Secular Does Not Mean Anti-Religious

The answer is NO! Or rather, the correct answer is: Secular ceremonies are for everyone indiscriminately: for believers, atheists, agnostics, etc. Faith is not a topic I address when asked to officiate a ceremony.

So who chooses a secular ceremony?

First of all, the couples who choose it have one common denominator: the desire to give value to such a fundamental event in their lives through an emotional and non-traditional ceremony, totally original and that speaks of them and their feelings.

There are non-believers, of course, but also believers and for various reasons.

For example, there was a couple who got married with a Catholic rite in church during the lockdown period but chose not to invite anyone, not even for the mass. It was just them, their parents, and witnesses. Then last summer, precisely because they wanted to share the true celebration of their love with friends and family, they called me for a secular ceremony at a beach location. And it was wonderful; they felt they had completed an important step that they had experienced only halfway.

Then there are couples consisting of two people with different religious beliefs who, in mutual respect for each other's views, do not want to opt for one religion or the other.

There are also believers who do not feel close to the church, do not attend, and do not want to deceive themselves. They sincerely prefer a ceremony that resembles them more than one they do not genuinely feel connected to. Many choose to get married in church only out of tradition or because they find the religious rite more engaging than the Civil Ceremony celebrated in the Town Hall, with just the reading of the articles and the marriage act, and do not know of any alternative.

Moreover, there are those who cannot marry in church, such as divorced individuals who still believe in love and are giving themselves another chance. And finally, LGBT couples who, due to their sexual orientation, cannot choose a religious rite.

Therefore, the secular ceremony represents everyone because it is humanist.

The fact that it is not religious should not make one think that a secular ceremony cannot be spiritual. Quite the opposite. In a secular ceremony, the protagonists are the people and their feelings. And not in general, but specifically that couple. Step by step, the strings of emotions are touched, and regardless of each person's religious beliefs, the ceremonies exalt that immaterial and ethereal part of human beings, ultimately emotionally involving all those who attend.