It's only weird if you say it "Mawidge". Or if the groom's surname is Humperdink, I suppose.
My friend was asked to officiate a wedding, but she knew the groom to be in love with another woman, although unwilling to lose his fiancée. He had also never told the fiancée that he loved her and wouldn't promise a lifelong commitment. The fiancée was nevertheless forcing the marriage. When my friend was asked to officiate, she was told that she could not use the words "love" or "forever". She decided against officiating.
She did go to the wedding, where the officiant talked abut companionship in the moment.
3: This story requires an update.
Some ideas to get you started here (transcript).
Last year the girlfriend officiated at her brother's wedding (which was also technically for show as they'd previously done a quickie official marriage--although apparently most of the family was not in on that secret). It was excruciating for me, mainly because I knew that the girlfriend was not particularly fond of her new sister-in-law so the opening remarks about what wonderful people they were and what a great team they made etc. etc. were at least half bullshit, but everyone else seemed to think it was just lovely.
1,2: Ah yes. Speaking like Pilate in Life of Brian is what came to my mind, but that reference is far more appropriate.
I like stories about the couple, assuming you know both of them. How they met, how he thought she was adorable, how they got stuck in an elevator together, how she stuck with him through illness, stuff like that. I think it's especially nice if there are attendees who might not know the basic how they met or what the non-relative might be like.
I also like the proposed opening.
Our officiant delivered it with a little more winkiness than I would have preferred, but I still enjoyed it.
"Marriage. Marriage is what brings us together today..."
"The internet. The internet is what brings us together today..."
Whatever you say, as long as you're brief and don't explicitly mention past sexual partners of either party, I'm sure it will be fine.
11: Hmm, seemingly sound, well-meaning advice from Moby ... careful, there's got to be a catch.
I'm sure they'll be very happy together. I've slept with both of them. (at the wedding of Iris Murdoch and John Bayley)
We had You are the bread and the knife read at our ceremony, which I'm still very fond of.
Be brief, seriously. Last summer I was at a wedding where the best man gave a 15 minute toast. Absolutely unbearable and I was already drunk.
Ah, so what Moby is saying is don't get drunk beforehand or you may find yourself rambling as he did.
the best man gave a 15 minute toast
Must have been well burned then.
See Moby, this is what happens when you don't do the jokes.
"American Heritage Dictionary defines marriage as..."
3: My wife and I were married in her parents' church, at the very strong request of her mother. Getting married in that church required undergoing some pre-marital counseling process with the proposed officiant. Ours made us undergo some psychological battery measuring our compatibility and marital readiness (or something like that). Based on the results of this battery, he determined that we were wholly incompatible and destined for divorce, and said he would not marry us. It took special pleading with the church by my wife's mother to allow us to be married in that church, with a different officiant, who apparently was less scrupulous with his standards for compatibility evaluations.
22 is just nuts. Although I recall some friends telling me how hard it was to keep a straight face while being given sex advice by a Catholic priest.
My wife and I were married in her parents' church, at the very strong request of her mother.
She showed up one day with a ring and proposed to the two of you that you marry each other.
22, 23: We never had any sex advice from a priest, but they do make you take a psychological battery and go over it with you. From what I've gathered talking to lots of people who went through the process, the strictness of the process is inversely related to how old the couple is.
At a friend's wedding, the bride's father [very German], gave a truly hilarious speech which was full of very dry humour, but also [and I'm not sure this was intentional on his part] very much sounded like, 'Let me enumerate the ways in which my daughter is a massive slut.'*
* exhaustive lists of ex boyfriends, cast in very funny ways, admittedly.
'And then there was the hitchhiker, that we were very surprised to find in her room, one Monday, just after Easter. A nice boy. Very fond of bacon.'
'Let me enumerate the ways in which my daughter is a massive slut.'
Everybody in the audience is thinking, "Why couldn't you have told me this years ago when it would have been useful information?"
I don;t know which makes me happier, 26 or 27.
My grandfather held a lifelong grudge against the RCC because they gave him and my grandmother a hard time about getting married. I've never actually understood what the hard time was about*; I suppose I should ask my dad.
