Inter-religious celebration showcases marriage, commitment across the globe

Though not quite a dreamy wedding destination, the Schmitt Academic Center functioned as the location for six weddings last Thursday.

As part of DePaul’s Quarterly Inter-religious Celebration, Michael and Meagan Vaynerman, both DePaul alumni, volunteered to help DePaul’s religious leaders and Interfaith Scholars re-enact marriage ceremonies from six different faiths.

More than 130 students attended the event, some from the Vincentian Community Service group, the Education and Development Grant for Employability group, and Vincentians in Action.

Interfaith Scholar, Samreen Ahmed began the event with a moment of silence for the three students killed last week at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and then students reflected on their ideas of commitment, faith, and marriage.

The demo couple, Meagan and Michael, dated for four years before they were married in 2013. Meagan was a DePaul Interfaith Scholar and Michael was a founding member of the Jewish fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi.

“We met at a sorority Halloween party,” Michael said. “We were the only two people not in costumes at the party because technically it was the day before, so we didn’t dress up.

“(Meagan) came with a mutual friend of mine and that’s how we got introduced,” Michael said.

The couple said the experience was surreal, to be “married” in the SAC  where they once took classes.

“We are going to have clergy, officiates, DePaul students and DePaul religious leaders lead us in six down and dirty super quick weddings. It’s like Vegas,” Interfaith scholar Joel Gitskin said.

Each of the ceremonies was brief, running for about five or six minutes each.

Rev. Diane Dardon led the first ceremony, a Christian Liturgical wedding, followed a Jewish wedding led by Jewish Life Coordinator, Matt Charnay. Pastor Keith Baltimore led a Black and Afrocentric wedding; Abdul-Malik Ryan led a Muslim wedding; Interfaith Scholar Mel Kulatilake led a Buddhist ceremony; and the final ceremony was an Orthodox Catholic wedding led by Interfaith Scholar Julian Hayda.

“I knew I was going to see different wedding ceremonies, but I didn’t think everybody was going to be so enthusiastic and enjoy it that much, “DePaul student Thano Prokos said. “I didn’t know too much about any of the other rituals other than my own which is Orthodox, so it was really cool to see.”

Having a leading role in the Interfaith Scholar program, Charnay said the entire event took a lot of time and preparation. He and the scholars had been working on the event since November. All of the different clergy and student scholars wrote their own scripts, collected their own photos and did a lot of last minute planning.

“It’s always a rush and kind of a panic. Everything is always last minute because of how these things are,” DePaul Interfaith Scholar Nicholas Stanley said.

“On the fly we decide we are going to change everything right before the event and I’m like ‘oh there goes two hours of my night before,’’ Stanley said. “But it’s honestly a lot of fun and the best part is when it’s so seamless and nobody knows that this was thrown together in five minutes after a lot of other preparation.”

Pastor Keith Baltimore said he hopes students learned “there is more than one way to do the right thing.”

“I think sometimes because of our different faith traditions, ethnicities, race and cultures we can sometimes believe that our own experience is the only experience,” Baltimore said.

“Events like these prove that so many different people around the world do the exact same things we do, but also very differently than we do and they are happy, successful, good people who know God,” Baltimore said. “That is really what is great about these QIRC’s.”