Before a crowd of 45, 36-year-old Nadine Schweigert from Fargo, North Dakota, USA, recently married herself.
During the ceremony Schweigert declared her vow, “I, Nadine, promise to enjoy inhabiting my own life and to relish a lifelong love affair with my beautiful self,” and presented herself with a ring.
At the time the bride and groom traditionally kiss, Schweigert invited her guests to “blow kisses to the whole world.”
Schweigert views the secular ceremony as a public pronouncement that she has learned to love and accept herself as she is.
“I’m very proud of it, and I feel very good about it,” said Schweigert.
The divorced mother of three says she struggled for years with self-acceptance.
“I was waiting for someone to come along and make me happy,” she says. “At some point, a friend said, ‘Why do you need someone to marry you to be happy? Marry yourself.'”
Initially dismissing the idea, but lamenting the loss of a relationship, the idea began to re-surface.
Initially Schweigert’s 11 year old son did not like the idea.
“His response was to put his hand on my shoulder. He said, ‘I love you, but I’m embarrassed for you right now and I’m not coming,’ ” she says.
In time he came around to the idea and participated in the ceremony.
Nadine’s parents had not heard before of self-marriage. However her mother, Charlotte Schweigert, says a self-marriage ceremony fit her daughter perfectly.
“She always did her own thing. That was Nadine,” she says.
“Everything in this younger generation – nothing surprises me anymore.”
Soon after the ceremony, Nadine even took off on a honeymoon at New Orleans, all by herself, of course.
Sources
- Inforum
- Image: Oddity Central