A Humanist Wedding Ceremony at Hatfield House: Laura & Daved
Some relationships are shaped by distance before they're shaped by anything else. Laura and Daved met on 14th July, and theirs has been a love story carried across three countries ever since, a real, recurring theme of who they are as a couple.
It made their wedding day at Hatfield House, the Tudor Old Palace once home to a young Elizabeth I, feel less like the end of a journey and more like a proper homecoming.
Humanist Wedding Ceremony at Hatfield House, London
Laura & Daved
Laura describes Daved as an extension of herself, and that closeness was tested in the strangest possible way in 2020, a year when the world was actively working against couples being near each other at all. Through it, she found her sense of comfort simply in being near him. Daved, for his part, has a habit of telling her to "just enjoy your life," a small phrase that helps Laura stay grounded and hold onto a sense of lightness, even childlike wonder, without the weight of worry. It's the kind of quiet, steadying dynamic that doesn't always make it into a wedding speech, but absolutely belongs in a ceremony.
Wedding ceremony at Hatfield House - Wedding Celebrant Love Celebrants
The ceremony
Laura and Daved's humanist wedding ceremony included:
A ring warming, passing their rings among their loved ones to hold and bless before the exchange
Walking together, a symbolic moment representing the life they're choosing to walk through side by side
The exchanging of rings
Exchanging vows, written entirely in their own words
Set against the Old Palace's medieval brickwork and centuries of history, it was a ceremony that felt both timeless and entirely, unmistakably theirs.
A love story worth writing properly
Every couple I work with has a story that deserves more than a fixed script, but Laura and Daved's stood out even by that standard: three countries, a global pandemic, and a partnership that only grew steadier under pressure. That's exactly the kind of material a humanist ceremony is built for.
Laura and Daved - Hatfield House Wedding
Got a similarly unconventional story of your own, distance, timing, the odd global pandemic thrown in? I'd love to hear it. Drop me a line and let's talk about how it could become your ceremony.