A while back, I came upon a beautiful little book by Marty Younkin titled A Wedding Ceremony to Remember – Perfect Words for the Perfect Wedding. It’s filled with meaningful reflections suitable for a wedding ceremony. Among them, Younkin includes a discussion of unity rituals—those symbolic acts often woven into the larger ceremony to represent the coming together of two individuals, families, or even communities into one.
One of the best-known of these, of course, is the unity candle, where two flames are used to light a single pillar candle, symbolizing two lives merging into one. Equally familiar is the sand ceremony, in which couples pour different colored sands into a single vessel, blending them into a new pattern. And then there’s the Celtic-based handfasting ritual, where hands are wrapped with cords or ribbons in a symbolic “binding” of lives together.
Younkin also includes several perhaps lesser-known unity rituals, such as wine blending, and the cord of three strands, where three cords are braided into one to symbolize unity and spiritual strength. One of my favorites is the tree planting ritual. In this, a couple nurtures a sapling together as a living symbol of love growing into the future.
The only limitation of the tree planting ritual is that it often doesn’t occur during the ceremony itself, but later—at the couple’s home or a place of meaning. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But the act of planting—choosing the right soil, finding the proper light, tending to the tree’s needs—can lose symbolic power when separated from the ceremony’s sacred context.
Still, the tree planting ritual moves me because it dares to look beyond the moment. It sends a promise into the future—one that may someday bless or gently tug at the heartstrings with tangible reminders of how love continues to grow: a ripe apple, a patch of shade, leaves lit by the last light of day.
When our son was born, we planted an apple tree as a symbol of our family’s love. I can’t begin to recount the number of times that tree became a resting place for our hopes, a symbol of the bonds we were building. Long after we sold the house where it grew, that tree lives on in our memories, as vivid as if it still stood in our backyard. Like love, it will never die.
Unity rituals that embrace reality—bringing love into the dimension of time and change—prepare the ground in which love can endure. Memories fade. Vows become dim echoes. But rituals that invite us to cast love forward into time—now, while the music plays and the joy is fresh—help root that love in the real, durable world we share.
For that reason, one of my favorite unity rituals is one Younkin calls the “Letters and Wine Box.” He describes it this way:
“This box contains a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a love letter from each to the other as they begin their marriage. The letters describe the good qualities they find in one another, the reasons they fell in love, and why they chose to marry. The letters are sealed in individual envelopes, and each has not seen what the other has written. They have created their very own romantic time capsule to be opened on their fifth wedding anniversary.”
If this ritual spoke no more than this, it would already be enough. A bottle of wine. Two glasses. Two sealed love letters written with hearts that are filled with hope. A time capsule of today’s tenderness, tucked away for a future day—five years from now, when life will look different, and love will have weathered more than this morning’s resplendent vows.
But the beauty of this ritual is not only in what it preserves—it’s in what it anticipates. If, somewhere along the way, the path becomes uneven and hearts grow weary—before giving up, the ritual whispers: Open the box. Pour the wine. Read the words written by your younger selves. Let them remind you of the laughter, the reasons, the hope and the love that brought you to this sacred moment—when you opened your hearts and took that leap of faith generations have called marriage.