Can you marry yourselves

Find an outfit that represents how you feel about the next chapter of your life as your own soulmate. Invite a few close friends and trusted family members to witness your public declaration of self-affirmation. You can still have your maid of honour or best man along with an entourage of bridesmaids and groomsmen. If you want to be a little extravagant, a function room at a hotel should be more than enough. A destination wedding at the beach or the mountains would be great too!

Stating your vows is like reading a love letter from yourself, but this time you get to share the experience with loved ones. After all the emotional stuff, you can toss your bouquet and enjoy your wedding cake without having to share it! Well, loving yourself also means getting in touch with your sexy side. It all began with Linda Baker in In fact, out of all the couples I work with, more than half of them choose to have a self solemnization or self uniting marriage ceremony.

Karie and Jared kept things very simple for their self solemnization elopement ceremony in the mountains of Colorado. Mackenzie and Jared did an amazing job of officiating their own wedding. Similar to Karie and Jared, they also opted to not have any witnesses present at their self uniting marriage ceremony. In addition to sharing their story and vows, Mackenzie and Jared also brought notes from their loved ones along to their self solemnization.

They read the notes to each other before sharing their own personal vows and officially marrying themselves. Their ceremony was on the longer end, lasting about 30 minutes. You can find the blog post for their elopement here , if you want to see what their self uniting marriage ceremony looked like. Unlike the previous two elopements I just talked about, Sophie and David did have their family present at their self solemnization elopement. They had one family member come up and say a few words and help with the ring exchange, but other than that, Sophie and David pronounced themselves for the first time and essentially acted as their own officiants.

Just like with Sophie and David, Amanda and Peter wanted their parents and siblings present at their elopement ceremony, but they still wanted to self solemnize. They had each member of their families come up and share words of advice and stories with them.

And Amanda and Peter themselves actually decided not to read their private vows during the ceremony but save them for later. Instead, they read a poem during their ceremony, followed up by them pronouncing themselves married.

Take a peek at their self solemnization elopement here. My husband Ed joins me as we discuss all sorts of elopement topics, from the perspective of a couple who eloped too.

And their story ended up going viral , sharing their intentions behind both their choice to elope and have a self uniting marriage ceremony. We wanted to start our lives together elevated from all the noise with the understanding that we only wanted to go higher in our lives from that point. That mountaintop, and marrying ourselves without an officiant or witnesses, felt like the freest, dopest, Blackest, most revolutionary thing that we could do. And we were right….

So can a couple marry themselves in Colorado? Yes, and while self solemnization might seem confusing at first, self solemnized elopements are a simple and empowering way to get married. In the UK, Sophie Tanner married herself in But not everyone welcomes the sologamy trend. Some call it narcissistic and others criticise it as a pointless submission to a patriarchal institution.

Karen Nimmo, a clinical psychologist in New Zealand, says: "Self-dislike is at the root of so many psychological issues, so where marrying yourself is about healing from past trauma or relationship issues it can be helpful. If you rely too much on yourself and constantly put your own needs ahead of everyone else you may be slipping into narcissistic territory - and that's an unhealthy and lonely place to be. Alexandra Gill, co-founder of consultancy Marry Yourself Vancouver, accepts marrying yourself "kind of is" narcissistic, but adds: "Aren't all traditional white weddings also narcissistic?

She also says that marrying yourself doesn't have to be taken deadly seriously. Since , her firm has helped solo brides plan their big days, but is now branching out to offer a "ladies' night" concept which celebrates "self-love and sisterhood".

Sex in the City's heroic protagonist Carrie Bradshaw, who wed herself in a episode of the series, would surely agree. Italian woman 'marries herself'. Japan's 'solo' weddings. Image source, Micaela Martini. I got engaged at a gas station on the way back from a hot springs trip for my birthday in California, and nine months later I got married in the Japanese Gardens in Buenos Aires, with two close friends that I know from dancing tango in Buenos Aires.

I would say that I officiated the ceremony, but both of my friends participated by talking about what self-marriage means to them. My best friend in Buenos Aires, Alexandra, gave me a ring as a symbol of self-love and self-acceptance.

What was the general reaction from guests? Did anyone decline to go? I was very careful to only invite people who I knew would absolutely get it. It was more important to me to have percent support from the guests than to have a big group.

When people ask you for your relationship status, what do you say? I find the wedding industry to be absurd.