch to your ceremony. Watch this video, read the transcript below, and feel free to make use of the unity candle ceremony script excerpt!
In this post you’ll find:
• The transcript of the unity candle ceremony explanation video
• A unity candle ceremony script sample.
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UNITY CANDLE CEREMONY SCRIPT: Version with moms lighting the candle, leading into a reading
Emily and James arrived at this ceremony as two individuals on their own path in life. Over the last 5 years these paths over intersected and even overlapped, but they feel that today is what will truly merge them. When our ceremony is complete they will be a married couple, they will be family, they will be on a shared path.
Before that moment comes—becoming family to each other—Emily and James wish to thank and acknowledge the families they come from. The families who made them who they are, and taught them what love is. Their mothers will help us enact a Unity Candle ritual.
You can see up here there are three candles. Each of their moms will light a candle to represent the Doe and Smith families. Then, together, Emily and James will light their new family candle, from the flame of their birth family.
[moms come behind table—so everyone can see—and each pick up a lighter. Then Emily and James use a long match to transfer the flame to their shared central candle]
As this central candle of Emily and James’s unity burns, we’ll have a reflection on marriage by Mark Twain, read by James’s Aunt Jane.
TRANSCRIPT
0:01 Hey, I’m Reverend Maureen Cotton from the Soulful Wedding. I’m a spiritual but not religious minister and I want to help you have a meaningful and deeply authentic wedding ceremony. Today, I want to share about a very classic ritual that suits couples of all different kinds of mindsets and religious backgrounds and more. It’s the unity candle. The unity candle is about honoring families and especially parents so if you are inclined to honor or include your parents in your wedding ceremony keep listening this is a simple and beautiful ceremony the unity candle involves three candles one represents the family of origin or rather two represent the family of origin for each of you so one candle for each partner that’s represented a third candle represents the family that you are forming by getting married
1:00 that’s how simple it is and then how you actually do the ceremony can look different ways a very We’ll see classic way of doing it if each partner has a living mother who will be present in the ceremony is to invite the moms to come up and they each light the candle of origin that the candle representing their family of origin then. You the couple you each take that candle from your family of origin and together at the same time you light your new candle so it’s a way of honoring you know you’re fishing and can talk about the meaning different ways it honors Thanks for the love and lessons from the family you grew up in it honors families merging whatever is authentic to you
1:45 but there’s a lot to work with there you of course it doesn’t have to be mothers it could be both parents it could be whomever you have as parents or honor as parents can come up and light it during the ceremony its also an option just to have the candles pre lit Ive done that if we were in a ceremony situation where movement was actually fairly difficult I just lit I lit each candle of origin before the Ceremony began but I still explained it in the same way each candle represents that family and then you transfer the flame logistically there’s a few things to think through here if the candles for the family of origin are small you can actually lift those candles up to like the candle if they’re larger 2:27 you can use a long match to transfer the flame an important thing here is to think about the environment in particular if your ceremony is outside it is important that there is significant space between the candle wick and the top of the container you need to make sure the wind is blocked so it’s hard 2:49 for me to say exactly you know what you should do but definitely have a google you know and I’ve seen people if you buy you need a candle kit Thanks for to the even have a craft store thats usually two tapers and then one large pillar Ive worked with couples who we were like outside in the garden they 3:05 were worried about the wind and so they got much bigger hurricane vases like big honkin beautiful candles and then they actually gifted each of those candles to their parents the ones that represented their family so thereby each of them now had this candle in their home so it connected them in that 3:25 way so good luck if you choose to pursue the unity candles Thank you. And honor your families in this way Bye.