Toast to Love: The Irish Wedding Cup Ritual

This is a variation on the ritual I wrote about before – Sharing the Chalice – but you could have the Irish Wedding cup and ring in the marriage after the signing is done ( to close the ceremony) as it involves all the guests in celebration.

So you are really re-booting the ceremony but spontaneously starting the party (this is often a bit awkward because people don’t know when to move along after the formal part is done.)

This ritual involves the bride and groom sharing wine and drinking to their relationship.
It can go like this:

“ This cup of wine is symbolic of the cup of life. All the sweetness life's cup may hold for each of you will be the sweeter because you drink it together. Whatever drops of bitterness it may contain will be less bitter because you share them.

It is symbolic of the pledges you have made to one another to share together the fullness of life. As you drink from this cup, you acknowledge to one another that your lives, separate until this moment, have now become one.

Now drink to the love you've shared in the past.”

Bride and groom sip from the cup

“ Drink to your love in the present, on this your wedding day.”

Bride and Groom sip from the cup.

“And now will you all join (Ask the congregation to drink) with _____and ______ to drink to their love in the future and forever more!”

Bride and Groom sip from the cup and hand it back.

“As you have shared the wine from this cup, so may you share your lives. May you explore the mysteries of the life and share in the reflection of love in one another's soul. From love all things proceed and unto love they must return.”