I Had to Say Something at My Son's Wedding

So I'm sharing it with you too

A few days ago, our oldest son Michael got married in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was a big deal—Michael is the first of his generation of Gioias to tie the quasi-Gordian knot, and guests gathered from near and (mostly) far.

It was a traditional ceremony but with some unconventional elements. My brother Dana, for example, read a poem. And my name also showed up on the program too—I was scheduled to offer a “reflection.”

But what should I say to all those people?

I see my name on the program—but what do I say?

My son the groom had a bit of advice. “Dad, why don’t you read the same passage from Kierkegaard that you recited at your own wedding?”

That was a swell idea—much better than reading from my recent Substack columns.

But where was that bloody passage in Kierkegaard? He wrote a lot of books—the website Goodreads attributes 1,164 volumes to him—and even assuming that’s an exaggeration, it still would take forever to find it.

I could rule out some options. Surely I wouldn’t have recited a passage from The Concept of Dread on my wedding day? (Or would I?—I did some peculiar things in my youth. And this was, after all, my last public pronouncement as a single man.)

The same was true for Fear and Trembling or The Sickness Unto Death. I love those gloomy books, but they definitely don’t go with marriage like a horse and carriage.

I started feeling a heavy bout of Kierkegaardian angst come on. I had read something half a lifetime ago, and had to find it again. But where do I even start?

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But I fortunately hold on to odd bits and pieces of paper—writers can be obsessive about that. And I found my reprieve in a box of files—in fact, I located the exact sheet of paper I had read from 33 years ago on my wedding day.

It was in an envelope right next to the marriage certificate.

The sheet of paper was in good shape—it had held up much better than me. But what about the text itself? Was it still appropriate, or perhaps (a word that makes us all shudder nowadays) problematic?

So I read through the Kierkegaardian passage with real fear and trembling, asking myself whether it would convey the right message for my son’s nuptials.

I am not ashamed to say that some tears came to my eyes as I read this passage in 2024. It actually holds meanings for me now that I could not have possibly comprehended as a young man.

I made only one change from my own wedding day recitation, and omitted the first two sentences. (The original source is volume two of Either/Or, by the way).

So here’s what I read at the Cambridge ceremony:

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I’d like to read a passage from Søren Kierkegaard that I recited at my own wedding many years ago. Please forgive me if I get a little teary-eyed while reading this—I am the sentimental sort:

“Over the centuries have not knights and adventurers experienced incredible toil and trouble in order to find quiet peace in a happy marriage. Over the centuries have not writers and readers of novels labored through one volume after another in order to end with a happy marriage. And has not one generation after the other again and again faithfully endured four acts of troubles and entanglements if only there was any probability of a happy marriage in the fifth act?

“But through these enormous efforts very little is accomplished for the glorification of marriage. For the unhealthiness of these books is that they end where they should begin. So let Don Juan keep his romantic bower and the knight his nocturnal sky and stars—if he sees nothing beyond them. Marriage has its heaven even higher. And it is not the earthly heaven that arches over marriage but the heaven of the spirit. So beautiful is marriage. And the sensuous is by no means repudiated, but is ennobled.

“Indeed I confess it—perhaps it is wrong of me—frequently when I think of my own marriage, the notion that it will cease to be awakens in me an inexplicable sadness, as does the thought—sure as I am that in another life I will live with her to whom my marriage joined me—that this will give her to me in another way, and the contrast that was a condition of our marriage will be annulled. Nevertheless it comforts me that I know—and I shall recollect—that I have lived with her in the most intimate, the most beautiful association that life on earth provides.”

Adapted from Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
“The Esthetic Validity of Marriage” (Either/Or, volume II)

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Here I am—reciting Kierkegaard at the wedding

I got through it without obvious tears, but I had to steel myself to deliver the last paragraph without faltering.

I’ll give Mr. K. some credit. I couldn’t have put it better myself. So I’m saving that piece of paper—just in case I need it again in the future.