Wine Ceremony, as with the other unification ceremonies, the bride and the groom each have an individual vessel and blend their contents into a third. In a wine ceremony, the couple may each have the same wine or they may opt for one to pour red wine while the other pours white.
The effect is aesthetically pleasing, but I am not sure I would serve the results at the reception. The officiant guides the couple through the wine ceremony ritual and explains the symbolism to the guests.
Alternately, a wine ceremony can be used to symbolize the marriage bond that persists in times and joy and in sorrow.
Wine Ceremony Example:
It is the goal of marriage to achieve a blending of hearts and lives—but let there be spaces in your new life together, so that each may encourage and nurture the individual growth of the other. Even so, your separate lives will become one life; your separate homes, one home, your separate fortunes, one fortune.
Over the horizon of the future, there comes toward you even now, hours of brightness and hours of shadow, for such is the nature of life.
(Pick up the goblet of sweet wine.)
Life has, indeed, many bright and happy experiences, of which this sweet wine is a token. As you drink of it together, may it serve as a symbol of the joy that comes with loving and sharing, and may your happiness be tempered with gratitude and modesty and a bountiful sympathy for those who are less fortunate than you.
(Pass goblet to partner #1, who drinks and passes it to partner #2, who drinks and passes it back to you. Return goblet to table and pick up goblet of bitter wine.)
But when hardship and sorrow and disappointment come, of which this bitter wine is a token, may you care enough to help one another with courage and compassion, neither one blaming the other for folly or failure, or regretting the obligation of marriage to share and bear together the chances and changes of a life deeply lived.
(Goblet is passed as above.)