*I always had the vague sense it had to do with timing and the war; my grandfather didn't serve, but he was a tool and die man, so he may have qualified as protected war production
One thing I've only thought about in the last few years is the Lutheran practice of Wedding Sermons. I witnessed one many years ago, but forgot about it until my nephew's wedding, Wisconsin Synod. My children were aghast, more by the sentiments than the fact of there being a sermon at all.
I had thought this right wing, but then encountered a Wedding Sermon in Bonhoeffer's Letters From Prison.
Is this peculiar to Lutherans? Usually Episcopal practice parallels Lutheran but I've never heard of this one there. Is it carried on in Lutheran-descended pietistic churches? Might it be German as opposed to Scandinavian, so that you wouldn't see it among Evangelical Lutherans or the Swedish Covenant?
All of these are wonderful. You should definitely include the Litany Against Fear in the reading. Adapted, of course, as needed.
I had thought this right wing, but then encountered a Wedding Sermon in Bonhoeffer's Letters From Prison.
It's very lovely but perhaps a little old school w/r/t the ol' gender roles. On the other hand, Nazi prison.
10 points if you can work the phrase "on the other hand, Nazi prison" into your wedding speech.
At my brother's wedding we recited "The Jumblies" in unison. Of course we weren't the officiants.
Why does it make a ceremony "empty" for the couple to already have the license? Hasn't it been common for ages, if not universal, for the license to be obtained separately? Or does the OP mean that they did a small ceremony already that marked the marriage for them and this is the big showy one?
(Interesting case in North Carolina, where there's a law making it illegal to officiate between a couple with no marriage license, which the UCC is suing against on religious liberty grounds.)
One thing I've only thought about in the last few years is the Lutheran practice of Wedding Sermons.
I take it this is something more specific than a sermon at a wedding? Because I've heard those at pretty much every wedding I've attended in a church, in three different countries across many denominations.
35: I think Messily is just be self-deprecating about her power.
"Since the dawn of history, people have gotten married."
22: Ex and I scored off the charts on the church's compatibility test, which as I recall was really long and full of redundancy in the manner of the MMPI. Like, one question we answered differently. Now, well, she's my ex. I win again, Catholic Church.
Our priest gave a totally awesome sermon, though, which was especially appreciated given the heavy concentration of non-religious, especially on my side of the aisle. No hectoring about how marriage is hard, no bullshit platitudes, and just about as all-embracing a positive message as doctrine would allow.
35: At least in New York State, obtaining the license doesn't create the marriage -- you need a ceremony with an appropriate officiant. So I'd understand this to be a situation where the license had been obtained and a quick-and-dirty ceremony (City Hall or the like) had been performed, so the marriage was legally in existence, and then a party was going to be held with a sort of re-enactment ceremony with no legal effect.
but he was a tool and die man
,
... laydeez
I like the story about the couple who were both on a blog and then got married and insisted on never being mentioned on that blog again. What, I got to the blog afterwards and never met them so I'm exempt. Anyway I find it slightly nutso.
39: OK, but why should its legal effect be the determinant of whether it's "real" or a "reenactment"? It seems to me in the case you describe the ceremony will be much more emotionally meaningful.
Of course it makes an emotional difference whether the ceremony will have a legal counterpart, but that still seems secondary.
I wouldn't call it emotionally empty, it's just a way of saying that if you skip the City Hall ceremony, you're not married, while if you skip the party ceremony, you are.
39 is correct. I don't have any power. I won't say anything like "by the power vested in me by the District of Constitution, I pronounce you" because nobody has vested me with any powers.
The couple did a city hall wedding in November, so they are legally married already. This ceremony is for party/family/friend/entertainment purposes only.
I don't think it's emotionally empty- I just don't think "officiating" is very accurate as a descriptor of what I'm doing.
a "reenactment"
Marriage reenactors: better or worse than Civil War reenactors?
Re: the OP, our wedding processional was the tune to the Princess Bride. I don't remember much about what the officiant said, but after that we had a reading: this poem, with one minor change - "New York" to "Washington."
