The Words of a Wedding

On the Creation of Original Vows

by Erika Alexia Tsoukanelis and photographs by Hillary Harvey, January 25, 2008

On January 13, 2001, Gretchen Hein stood by a reflective pond in front of 100 friends and family at a state park in Tallahassee, Florida. The early morning sky had been dim and the air icy, but when Hein stepped out of the house with her fiancé Marty Klein at her side, the clouds shifted. By the time she got to addressing their clan, the Southern sun had determined to give its wintry all. She spoke from a pool of light as she welcomed the wedding guests.

“I invite you to be open to transformation,” Hein said, “because we will all leave here different than we arrived. You are invited to be part of the transformation that Marty and I have decided to embark upon. Thank you for coming, thank you for sharing of yourselves.”

Hein is a Kripalu-certified yoga teacher who owns Namaste Yoga in Woodstock. Her husband, a writer of plays and nonfiction, is the author of Blindsighted: One Man’s Journey from Sight to Insight. They met at a re-evaluation counseling workshop in Atlanta, and, as romantic liaisons between teachers in that community are discouraged, decided to leave their leadership positions in order to pursue the strong and alluring connection between them. Marriage was a way to deepen that connection. It was not something they wanted another individual to do to them. They wanted to do it together, and so they opted to pen their own vows.

“It helped us clarify where we were going,” Klein explains, “and what we wanted to have happen.”

Her three children from a previous marriage spoke on that January day as well. Each espoused one of the three uppermost qualities the couple sought to enhance their union: clarity, creativity, and passion. The bride and groom recited poems by Marcus Aurelius and Amy Friedman.