I was sitting across from a couple a few weeks ago, notebook open, ready to start drafting their ceremony. Before I wrote a single word, I asked the question I always ask first: What are you marking here, underneath the wedding itself?
They both fell quiet. Not because they didn’t know the answer, but because no one had ever asked them that before. They’d answered a hundred questions about flowers, timelines, and guest counts. Nobody had asked what was changing for both of them, why they had chosen to mark this moment this way, at this time.
The Question I Always Ask First
That question isn’t rhetorical. It’s the whole job.
A wedding ceremony can mark two people combining their lives, sure. But it might also mark the end of each person’s identity as a single person, the joining of two families with very different histories, or a quiet goodbye to a version of independence that one or both of them have relied on for years.
Until I know what’s truly changing, I can’t write a word that means anything. Vows and rituals are just decoration until they’re anchored to something true. My job isn’t to write pretty language. It’s to help two people name what they’re really crossing into, so the ceremony can hold it.
Weddings Are Just the Beginning
Weddings are the most visible reason people come to me for ceremony. But they’re far from the only threshold that deserves one.
I once worked with a woman who came to me not for a wedding, but for a ceremony marking the end of a marriage. She wanted a way to close that chapter with intention, rather than letting the paperwork quietly finalize it. We created something small and private: a few words, a ritual gesture, and a witness. She told me afterward that it was the first time the divorce had felt complete, rather than merely processed.
Retirement, becoming a parent, leaving a career, a major move, grief. All of these are real passages. Most of them go unmarked. We update our calendars, our job titles, and our relationship status, and we move on without ever pausing to cross the threshold on purpose.
Ceremony as Container, Not Performance
Once I know what someone is really marking, the actual design work begins, and it always follows the same order: intention first, then meaning, then the ceremony itself.
Intention is the what: what is ending, what is beginning, what is being honored. Meaning is the why: what this passage says about who someone is becoming. Only once both of those are clear do I start building the container: the words, the rituals, the physical gestures that hold the whole thing together.
You’ll feel it before you can name it, that quiet sense that something is closing, or opening, even before you have the language for it. That’s the real difference between a ceremony and a performance. A performance can be beautiful and still be empty. A ceremony, even a simple one, does something. It gives a moment somewhere to land and becomes transformative.
What Are You Marking?
Whatever threshold you’re standing at right now – a wedding, an ending, or a new chapter you haven’t named yet – I’d invite you to ask yourself the same question: What am I truly marking here?
Picture yourself a year from now, looking back on this threshold. Did you mark it, or did it just pass?
Lauri Ingram is a transformational life coach, professional officiant, and founder of Awakened Pathways in Hamden, CT, offering couples coaching and life ceremonies for those who sense there’s more. Learn more at: lauriingram.com.