All things considered, the wedding and related activities went very well. Teresa would periodically gush about it, saying it went perfectly, but I never echoed her. Eventually she asked me why, and I pointed out that I had forgotten to bring the rings.
45 -- think of yourself as a hype man. PEOPLE --ARE YOU READY FOR SOME WEDDING????
41: I met them (they visited Dublin). Can't remember if it was pre-blogexit. I used to enjoy her own blog which died off or moved incognito years ago.
Brevity is the most important factor. Followed closely by scrupulously omitting too much information about anyone. If all participants at weddings would hew to these two principles and then remember their roles it would all be much more bearable.
I have little tolerance for the multi-day extravaganzas that seem to have become the new UMC norm, though so I'm sure this is just grumpiness talking.
Sigh. I believe I knew about this at the time. My memory, so weak.
No hectoring about how marriage is hard
So we got married by the mayor of this little town in NJ. The outgoing mayor was 80-something, and the incoming guy was 23 or so, and lived with his mom. When we met with him in advance, he gave us a copy of the standard spiel, which was typewritten on an old piece of honest to god onionskin, and was entirely about how marriage is hard and long and how this is a solemn occasion, etc. It was like it was written by a heavy-handed screenwriter to demonstrate a depressing wedding sermon.
AB, of course, tossed it and started from scratch. It was mostly about how important it is for spouses to have their own, separate online lives.
||Remember how some Satanists decided to troll the Oklahoma State Legislature by demanding that a monument to the Satanic religion be placed in the same area as the Legislature's monument to the Ten Commandments? They've built the sculpture of Baphomet and it is awesome. Still hasn't been installed yet but this is close to actually happening.|>
I have little tolerance for the multi-day extravaganzas that seem to have become the new UMC norm
The comeback of big weddings among my connections--which had suffered a dramatic decline after Dustin Hoffman barred the door with the brass alter cross, and may have been at their nadir when we were married in '84--has me stumped.
In the 90s I thought of it as a pendulum swing, a reaction against excesses of the hippy era. But if that were true, wouldn't simple/informal have made a discernible comeback?
"And now, 'The Rains of Castamere'."
Hilarious. Or emulate Sherlock on, er, Sherlock and make a long, rambling, seemingly insulting but actually very moving speech and then start quizzing the guests on how to solve a murder.
53: Interesting - I didn't know that was a trend, but it fits with my parents' wedding (1978).
Miłość pronounced 'meewoshch'.
I have little tolerance for the multi-day extravaganzas that seem to have become the new UMC norm
But this only applies to those guests from out of town. I've never been to a local wedding where we attended anything beyond a rehearsal dinner. But if you're travelling and staying at a hotel, I think it's nice if they recommend a bar for the night before, and have a brunch for the morning after.
Somehow we have SIX weddings to attend within twelve months. This isn't nuts when you're in your late twenties, but it seems super nuts when you're hauling kids all over the country or coaxing your mother-in-law to fly down to stay with them.
Three of them will be in my 8th month of pregnancy. Jammies has been counseling me to stop ruminating on this fact.
Our wedding was a multiday extravaganza, but we had an excuse. Most of one family and some of the other were on each coast. Rather than making half the invitees fly 3,000 miles, we had the actual wedding in DC, and then had a reception in California. There were 55-60 people at the wedding and more at the reception, but only like 15 people at both events, counting ourselves.
Also, there's another problem that made our ceremony less-than-perfect: the officiant wasn't official. We had wanted a friend of ours to officiate, but someone dropped the ball on doing the paperwork to make it legal. (And by "someone," I mean "the friend.") So we were running around like two weeks before the wedding trying to find someone who could sign the papers for free or a minimal charge. In the end, we found someone, and sorted out their own paperwork problems, but it was stressful for a while.
You will need a meetup to flee to in every location, clearly.
Please don't do the Princess Bride thing. I've been to so many weddings with that now, it's getting really old. :-(
Way to stomp all over my wedding there, Ile.
