Worries about a friend / pagan wedding

[RockNRollerskates]

An old friend of ours has announced he is having a private pagan handfasting wedding in the woods next week with his new girlfriend he met very recently. All very sudden and he was due to marry (in a church and then hotel after) another old friend of ours whom he had been with for 10+ years in about 9 weeks ago but they called it off very last minute after being engaged for 2 years.

I'm worried about him. He's never mentioned anything Pagan before and if I'm honest I know very little about it. No one has met his new partner before and we were only told he was seeing someone last week.

Aibu to feel concerned about him?

Please, if you have any experience with the pagan hand fasting wedding situation or know if it is a legally binding wedding ceremony I'd be really grateful!

I have name changed..

Subtlety check if it's legal with him- feign interest in such an unusual ceremony and ask when they sign the register etc.

Aside from that, he is an adult and even though you're worried that it's unlike him and too soon, you can't do or say anything without potentially alienating him.

I'd just smile and nod, and hope for the best.

My friends had this service but they had to marry in a registry office as well so I assume it's not legally binding

We had a outside handfasting. It is 100% legal if you are in Scotland and use a registrar, otherwise it's not but maybe they don't mind?

It's not weird:-) we stood in a circle and just read our poems to each other, had the handfasting ribbon, drank iron brew and had a family blending thing.

I am sure he is fine :-)

If you're in England or Wales, it isn't legally binding without the addition of a ceremony by a registrar. In Scotland, it could be.
If I am asked to handfast people who are not well known to me, I basically interview them first, to find out what the score is, what sort of ceremony they want, what their beliefs are, etc. If something didn't feel right, I wouldn't proceed any further.

A handfasting isn't a legally recognised ceramomy people who actually wish to get married normally go to the register office first. A handfasting is a spiritual ceramomy normally ment for a year and a day then another ceramomy after that. Some pagans only do it the once and leave it at that some have the second ceramomy.

^ it can be in scotland :-)

The year and a day thing isn't always relevant.

Thanks so much for the quick replies. I didn't think it was weird sorry if it came across as judgey at all it's just completely unknown to me and so out of the blue for him.

It is completely not my business and we did congratulate him, albeit first we asked if everything was ok and if he needed anything, but it's just so out of character I didn't know if something else was going on and it's just so out of no where. He's not mentioned signing of registers at all just a secret Handfasting wedding in the woods (England).

Handfastings are beautiful ceremonies. Really, really beautiful. Nothing at all to worry about x

Not legal in the uk as you can't have a legally binding marriage outside. Just a very lovely ceremony centred around love and commitment to each other.
Paganism isn't witchcraft so you've nothing to be worried about.

Well I wouldn't worry that he's having a pagan wedding.
I'd worry that he's rebounding from a long term marriage into a serious relationship and they're both going to get hurt

We went to one and it was absolutely lovely. Rugby club acquaintances invited us with some other parents. Very unlike weddings we’d been to before but also in other ways very similar.
It was in an ancient farm, a Druid did the ‘service’ it was all very relaxed and informal. Hands were bound with ribbons and some jumping over brooms. Personal vows made.
There was a hog roast, a huge cheese wedding cake, ice creams and dancing. The setting and simplicity of the round, thatched barn was lovely. Lots of greenery decorations, pretty hedgerow bouquets. Chickens running round. No high heels or hats just a good, warm, sincere feeling.
No eating babies or dope anywhere we saw!

^ only not in england and Wales.

Scotland you can just have a handfasting, no registry office and it's legal.

I wouldn't have thought that arranging a commitment ceremony to a new girlfriend 9 weeks after cancelling a wedding to a partner of over a decade is necessarily normal behaviour.

The OP can't do anything about his choices, but if I was his friend I wouldn't be rushing out to buy an engagement gift.

It is legal in Scotland because of the celtic tradition of uniteing clans I have seen handfasting at a wedding it was lovely
anyway in regarding your friend I would take an interest and see what happens.

Paganism isn't witchcraft

Erm, well that's not strictly an accurate statement. Witchcraft, Wicca and associated beliefs fall under the Pagan umbrella (Pagan is really a catch-all description of Earth-based religions and belief systems) but that doesn't mean that anyone who describes themselves as Pagan is necessarily a witch/Wiccan/similar.

There's a lot of misconceptions about Paganism, witchcraft or otherwise, but also a lot of resources on t'interweb that explain more. This might be a good site to look at: www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/paganism/

I've been to a couple of weddings where there's a handfastening and it's really lovely (that's actually where 'tying the knot' comes from. You're not BU to be shocked but he's an adult and by the sounds of it they're not actually legally getting married so he's not actually committing to anything. I'd probably suspect the new GF isn't actually that knew though

Regardless of what kind of wedding it is, wind your neck in. If he's an adult, he can do as he pleases. If he's making a mistake, it's his to make.

A handfasting is a lovely ceremony. Very personal and 'gentle'. We had ours in a field at sunset on New Years Eve, and a rabbit hopped into the circle.
And by the way, Paganism was a huge religion loooong before Christianity..... most old churches are built on sites which were originally pagan. Because they were on the junctions of ley lines and they basically nicked the sites and quite a few of the rituals.

its fine, its a ceremony of commitment, not a legal marriage, the ceremony itself is more or less like any other ceremony, nothing weird about it, all pretty straightforward

I agree though, he's been with this woman a lot longer than 9 weeks

And by the way, Paganism was a huge religion loooong before Christianity

no paganism is a Victorian invention, an attempt to reconnect to a "celtic" tribe that invaded and inhabited the west of the uk, but sent administrators to rule over the Brits across the whole of the UK.

How accurately the Victorians replicated this culture is impossible to know, as there were no records kept of the original tribe.

However, the Victorians reinvented them, rightly or wrongly, as nature worshippers, and this victorian construction has become an outlet for people seeking a way of expressing admiration and spiritual connection with nature and science.

@clairetree1, I see you have forgotten the Druids...Most of christian holidays are plundered from their Pagan origins. Fact.

www.paganfederation.org/what-is-paganism/

"What Paganism Is
Paganism is the ancestral religion of the whole of humanity. This ancient religious outlook remains active throughout much of the world today, both in complex civilisations such as Japan and India, and in less complex tribal societies world-wide. It was the outlook of the European religions of classical antiquity – Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome – as well as of their “barbarian” neighbours on the northern fringes, and its European form is re-emerging into explicit awareness in the modern West as the articulation of urgent contemporary religious priorities.
The Pagan outlook can be seen as threefold. Its adherents venerate Nature and worship many deities, both goddesses and gods."

@secretwitch, thank you!

no paganism is a Victorian invention

Again, not strictly true. There are some who argue that Wicca was the invention of Aleister Crowley (and I don't necessarily disagree with them), who was indeed a Victorian, but the word 'pagan' was in use from Roman times. Its (relatively) modern usage as an indicator of pre-Christianity and/or Earth-based religions is a separate issue from the archaeological proof that pre-Christians worshipped in a way that modern Paganism reflects, and which included the festivals/religious observances (such as Easter, Christmas and All Hallows Eve) that were later absorbed into Christianity.

@clairetree1, I see you have forgotten the Druids

no, the druids were the administrators I was referring to.

They ruled the UK, they dominated it, but their people didn't really inhabit it, they just colonised the west coast.

the druid "religion"is a victorian invention, no one knows anything about it at all really, beyond what the Victorians dreamt up, with no evidence at all.

Maybe they didn't even have a religion! Maybe they were just law keepers