A New Perspective

I know I've mentioned before that I've been to a number of weddings. Amazingly enough, people keep getting married, they keep inviting me, and I keep going. A lot of people have suggested that everyone I know ought to have been married by now. I would have thought that, too, but it is apparently not the case. I've been to weddings in places ranging from DC to San Pancho, Santa Barbara to Louisville, Chicago to St. Lucia, and several places in between. Ridiculously, I've been to 5 weddings in Roanoke, VA.

After all of that, I often find myself looking for what's new about each wedding I attend. A couple of months ago, I attended an outdoor wedding where the bride and her father rode up to the event in a horse-drawn carriage. Someone suggested that I hadn't seen that before. But I had. That wedding was an easy one to stand out, though. During the whole cake cutting/feeding thing, the bride dropped some of the cake she was supposed to feed the groom (or maybe it was the groom who dropped it -- I'm not sure) right into her cleavage. The groom went right in after it. I definitely hadn't seen that before.

But I digress. The point is that some new wedding things are easy to find while some are harder. This past weekend was incredibly easy. In my time, I've been a groomsman, an usher, a reader, an invited attendee, a Guest (my name wasn't on the invitation), a named guest (my name was on the invitation but I wasn't the primary invitee), a rehearsal dinner emcee, and even a reception crasher. But this past weekend, I served a completely new role. I was the officiant. That's right. I married them. The Girl's brother got married, and he and his fiancee wanted a friend to perform the ceremony. For some reason they asked me. Before you ask, no, I didn't go get ordained on the Internet. I'm not Reverend Abs, as several people kept wanting to call me. I am still just Abs. The Commonwealth of Virginia has a state law that allows pretty much anyone to become a "One Time Civil Celebrant" upon successfully petitioning the court to do so. There are some paperwork hoops to jump through, and you have to post a $500 bond to do it, but it's not all that difficult. I can't quite figure out the $500 bond, other than to think that it's there because we can't have poor people marrying each other willy-nilly. Then where would we be?!

Luckily for me, the bride and groom wrote the ceremony, and all I had to do was read it. Granted, I have to admit that I was disappointed to discover that it didn't start out with "Mawage..." a la the Princess Bride. Aside from that, it was quite nice. I managed to bumble my way through it, and I was lucky enough that most of my bumbling was invisible to the audience. I did screw it up on the very first sentence, and I thought that was an entirely inauspicious beginning. I managed to right the ship after that, and it suffices to say that the bride and groom are officially married and even still speaking to me.

All in all, it was a pretty cool experience, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it. There's another wedding coming up later this month. Who knows what will be new about it? Hopefully, I won't have to resort to making it the first "no pants" wedding I've attended.