We eloped, and I heartily recommend this if you give up and cave on the only correct stance which is clearly to avoid matrimony entirely & be with each other because you want to be with each other, so take this as you wish coming from someone only hitched because of health coverage issues, but there really are good and BAD elopement practices. Personally represented within my own immediate family! Don't be a bad eloper. Do not:
- tell parents and others likely to be wounded not only that you will be eloping, but also the exact date, time and easily accessible location, thereby ensuring they know the precise moment to feel maximally awful.
- ask to wear totemic family garments so that it is SUPER clear the event has emotional significance for you and you still are not allowing them to be present.
Do:
- get yourself to a far location if possible so that it would have been difficult and an imposition to ask anyone to attend, but they can understand why you went there.
- keep it a secret beforehand, sheesh.
- take some decent photos.
- buy bottles of the best bubbly you can afford & rig up a portable ice bucket.
- arrange to "drop by for a visit" with parents/anyone else likely to have been wounded by exclusion.
- take cold bubbly and photos, as soon as they open door pop cork and get a glass in their hands, very cheerily say "you won't believe this! We got hitched!" and start showing pretty pictures. Keep the flow going until they have time to get with the jolly mood and decide to go with the "you whacky two!" party line.
- ask them to keep the news to themselves until you've finished the rounds, by now they should feel like a co-conspirator and "in" on the joke.
I've barely been to 6 weddings in my life. Mildly outcast socially FTW!
OK, it's probably closer to a dozen. But I was never at one as a kid, I'm not in touch with any extended family, and a good chunk of my classmates were married far enough away that it wasn't going to happen.
Oh, and at 28 I swapped BOGF's mid-20s social circle for AB's early-30s social circle, such that I largely missed that late-20s peak. Among our current circle(s) of friends, all but one couple married before we met them.
I do find the trend in 53 fascinating. So many UMC weddings really are big fancy productions these days (even though I agree that the three-day fiestas are primarily for out of town guests), when they weren't 35 years ago or so. My parent's first wedding was about the size of my third -- immediate family only, in a backyard. I guess we can all come up with stories about why the increasing fancification of weddings happened, but it seems definitely true that extravagant weddings are more the norm for UMC people now than they were in the 70s.
Here's my theory: weddings are primarily about assuaging fear. The fear of young couples in the 70s was of a confining, unhappy marriage like their parents, doomed to endure as an lifeless, formalistic shell, so that making the wedding primarily an unostentatious moment of personal commitment was attractive. By the 1990s, the primary fear was that marriage would be a flimsy disaster ending in divorce, so you needed a big production to symbolize that things were really serious and would last.
My favorite wedding officiant was actually drafted on the spot after the paid-for-officiant failed to show up, and was the groom's stepmother. It was very short and sweet. She basically said, "Each of these two has told me how the other helps them be the best person they most want to be. I have seen it for myself and I believe in them and in the rightness of their understanding of each other and their relationship and its promise. Let us witness their commitment to always trying to become better, together, for the rest of their lives. Let us help them when they need us. And let us be grateful for the better help they will be now be able to give us in our own quests, now that they are a team." But this was about 14 years ago and is probably heavily filtered in my head.
60 is more or less what we did, except it was Jersey and Pgh. That was done because my mom couldn't travel, but it did end up that 6 of the 16 people at the ceremony didn't go to Pgh for the reception.
HG: Sorry! You were probably super original about it. You got married at least 5 years ago, right? It wasn't old then! But seriously, it's been invoked in like 10 weddings I've been to in the last 1 year.
my favorite weddings are camp weddings where you rent out a summer camp space in the off season, and the wedding part is pretty small but mostly it's a roving weekend camping party. Now that my mom is dead I think I might actually consider it myself if I ever get married, b/c her bad knees were the main obstacle to fantasizing about it before--and she would have loved it before her knees blew out.
One of my, shall I say sources of good stories, had a very small, intimate wedding and larger reception. Apparently quite a lot of out-of-town guests were not told until they were actually out there for the weekend that they were not invited to the actual ceremony.
67 is indeed lovely, and since I'm going to have to give a toast at one of these weddings, I think I'll pilfer it.
68: Well, not if it is going to be a destination reception like that.
