In what is believed to be a global first, Humanist celebrant Caroline Black conducted a wedding over Skype this weekend. The Skype wedding was for a couple stranded in Dubai because of the volcanic ash cloud which has grounded flights across the world. The couple were flying from Australia to London, to have a Humanist wedding ceremony in front of their families, when their connecting flight was cancelled. Caroline Black conducted the ceremony over the Internet, with guests in London watching the couple take their vows on a screen.
Ms Black, who is an accredited officiant with the British Humanist Association (BHA), said that she had been reflecting on the meaning of this ceremony for Humanists. She commented, “We celebrate science and rationality and the achievement of being able to connect people in that way over the Internet was because of our technology.
“For humanists, human relationships matter so much, and it is interesting that this ceremony was made possible through human ingenuity. The sincerity of the vows made was not diminished, even though the couple and their loved ones, and the celebrant, were thousands of miles apart.”
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Notes
The British Humanist Association is the national charity supporting and representing people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs.
Humanist Ceremonies™ is the BHA’s network of trained and accredited celebrants throughout England and Wales. The Humanist weddings and partnerships, funerals and memorials, and naming ceremonies conducted by BHA accredited celebrants are unique, created specially for the people involved and based on shared human values with no dependency on religion or superstition.
Humanists are atheists and agnostics who make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values, base our ethics on the goals of human welfare, happiness and fulfilment, and seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves, individually and together.