We would like to acknowledge that this is the ancestral land of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. While we are overjoyed to be married before the Creator today, and privileged that the church and the state collaborates in our favour to recognize our marriage, we realize that the same collaboration that unites our families today was responsible for acts of injustice that tore apart and continue to keep other families separated. As we inherit the church from our forefathers we bear the responsibility for healing and transformation, to listen and learn and strive to care for and share the land and its resources in accordance to the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant that this land is subject to. It is, in part, by the spirit of this covenant that Tim and I were able to tie the proverbial knot on this land with so much support and joy today; and this is a privilege we hope we will never take for granted.
For the same reason, we also love and cherish the privilege of being tied to each of you with our own unique and relationship-appropriate knots. We are knotted with each and everyone of you who have contributed to who Tim and I are now and will become together. By extension, we celebrate all the knots tied over all time and space that make you uniquely you. In a world that celebrates “no strings attached”, we consider it grace to be knotted to each other in marriage and to you as family and in friendship. Afterall, a stitch in a tapestry is just the right knot in the right place, and what an absolute privilege it is to be knotted to each of you in this tapestry we call humanity.
We have been cared for and doted on by our parents, our aunties and uncles, our chaplains, our pastors, our Sunday school teachers, our landladies, our bosses, our socially carnivorous friends. Tying intergenerational knots with you is so important for us and we cherish your blessings. We thank for your patience, mentorship, and encouragement. You are an inspiration in many ways… And we look forward to becoming some sort of superposition of all of you.
To you who we’ve tied knots of friendship as peers, siblings, cousins, classmates, and housemates: thank you for your companionship, advice, commiseration, and solidarity, you are living examples of possible worlds we’d never known I could imagine… And your lives inspires us to imagine how we can also live and worship in ways that are authentic to who we are.
To those with whom we’ve tied “long-distance knots”–whether it be from Montreal or Philadelphia, London or Ottawa, Tokyo or Texas, California or Caledon, HK or UK, New York or Newmarket–we are humbled and honoured by your presence here despite our warnings of shoddiness.
To those who turned down other long weekend plans to be here, we are perplexed by your life choices but honoured by your presence nonetheless.
Special Thanks
A heartfelt thanks goes out to the helpers who have contributed their incredible talents here and contributed joyfully. You have saved this wedding from being the race to the bottom that we were expecting it to be.
We’d like to thank Beach United Church… we could not have found a better venue to be married in. Not only is the space is beautiful, it means a lot to us that the church seeks to form relationships with and between God, people, and the earth as its triple bottom line.
We are honoured to have our wedding officiated by our long-time pastor at Toronto Chinese Baptist Church, Rev. Nolan, and have our Sunday School teacher Uncle Simon sneak in a couple wise words. They have been our mentors and seen us through so many seasons of life.
In the same vein, International Students Ministry at UofT has been a huge part of our lives and our relationship for the past 4 Years. ISM’s Chaplain, Tony and his wife Iris, showed international and domestic students like us exemplary love and grace. That said, it’s so fitting that Tony and Iris are such a big part of this wedding… both behind the scenes and on the cello!
Full disclosure, since neither of us are musical people, we weren’t planning to have music at all… but when Tony volunteered to play the cello we just couldn’t say no… and then he totally one-ups himself by composing the opening track you heard before the ceremony. So Tony’s basically the SparkNotes on how this wedding went from 0 to 120% on the music department.
We are also honoured that the worship team is stacked with Mike and Hannah who are arguably the two people who understand us the most… and we just also happen to be benefit from their ability to weave our intentions into art.
In addition to being a huge help to us here, Hannah in particular will be helping us start our marriage right on some high quality calories from her farm. So whenever we tell you that we’re “at the farm”, we’re almost certainly bothering Hannah. We’ve made accessibility to her CSA shares a priority in our housing search and we think you should too. Find her at luminousgroundfarm.com and stalk her at @luminousgroundfarm on Instagram.
Speaking of calories, a special thanks goes out to Cathy (@kczdesserts on Instagram), Vivian and Alicia for preparing the munchies at the back that you’ll be able to enjoy as soon as I shut up. Now, if it were up to us, we’d be serving you sardines and saltines… so we all have Cathy, Vivian and Alicia to thank for transforming the tables behind you into a land of milk and honey! We’d had the privilege of enjoying the fruits of their talents for many years now and we’re so so excited that they’ve agreed to share that joy with everyone here.
We thank Mandy and Matthew for heading up our ushering team and their knack for reversing entropy. In particular, it was so special for me to have the capacity to spend time with many of you prior to the wedding… and I owe these special memories to the fact that we outsourced our prefrontal cortices to Mandy. Likewise, we are blessed to have Iris, Carol, and Barbara on our ushering team. They would be the first to greet newcomers and make them feel comfortable at International Students Ministry, and we are so grateful that they’ve brought that spirit to this space.
We thank our friend Lawrence for bearing the burden of being the sound guy aka. the scapegoat for all technical problems. And thank you Justin for wiping the dust off your DSLR to be the guy with the camera.
Announcements
Momentarily we will be taking group photos in the order listed on the program. We ask family identifying with #1-7 on the program to stay seated until photos are taken. Friends, we will make another announcement when it’s your turn. In the meantime, friends are welcome to work on the puzzle by the stairs, grab a bite at the back, and mingle anywhere on this floor of the building. We have some extra mugs if you didn’t bring one, but please don’t use them frivolously. I’m ashamed to have given Vivian, Alicia and our ushers the unflattering task of washing those mugs, so we’d highly appreciate it if we combined our efforts to keep their workload to a minimum.
After the photos and snacks, we recommend that our extended family visit the nearby attractions … and we look forward to catching up with you over dinner up north at 7pm. Friends, we will have some time to hang out and catch up before we get kicked out around 5pm … so whatever you do, don’t leave without saying bye to us!
That is all. You are loved and you are dismissed.