OK, I tallied up, and I don't think I'm at 12 even including my HS best friend's two failed weddings*. I may be forgetting 1 or 2 attended with BOGF, but I don't think so.
*technically failed marriages, but the first wedding was more or less a failure as well, since everyone on the groom's side hated the bride, and the bride's family didn't think much of the groom either.
Also, HG, if I am reading it correctly you did not ask your officiant to pronounce ti Mewwidge? To me that's the thing that I'm just tired of now. Especially having to explain it to some old or foreign person who hasn't seen the movie. For some reason I'm always the one who has to explain it.
74: it was in a city park shelter!
Actually, "destination" reminds me of what I think is #12: my friend's wedding on a cruise ship in Miami. Which was done largely to avoid people coming - they could invite whoever, only a handful would show up. That ceremony featured the most cliche-ridden officiant speech ever, with all the cliches being nautical. Comically bad.
I'm pretty sure Lee and I have only gone to one wedding, and actually she missed most of it because she was driving back from an out-of-town funeral. But the toast was about all the disasters that had befallen all the wedding plans (accurate!) and how the supportive friends came through to save the day for the happy couple and that we would all keep doing that for the rest of their lives, which I thought was a weird message. These are the flaky friends who still haven't gotten together with us even after promising at least a month ago that they totally would and weren't blowing me off.
Right, he just said it straight (although with more of a winky pause than I would recommend). A few people in the audience chuckled, but it just passed by most. And right, about 5 years ago.
72 is so hilariously wrong. Communicate to your guests, people!
75: If it makes you feel better, I've been to seven, three of which were family.
Talking about wedding planning just gives me agita. What a stressful thing to plan! I'm so glad dairy queen endorses sinful cohabitation, as that's my preferred route to domestic happiness.
Let's see: I've been to weddings of 2 siblings, 4 cousins, 3 college friends, 3 post-college friends, 3 of Jammies cousins/siblings, and 4 of Jammies' friends.
Of the 6 that are coming up, 1 is a repeat of the above, now that they can get married legally, 3 are Jammies' friends, 1 is his cousin, and 1 is my friend.
So, 25.
Now that I've written it out, I'm super torn on the boring to read but I wrote it all out!-o-meter.
72: What did they do during the actual ceremony? I like to think they sat around telling really embarassing stories about the bride and groom.
83:
If it's any consolation, I was doing a similar computation, and came up with a reasonably similar figure.
It occurs to me that I attended very few weddings outside my family when I was truly single, nor very many where there are lots of unattached people present.
So all of the frisson, the chance encounters in romantic mood probably haven't been common in the weddings I've been to, and therefore I don't need to be nonplussed about those stories, nor feel I must be unusually oblivious.
Was the trend in the 70s really for smaller-scale weddings? The only wedding I can remember from the 70s was my dad and stepmother's, and it was an insane cocaine-fueled last-days-of-disco extravaganza. It's conceivable that they were out of step with the times, though.
The last multi-day wedding extravaganza I attended brought me to State College for the first time, a couple months ago. It was as awful as I'd expected. State College seemed pretty bleak, too.
One year, in the middle of Thanksgiving Dinner, my wife's Uncle got up and proposed to her Aunt. They had been together for 40 years, but not married. In the kitchen, ten minutes later - with their drunken son officiating - they tied the knot.
Is that even legal? There's paperwork and I think the person doing it is supposed to be sober.
I once found myself in a circle of nerds*, one of whom had officiated at a wedding, at which he recited "The Jabberwocky" in its entirety. Which he then proceeded to do, again, after telling us about it, with great hilarity for himself, and mortification for me.
Also, a friend of mine has officiated a few weddings now, but the first one was that of his best childhood friend, who he's still very close to. He was literally writing up his remarks 10 minutes before the ceremony. And man, were they stupid. All this bullshit about "no two entities in the history of the universe have ever been as in love as these two." BMAFG
*It's not a comedy.
I think the Uncle and his drunken son had worked the paperwork out in advance.
Pretty sure reciting Jabberwocky falls under "weird", at least in the happy couple's eyes. Otherwise I'd totally do it.
