Clearness

If you wish to have a marriage under the Meeting’s care, please write to the clerk of meeting, explaining the request. The letter will be read at the next monthly business meeting, then forwarded to the Pastoral Care Committee.

As with making other major decisions, we start with a clearness committee. This involves sitting down with a small group of Friends to determine whether those in the relationship are ready to take that next step under the care of Adelphi Friends Meeting. The Baltimore Yearly Meeting Faith & Practice outlines some of the topics the clearness committee and those to be wed will explore together. You should familiarize yourself with them before requesting to be wed.

Someone from Pastoral Care Committee will ask about names of AFM attenders or members you would like to serve on your clearness committee. When the clearness committee has reached unity, it will make its recommendation to the Pastoral Care Committee, which will make a recommendation to the business meeting. Gender will never be regarded as a disqualification for marriage.

Since this involves at least two business meetings, plus coordinating the schedules of all members of the clearness committee, this process can be expected to take several months.

Oversight

After business meeting agrees to oversee the marriage under the care of Adelphi Friends Meeting, an oversight committee is formed. This typically includes one or two people form the clearness committee, and you may recommend others. The oversight committee’s primary tasks are to ensure the wedding is conducted in good Quaker order and to provide ongoing care for the marriage.

The oversight committee will remind you of legal obligations and is authorized to sign legal marriage licenses. They can help you find a calligrapher for your marriage certificate and sign off on non-standard certificate wording and non-standard promises, if that is your desire. Prior to the wedding, the task of theirs that will likely be most forefront in your mind is that they are there to help you plan your wedding day.

If you wish to use a meetinghouse other than Adelphi’s, that can be arranged.

The wedding

The marriage is solemnized in a meeting for worship open to the entire Adelphi Friends Meeting community. The usual decorum of meeting for worship (such as the bans on photography and recording) is observed. Typically, those to be married enter together after everyone else is seated and seat themselves on the facing bench. If many non-Quakers are in attendance, someone (designated in advance) should explain our marriage form to all assembled. When those to be married feel ready, they stand, join hands, and share with each other the promises they are making. Their marriage certificate is brought forward on a table for their signatures then read aloud by whomever has been designated in advance. The remainder of the time is spent in waiting worship. After the rise of meeting, all guests (including children) are invited to sign the marriage certificate as witnesses.

The oversight committee should then slip away to sign the legal marriage license.

Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s Faith & Practice includes an explanation of how a wedding may proceed with several optional elements.

If a reception is to be held on-site, our longstanding policy against alcohol on the premises is to be observed. There is no charge for use of the property for marriages under the care of the Meeting.