WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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My now husband and I are both humanists so
naturally whenever he proposed, we began

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planning and realised that, of course, we
want a humanist ceremony and they're not

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legally recognised in Northern Ireland,
where we were both from, and that to us

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was an issue because when we looked
into it, we find that a diverse range of

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different beliefs are recognised in
Northern Ireland law so we couldn't

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really see any reason why ours was of
lesser value, and we really wanted to

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challenge that because for us to have
the marriage that would be true to us

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and who we are fundamentally as
individuals and a couple, we needed it to

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be a humanist ceremony and we knew that
we wouldn't be the only people in that

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position. So we decided that
we would challenge the law.

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We couldn't understand why we'd be
treated any differently, that was really

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hard for us to accept. Especially because
we know that there's so many other people in

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our position - it wasn't fair. We just
want to be accepted as equal and as

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equal as other beliefs, and we don't want
to ever take away from anyone, we were

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just asking for the same.

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Getting the win was really incredible
for us personally but also for the

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countless other people in Northern
Ireland who are not religious and wanted

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to have a ceremony that embody
them as people and their beliefs.

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Our wedding ceremony was really beautiful
and personal to us. We had - it was all

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about our story and how we got to
that present day. What we loved most

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about one another, and we were able to
incorporate our loved ones in the

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ceremony. And that was
really special, and it was

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just about us and our love for one
another, and that's not something that we

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could have had from a civil ceremony or
a religious ceremony. We had the total

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flexibility to choose our own vows, we
wrote our own vows, but even the

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structure of the ceremony, we were able
to completely build from scratch and shape it

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however we wanted it to be. It was
totally flexible and it's all about what

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is important to us - totally
bespoke - and I just couldn't even

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imagine having a ceremony that
would be anything other than that.

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I think it's really important for
humanists to continue on this path of

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challenging outdated laws and outdated
human rights because I feel as though

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it's chipping away at something that's
outdated, and we are moving forward one

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case at a time, one action at a time,
towards a much better future. It's not

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just about a better future for humanists,
it's a better future for everybody.