At least the Jabberwocky is fairly short?
The full Hunting of the Snark would take a while.
When Harpo Marx got married, the couple dressed up very weirdly to obscure their identity and drove way out of town to keep the papers from hearing about it, courage-brandy on his breath:
When I woke up the car was stopped. "Where are we?" I said. "Santa Ana," said Susan. "It looks like a nice, safe place. Thirty-one and six-tenths miles from L.A."
We got our license from the city clerk - no waiting, no impertinent questions asked. I put myself down as "Adolph Marx," as an added precaution. Then off we went, cruising through town, going down the list of justices of the peace the clerk had given us. The first one we approached took one look at us and our weird getups and said he didn't know what the joke was - probably an initiation stunt from some college - but he wanted no part of it. The next one we located said to come back when we sobered up, and slammed the door in our faces.
The third guy was wearing a Landon button, and we walked out of his place before any words were exchanged.
We worked our way to the outskirts of town and to the bottom of the list before we found a justice who at least had the decency to ask to see our marriage license. He looked it over carefully and looked us over carefully. "Well," he said, "there's no law says how you have to dress up to get married. Okay, I'll oblige you."
I have written two Best Man speeches! But I'm kind of a one trick pony because both of them riffed on the little marriage spiel Odysseus gives to Nausicaa in Book 6 (ὁμοφροσύνη, joy to your friends, pain to your enemies, real pain for your sham friends, blah blah blah).
Unless you can and will recite the entirety of Through the Looking-Glass from memory, you have no business officiating at a wedding.
87: our then approximately 7 year old son was very vague on the entire concept of marriage and thought for some time that the three of us had gotten hitched. It was adorable. when the news spread that we'd done the deed, I made sure everyone knew if they enlightened him there would be hell to pay!
He went through a phase of assembling vast formations of stuffed animals and marrying them all to each other. The entire apartment was like a huge polyspeciesamory pit for a while.
Try to see if the bride won't wear something tight so everybody is reassured that she isn't armed.
my favorite weddings are camp weddings where
I read this and assumed it was going to be about drag queen officiantes.
That wouldn't have helped, she grabbed her groom's gun from his car and shot her niece in an argument over who was supposed to drive. I'd say the groom got lucky, the marriage wouldn't have lasted long anyways.
That's some Responsible Gun Ownership, right there.
I'd say the groom got lucky, the marriage wouldn't have lasted long anyways.
They're still married aren't they? There's no law that makes a marriage void if the bride kills a relative on her wedding day.
If you are going to be drunk driving with a loaded gun in your car on your wedding night, remember to keep the safety on and not leave a round in the chamber.
But then you only have five bullets.
Anybody else notice this detail?
The suspect's attorney, J. Lauson Cashdollar...
He was literally writing up his remarks 10 minutes before the ceremony.
I forgot my notes at home!* Jeez! Ten years and people still keep bringing this up!
* True. I had to wing it, but the string quartet, at least, were very complimentary about my speech. The couple in question gave me a scare last year but have not, in fact divorced.
But then you only have five bullets.
I only need one. [Commercial break.]
I think the statute of limitations on blaming the best man's speech is probably five years, and certainly below 10.
I don't have any power. I won't say anything like "by the power vested in me by the District of Constitution, I pronounce you" because nobody has vested me with any powers.
Don't sell yourself short. At the very least, say: "By the power of Greyskull..."
Ugh, He-Man weddings are SO overdone...
All the cognoscenti are having Thundercats weddings this year.
Voltron would be good them for a polyamorous wedding.
||
Maybe suggesting that LB should send her kids to a certain large midwestern research university wasn't such a good idea in light of their letting-students-play-with-bears policy.
|>
Fortunately, the url is wrong about the bear's fate.
It's kind of surprising that they let kids #2-#14 hold the biting bear cub.
I'm more curious about #3 through #10. One bite could happen to anybody and after ten, you'd have to assume the kids were into it.
"You aren't here for the petting, are you?"
This is a coverup. They were actually piloting a bear-baiting major, paid for through "community funding".
