In honor of this season of love, I’m excited to share my first post NOT focused on taking a break from work. Dixon and I got married in June 2022 (after a one year COVID delay, weee) and it brought together two of my favorite things –  love and positive psychology! I’m sharing because it seems so easy to get lost in wedding planning, and to lose yourself in the process. And folks often ask how I use my positive psychology degree – it’s far beyond professional application, it is integrated into my life! Weddings (and life) are a team sport, so we have lots of gratitude to share when we get to the end of this post. (One consistent finding in positive psychology is to lean into gratitude!)

This post could be a whole book (or workbook… gosh I love some reflective questions) so we’ll narrow it down to one part of our wedding that connects to each element of PERMA and to the humanities and human flourishing. Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman created the PERMA framework and explored it deeply in his book Flourish.  PERMA stands for positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Check out the Penn Positive Psychology Center’s website for a quick overview of each building block: https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/learn-more/perma-theory-well-being-and-perma-workshops. 

I want to start with meaning – while it’s not the first letter of the acronym, it is the foundation on which our wedding was built (and also our marriage). It was important for us to construct our wedding from the inside out, rather than the outside in. Given the impact of social media and external factors on weddings these days, we wanted to stay grounded in what defines our union and our values. In our initial wedding vision session, we identified priorities like setting a whimsical and joyous tone, ease of travel and logistics, and connection between guests, instead of starting with color schemes or things we saw online. We identified core elements and why they mattered. This relates to the PERMA element of meaning, and further provided the foundation for our entire planning process. 

Positive Emotion. It seems pretty obvious to say that people want to feel positive emotions at weddings. Weddings are generally “happy” occasions –  but there’s an opportunity to go deeper. Did we want folks to feel joy, or nostalgia, or awe, or something else? Emotional granularity, as defined by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett and colleagues, is the ability to experience and make fine-grained distinctions between emotions. Being skilled in emotional granularity not only helps us cope with and manage negative emotions, but also to cultivate and replicate positive emotions. Just because people typically feel positive at weddings does not mean that emotions can be left to chance. We decided to prioritize whimsy, amusement, excitement, playfulness, hope, and inspiration. Understanding the specific emotions we wanted to encourage informed all aspects of our wedding, from the design of the invitations, to the tone of our ceremony, to how we used physical objects. For example, our invitations were casual and colorful, with allusions to dance and a confetti-style background. Our ceremony centered humor and hope, inviting folks to react using our homemade ribbon dancers and to meditate on the beauty of the liminal wedding space. We’ll explore this more later, but the music was specifically chosen to elicit certain feelings, certainly inspiration, playfulness, and excitement. 

Positive emotion takeaway: Don’t assume that weddings elicit certain feelings – identify specifically how you want to feel and how you hope your loved ones feel, and be intentional about building elements that support those emotions.

Engagement. We have been to plenty of weddings where we’ve “gone through the motions” – not because we didn’t care or weren’t happy for the couple, but because it’s easy for a familiar ritual to fall into casual routine. We thought about this from the beginning of planning, hoping to find ways for our guests and ourselves to come back to the present and fully engage in the moment. Engagement is often associated with the concept of flow, defined by Csikszentmihalyi as total involvement, a deep concentration and enjoyment of what one is doing in the present moment – a loss of time. The conditions for flow involve a balance of skill and challenge, so that we neither fall into boredom nor anxiety. We wanted to find this sweet spot for our wedding – to challenge folks’ assumptions just enough to keep them on their toes, while still maintaining enough familiar elements that they did not fall into a state of confusion and uncertainty. We even explicitly invited our guests to find this space. Ever quoted John O’Donohue in our ceremony, and then shared this invitation to be fully present in the liminal space of our wedding:

Whatever patterns of repetition you might have been caught in, let them be shaken; whatever ills you’re bringing from the world, whatever is heavy on your heart, let them fall away. Let us find a greater sense of grace and elegance on this beautiful day as we share this ritual with each other. Let us all help them together cross this threshold worthily, with joy, laughter, a grounding purpose, intention, commitment, growth, and love. – B. Ever Hanna, as inspired by John O’Donohue

Another example is the mindfulness exercise Ever and we included in our ceremony. It was out of the ordinary and gave our guests a moment to come to the present moment and to reengage with their own emotions. It also gave us a special moment to soak in the experience, to feel the breeze on our skin and our hands in each others’. At the same time, Will and Ever told the guests up front that our ceremony would have unexpected pieces so that folks were not left completely uncertain of what was to come. Expectations were made clear leading up to the wedding as well. As noted earlier, our invitation was cheeky and low-key, helping to clue guests into what the tenor of our wedding would be. The website attempted to hit the same playful note while providing clear information. 

Engagement takeaway: As Priya Parker says, don’t be a chill host! Set expectations; surprise your guests, but not too much. Provide touch points throughout your wedding to help folks come back to the present. 

Relationships. We’ve all been at weddings where you stick to your crew and have the same conversations during this special occasion that you would have watching the Eagles. We were also particularly attuned to the fact that all of these folks we love so deeply won’t be in the same room ever again. Long before our wedding, we started joking about wanting certain pairs of our eclectic and amazing community to meet. We then realized it was well within our power to make sure this happened. So, we paired each wedding guest with another wedding guest, one who they did not already know, and put each person’s pairing on the back of their menu card. We put together journalists, boating enthusiasts, Chicago Cubs fans, musicians, and the tallest and shortest people at the wedding (with the exception of kids – they had their own pairs). During our wedding welcome, we invited guests to find their person at some point in the evening and to figure out how they are connected. It was incredible to watch these previous strangers connect and laugh throughout the evening. It also reinforced our personal relationship with each guest, as it made it clear we had taken time to reflect about what makes each of them special to us. 

