Handfasting a symbolic Celtic rite: ‘Literally from ‘to fast’ meaning to bind and ‘hand’ meaning the hands’ intoned the celebrant.

Suddenly, between the day’s obnubilation and the many words spent on us, I found myself gently but firmly holding a coloured lace. My next wife held the other end of the string and the celebrant tied us up, according to the handfasting ritual: the symbolic ritual of the hands.

We were there on that plain, which in other seasons would have been snow-covered, as if inside a glimpse of a postcard, a stone’s throw from the Trentino ski resorts.

In front of us, a white gazebo under which the celebrant was waiting for me to take the big step, and shortly thereafter my partner and I would exchange our deepest promises: we would be bound forever.

The same hand that exchanges promises, that is ready to respect and honour the agreement between two people.

The Celtic lace runs between the wrists, where life passes, on which we can feel our beating heart. The lace binds lives to an indissoluble destiny. This lace transfers a small, simple gesture onto a more magical plane.

Everything becomes more epic and intimate at the same time with this rite, perhaps because it goes back to the Celtic civilisation, which in our imagination, thanks to the numerous films and TV series on the subject, is steeped in mystery: the mystery of the most intimate and proud feelings at the same time that have something ancient, ancestral, primordial and therefore a harbinger of something lasting, something infinite.

Intimacy is pride, loving is a gesture of great courage. Feelings, the real ones, convey epicness and this Celtic knot reveals all these aspects to us.
In fact, it is no coincidence that some fantasy and historical film products mention it. Among the most famous are Game of Thrones and Braveheart.
Like the rings, the hand fasting laces are also protected until they are used. In fact, they are purposely kept in a box that is also artfully embroidered and precious, garlanded with special coloured ribbons: it is a shrine that guards the mystery of infinity.

This is indeed the power of handfasting.

‘May it be forever’. Recited the celebrant. Valentina and I saw that between our hands, the ribbons had arranged themselves in such a way as to reveal an eight, the symbol of infinity. To my astonishment I realised that it was I who had pulled her part of the string towards me, and vice versa. By pulling each other we had formed this symbol. The wonder of that moment is impossible to recount, perhaps that is why we adorn our most beautiful day with rituals, which have the power to make it precious and unique.