72 has happened to me. It was a little awkward but an awkward situation followed by copious wine and a dance party is the best awkward situation.
I have three weddings to go to this month. I wish I had a rockin' suit. Instead I have a cheap seersucker suit I got on ebay. I've had it tailored twice now, but there's nothing you can do about the big honking shoulder pads.
There's some good stuff for a ceremony at my friend's wedding website. I think the excerpt from Laura Kipnis's Against Love would make an excellent sermon.
I occasionally think that in the unlikely event that I get married I'd want an elopement or city hall lunch break ceremony and avoid the social trappings of weddings except for the marriage part.
124: according to the State of California, I am The Solemnizer
That is the best wedding line ever.
In the wedding-industrial complex, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the caterers who serve dinner and The Solemizers. These are their stories.
128 is great. And almost-but-not-quite dead-on appropriate, seeing as the catering was done by Homegirl Industries, who hire ex-gang members.
It would be even more appropriate if they could get Dick Wolf to do the solemnizing.
God, I've been to a lot of weddings. WASPs on Cape Cod, informal outdoor ceremony in Anchorage, in the redwoods in California, Latin ceremony in Milan, and many I'm sure I'm forgetting. We had my wife's colleague and her Iranian husband over a while back, and after about half an hour, he turned to me and said, "Wait! I know you!" When I told my mom about it, she said, "Yeah, we went to their wedding."
Donald Sutherland's Little Murders wedding monologue is referenced in my friend's ceremony, and has been linked previously in TFA, but E. Messily may want to full-on adopt the whole thing.
Marriage reenactors: better or worse than Civil War reenactors?
Depends on whether they are total farbs or not.
"And now, 'The Rains of Castamere'."
++
Alternatively finish by giving the groom wine in a golden chalice.
I like the Massachusetts law on being an officiant - anyone can apply for a one-shot license to do it (some friends once asked me to officiate at theirs, but I did not think I was the right person for the job).
In contrast, my aunt, who is a judge, has had to do a bunch of work to officiate at two family weddings. In one state it took an act of the state legislature (which I'm told is routine, but still); after the hassle with that, she joined up with the Universal Life Church as the easiest way to do the other one.
At the last wedding I attended the officiant was a cheerful Franciscan who looked about 80, and whose remarks totally avoided moralising and completely overlooked the fact that the happy couple had been cohabiting for a decade. So that was good. What threw me though was that he paused the proceedings immediately after the vows for a general photo op. Don't do that, people, it spoils the flow.
In Pennsylvania you can choose to self-officiate, which my cousin and her husband did. "We declare ourselves husband and wife!"
138 - That's presumably the Quaker influence, since that's how their weddings work. Personally, I think having someone driving the process along was very helpful.
Right, the Pennsylvania thing is to accommodate Quaker practice, although anyone can do it. My cousin actually had a Quaker ceremony even though neither she nor her husband is a Quaker. For a wedding present I gave them a book about the Wetherills.
Is this peculiar to Lutherans? Usually Episcopal practice parallels Lutheran but I've never heard of this one there. Is it carried on in Lutheran-descended pietistic churches? Might it be German as opposed to Scandinavian, so that you wouldn't see it among Evangelical Lutherans or the Swedish Covenant?
Hmmm...I thought most weddings had some sort of sermon/homily? I've mainly been to ELCA Lutheran weddings. The sermon is usually fairly innocuous, but then most things about the ELCA are. IIRC the minister usually cites Corinthians 13:4 (love is patient, love is kind...). I had a Swedish Lutheran wedding, which I actually have blocked out, but the sermon was based on a parable about a vineyard. According to my friends, it was a lovely sermon and even the atheists wished it had been longer.
I went to a conservative Baptist wedding on Christmas eve once, and the Pastor kept referring to how the couple was like Mary and Joseph, meaning to reference how Mary obeyed Joseph without question, even when it involved fleeing to Egypt. The heathens in my pew (aka my family) thought it meant the bride was knocked up.
