Alternative 7 Blessings, did anyone write your own or have your family and friends write them?

IG.muse

I hope I don't offend anyone with my question, but here goes. I'm not an observant Jew but I do consider myself Jewish. My fiance was raised Catholic but I don't think he considers himself a Catholic now as an adult. He's very respectful of my secular Judaism, I guess you'd call it, and we've hired a Rabbi to perform our ceremony. The idea is to have elements of Jewish culture and the challenge seems to be combining the elements in such a way that it feels comfortable and honest. 

We were looking at some versions of the Sheva Brachot, but nothing feels quite right to me. A traditional approach seems forced and the humanistic version I found seems a little too dry. I've never heard the 7 Blessings custom written but I like the idea that this is a possibility. I'm drawing completely blank on how to go about it, though. I'd love to see yours if you or your friends and family wrote a custom version. If you know of any literature that might have examples, I'd appreciate that info too.

Hope you ladies can help. Thanks in advance.

Rachiemoo

If I remember correctly, The New Jewish Wedding by Anita Diamant had a few different versions in it, I gave the book to my SIL though so I can't check it, maybe one of the other ladies will know for sure.

2dBride

We used an alternative version for our wedding.  Here is a link to it.

IG.muse

Thanks ladies, we put a draft together based on The New Jewish Wedding book, The Creative Jewish Wedding Book, your version -- 2dBride, and a couple other sources. 2d, your little explanations in the parentheses were really helpful.

2dBride

Glad they helped!  At our wedding, we had three guests who were Catholic, two who were Pagan, one who is of no particular religion, and four who were Jewish.  Thus, we wanted to emphasize the more universal aspects of the blessings as opposed to the strictly Jewish ones.  We also wanted to provide clear instructions so that everyone would understand what was going on.