I Take Thee, Baby

The bride wore nothing. Neither did the groom or, for that matter, the officiating cleric, a minister of the religious-diploma mill known as the Universal Life Church, Inc. (TIME, Feb.

21). The ceremony was as stark as the apparel. Dropping a stick before the cou ple, the pastor pronounced the legal essentials in mod vernacular: "You're married, as long as you dig it."

For all its bizarre exhibitionism last month's wedding of Carol Lee Garrett and James J. Kimmel in a hippie commune near Novato, Calif., was indicative, if not exactly typical, of a current trend in marriages. More and more couples are breaking away from traditional mar riage ceremonies to invent their own.

The stylized forms and archaic symbolism of the past appear increasingly ir relevant to some people, who nonetheless feel the need for some form of religious sanction for their love.

In Order and Chaos. "Elizabethan is a foreign language to them," says Epis copal Priest Walter Smith of Atlanta, speaking of couples who want to re write the service in their own phrase ology. Dr. B. Davie Napier, dean of the chapel at Stanford University, ad mits that he has become "increasingly uneasy with a ceremony that doesn't speak to us now." In one recent wedding ceremony performed by Dean Napier, the bridegroom vowed to take his wife "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, in war and in peace, in order and in chaos, now and forever."

The search for "relevance" often takes the form of innovation within accepted ecclesiastical norms. When Shannon Meagher and Henry A. Foley planned their Roman Catholic wedding in Milwaukee, they altered the traditional ceremony to give it an interracial, ecumenical character "for our friends who were black, white, Jew, Catholic, Protestant, poor, middle class and rich."

Shannon explains: "We wanted them to feel they were a part of our mar riage." With the approval of their priest, they decided not to have a nuptial Mass.*

Instead, the whole assembly read "On Love" from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. The Epistle and Gospel were read by Jewish and Jesuit friends respectively.

Other readings were from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the anti-Nazi Protestant martyr and theologian, and John F. Kennedy.

When China Altman and George Blakely Rogers married recently in Boston, they accepted the offer of an old friend to be their "paraclete," or special adviser and supporter of their union. Half a dozen lines were written into the Unitarian ceremony, formally requesting the friend to accept his uncommon role. "Many young people no longer look to their parents for assistance and advice," explains China. "To do so is often too emotionally complicated. We look instead to our best friends. To have a friend promise to be the paraclete of your marriage makes all kinds of sense."

Mind-Blowing. The new forms of liturgy are often conducted amid unconventional trappings--one recent wedding took place in a fish tank, with bride and groom in diving gear. Instead of organ music, there are apt to be folk songs, jazz, guitar or rock music. Outdoor ceremonies are also becoming increasingly popular. Dr. William Kramer, rabbi of Temple Beth Emet in Burbank, Calif., has married couples in parks, on beaches and on mountaintops. When an artist friend asked him to arrange a ceremony, Rabbi Kramer decided that nothing could be more natural than the merging of art and piety. The wedding took place within a work of art, of sorts--one of Sabatino Rodia's towers in Los Angeles' Watts district.

The invitation of one San Francisco couple read simply: "Elaine Smith and Gregory Dunlap will be married on the western beach of the Pacific Ocean at 4 p.m., May 31, 1969." When the brief ceremony on Baker's Beach was over, Elaine recalls, "Everybody hugged and kissed for about ten minutes. The thing I remember most is that everybody smiled so much." The minister who conducted the wedding, the Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Methodist Church, sometimes just sits and talks unceremoniously with couples about their lives. He concludes by casually telling them that they are now married. "We're married?" asked one pair happily. "You've blown our minds."

However far-out some of today's weddings tend to be, the need for ceremony remains deeply rooted. Pastors find this true even of couples who have been living together for some time before deciding on marriage. At Spencer Memorial Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, the Rev. William Glenesk is often struck by concern with ritual which still prevails among those getting married. While it takes new forms, they still want a sense of the mystical.

* On July 1, the Vatican promulgated a new, liberalized liturgy for Roman Catholic weddings. Among the changes are new forms of marriage vows and a choice of 30 readings from the Bible which may replace the Epistle and Gospel of the present nuptial Mass.

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