Relationships takeaway: Find ways to connect your guests with one another that are authentic to you. We met at a leadership conference and love icebreakers, so our pairing activity felt natural. Your way of creating connection might be totally different, but we encourage you to find your method!

Accomplishment. My friends, particularly those in MAPP, know that I struggle with this element of PERMA. And, despite how weddings are often framed, I struggle with the idea that a wedding is an “achievement.” But, as Ever so wisely said during the wedding, we built our relationship and community, and worked hard to create an event that celebrated them both. There are elements of luck to be sure, but we worked hard to cultivate our relationships with our friends and families, and most of all with one another. During this huge culmination of all that you’ve built, it also can be so easy to focus on the things that go wrong (like us forgetting to do any of our large group family and friend photos). Getting caught up in the mishaps might mean that you forget all that has gone well during the process and event. 

Accomplishment takeaway: Celebrate and give yourself credit for the hard work and the process – and give yourself grace as things don’t go according to plan. The moments when things go haywire are often the most fun, and they don’t diminish all that you have accomplished to get to this big day. 

Humanities and Human Flourishing. Not part of the PERMA framework, but both Dixon and I are deeply connected and committed to the arts and humanities. So it was inevitable that we would capitalize on the arts and humanities to increase well-being throughout our wedding. I serve as an assistant instructor for a MAPP class called Humanities and Human Flourishing, taught by the incredible Dr. James Pawelski. He also heads up the Humanities and Human Flourishing project, and recently published an edited volume with Dr. Louis Tay, The Oxford Handbook of Positive Humanities. The positive humanities is an emerging field that seeks to understand the relationship between arts and humanities, broadly referred to as culture, and individual and collective well-being. 

Dixon and I are fervent believers in the ability of arts and humanities to increase all elements of well-being. So, as noted previously, we carefully curated music that holds a deep sense of meaning for us and that we knew would elicit particular emotions throughout the arc of the wedding. The arts were woven throughout our ceremony, from Mary Oliver to Saturday Night Live. We believe in the power of creating and engaging with art, so we also handed out musical instruments and had a parade at the end of our ceremony! Dance is my most natural and beloved creative outlet, and I was able to express so much of what I felt on our wedding day through choreographing both our first dance and my dance with my Dad. We also scattered literature and philosophy throughout the day by including important quotes in our ceremony, vows, and on printed materials. In sum, the arts and humanities allowed us to express things we couldn’t have said in words. 

Humanities and human flourishing takeaway: The humanities make us more human. While you may not consider yourself an arts and humanities enthusiast, there are certainly songs, quotes, or other cultural elements that are meaningful to you. Don’t be afraid to integrate these elements throughout your wedding. 

Back to meaning… of all the concepts I’ve studied in positive psychology, meaning is most present in my brain and heart. Dr. Michael Steger studies and writes widely about meaning in life (and also was my capstone advisor!) and highlights that meaning in life is composed of both purpose and comprehension. Comprehension refers to the ability to find consistency and patterns in one’s life, to find significance in their collective events and experiences. It is the sense that one’s life makes sense, that the events and narrative come together to represent a sensical whole. Our wedding was an opportunity to find this coherence, to make sense of how the pieces came together and to set forth a shared vision for our future. 

Let us close with gratitude (a widely researched construct in positive psych!) to the folks who supported us in helping to create a union that was deeply us. Love goes out to Ariana, our officiant, wise Rabbi, and dear friend, and Ever, my dear friend and Ariana’s partner who jumped in to co-officiate when they were blessed with a baby and a due date quite close to the wedding! This incredible pair has taught us so much about relationships and building community, and have been with us every step of the way in this wedding (and life) journey. Deep gratitude also goes to our fantastic siblings – Will for jumping in to co-officiate, and Andrew, Ashley, and Ling for supporting and inspiring us with their incredible bonds and good humor. Heaps of love also go out to my matrons of honor, Afton and Caitlin, who are wise in the ways of marriage and both brought their individual strengths to making our wedding (and all of the events leading to it!) truly magical. We are deeply grateful to our parents, who supported our wedding vision without imposing their own, and who have provided role models of lifelong partnership. Finally, a million thanks to all of our guests, who played full out with all of our wacky ideas and even created fun schemes of their own (i.e. the “quit your job” chant on the bus ride home, which we sadly missed). 

We had a collection of incredible vendors who became friends along the way – links to all of our vendors are included below. A special shout-out goes to Adam, owner of Philly Custom DJ, who truly understands how music communicates emotion and meaning and who spent countless hours with us making our musical dreams come true. Special thanks also to Carina, Amanda, and the team at Love Me Do, who translated the vibe of our wedding perfectly into images and video that we will cherish for a lifetime. 

In the end, the way we built our wedding is how we try to live our married life. Family, fun, music, meaning, and laughter. All building blocks of a flourishing and full life. <3

Please enjoy our highlight video, produced by the fabulous team at Love Me Do! Carina, Amanda, and team – you are the absolute best!