Location of Renewal of Vows Ceremony and Celtic Feast

The location of both events is at Cedar Creek Park.    

Address is:  453 Evergreen Drive, Belle Vernon, PA 15012 • 1/4 mile North of I-70, just off Route 51. 

This park is located along the Youghiogheny River, and while the actual ceremony and feast will not occur riverside, I encourage everyone to take a side trip down past the rails-to-trails, and see the scenic river valley.

The ceremony itself will be held at the large outdoor amphitheater.  While there are some installed benches scattered about the naturally sloping hillside, everyone is encouraged to bring their own camp chairs, or blankets to sit on, picnic-style.  ***Note, we will be providing chairs.  Seating will be in the amphitheater itself - it's sheltered - and the ceremony will have the backdrop of the hillside.***  This will also provide more comfortable, relaxed seating after the feast at the pavilion, where the feast seating is the large park picnic tables with attached benches....  Both the amphitheater, pavilion, and nearby bathrooms are handicapped accessible.  

The Feast Hall is Pavilion #1, listed as having a seating capacity of 400, with plenty of flat open space and trees around it.  There is also a large playground nearby, which the kids are encouraged to take advantage of, with supervision....

Here's a link to a detailed park map:  http://apps.co.westmoreland.pa.us/parks/cedarcreekmap.pdf

And of course, if there are any questions, just email Lisa, or comment on this blog....

About religion and the wedding ceremony

Our Faiths

Jack supports Lisa in her membership in  Ár nDraíocht Féin, A Druid Fellowship, a federally recognized neopagan church. Lisa is a founding member of a local private Druid Grove called Monongahela Grove.  The wedding ceremony will include many elements of Druidry and Celtic paganism as well as elements of Christianity, as both Jack & Lisa were raised Catholic.

Druidry or Druidism, can be defined as “an earth-based Neopagan religion. We are polytheistic, meaning we worship many gods as distinct individuals. The Earth and Nature are important to us, and we see them being worthy of reverence. We use both academic scholarship and personal gnosis to shape our practices and rituals. Druidry is a living religion, and we find our inspiration in all areas of life — the family and hearth, bardic and visual arts, healing, nurturing gardens, magic, as well as research and liturgy.” (Dancing Lights Grove, ADF, website).

Neopagan Druids celebrate eight holidays throughout the year. These holidays are the solstices, equinoxes, and the points in between. They mark the changes in the seasons, the turning of the Wheel of the Year, and the ebb and flow of life.  Jack and Lisa were married close to the holiday of the Autumn Equinox (marriage date 9/21/12), and will be renewing their vows a year and a week after their wedding date, or September 28, 2013. This is traditionally the heart of harvest season, and the Autumn Equinox was celebrated as the second of three harvest festivals. The Autumn Equinox holiday has several other names in neopaganism, some historically ancient, others more recent, and is traditionally an observation of the astronomical event of the Equinox, and a gathering of the tribe or extended family to celebrate the harvest by feasting. It's likely that as at other harvest festivals, the exchanging of foods, crafts, and other goods, and the playing games occurred.

In the ceremony, Lisa and Jack will be offering to the gods of their faiths, primarily the Irish goddess Brighid (whose Catholic analog was later canonized as Saint Brigit, or Brigid of Kildare), who is a goddess of the hearth and home, and the Christian savior Jesus. In Druidry, offerings are made to Deities, Ancestors and Nature Spirits, known as the Three Kindred to show love and respect for them, and also so that the Three Kindred will extend their blessings upon the offerers, continuing relationships with them. Druidry holds hospitality as an important virtue by which to live.  An omen is taken as a blessing for the couple and the assembled people.

The ceremony will include a handfasting, where Jack and Lisa's hands will be bound together as a symbol of their uniting. Jack and Lisa will also share mead, a honey wine, the drink of sovereignty and kingship.

If you feel that your religious convictions will not allow you to attend the renewal of the vows ceremony itself, you are welcome to attend just the reception.

(Special thanks to Lisa Malik's wedding blog, from which I adapted the above post, as an excellent way to introduce these concepts to non-pagans...)