For my wedding, we had to have premarital counseling in the church and take a compatibility/readiness for marriage test. Since we were coming in from out of town, it was a two hour affair scheduled about 5 days before the wedding. It actually could be a helpful process, since their were lots of standard issue marriage compatibility questions, like about views towards money, child-rearing, life goals. The pastor then went over various sections and had us talk about areas of potential conflict. It would have been even more helpful had my then fiance not lied about the whole thing. I suppose that should have been a sign to call off the wedding, but 5 days before I wasn't ready to do that.
A plus of grad school is that you go to very few weddings. The few people who do get married usually elope or have really low-key affairs. My sister has a trendy career in a trendy part of the East Coast, and she goes to a wedding a week April-October, usually in some bourgie place like Martha's Vineyard or the Hamptons.
I've still never been to a wedding of anyone in my age-group. Some of my friends have gotten married, but no one I'm close enough to to be invited. Obviously this is mostly because I have very few close friends.
Which is to say that I have nothing useful to contribute to this thread.
142: I went to the weddings of five people in my graduate school class and was invited to one other. That counts my own wedding, so you maybe should subtract two. Still, lots of weddings.
I'm lined up for the half marathon. This time, I can see the start gate. Very much too early for the motivational speaker.
Hard to get a signal in the crowd.
And I am putting on my shoes for the 5 Boro Bike tour.
We have boroughs but I won't go to any of them. Good luck.
Good luck and happy racing, Moby and LB!
Go! Go! You're almost done! Have some water?
after the hassle with that, she joined up with the Universal Life Church as the easiest way to do the other one
My dad is a licensed lay minister in the UCC, and as such has the authority to marry people under certain circumstances (if they're members of his congregation, in his church, etc). Because all the rules can sometimes be blurry, he also got a Universal Life Church license. So pragmatic, that Blumedad.
Nice work Hammer. 146-48 had a nice 80s sports movie montage vibe -- the crew is getting ready, getting set, working out, competing.
158: Slow compared to my last. 2:28:30.
Does anyone know how to get nipple blood out of artificial-fiber shirts?
Hot water sets blood, my mother always said, but ime I have had about equal luck with hot and cold water on blood. Basically if it's fresh, you can just scrub with handsoap. If it's not fresh, then there's a bunch more things. Biz+Cascade is the preferred mix that I was taught, but it can truly eat holes in your clothes if you forget and leave it on for hours.
Scrubbing under cold tap water worked. There was also blood on my back and I don't want to know how it got there.
Cold water, never hot, on protein stains. Salt water works good for fresh blood stains. Oxyclean is a miracle, and will get out even old blood stains, sweat stains, etc. If you don't want to buy a brand product, hydrogen peroxide + baking soda will do the trick. Just hydrogen peroxide can also work.
Nipple blood is a low-protien blood.
That was easier than I was worrying.
On the down side, I'm now in Staten Island, dressed so as not to overheat while biking. I will be very cold before I get home.
Congratulations on visiting Staten Island.
Does anyone know how to get nipple blood out of artificial-fiber shirts?
Oh, that's easy. The hard part is getting the shirt to grow nipples in the first place.
They're already there. You just need to make the shirt cold.
Via Facebook, I'm seeing a discussion where someone (friend of a friend) is claiming that their child was diagnosed with autism and the best treatment is to cut all sugar out of the diet. They say they accomplish this by eating lots of fruit and honey. I am bewildered.
173: That's utterly fascinating. I'm trying to wrap my head around a theory that fits that behavior. Honey contains fructose, glucose, and sucrose, so it's not like they're excluding a particular type of sugar by doing that. Most (all?) fruits are the same way.
I assume they're just avoiding anything that is labeled "sugar" at the grocery store.
But I don't get why honey would be OK. I would kind of understand something like Stevia, which isn't a sugar at all or "no added sugar." Or something like a wacky pseudo-diabetic diet where you count grams of sugar in everything. I will mentally chalk it up to people being stupid, but I like my woo to have some crackpot theory that makes sense through a looking-glass of baseline lunacy.
Autism is caused by government subsidies of corn and HFCS.
Okay, I read further into that discussion. It seems honey is "natural" and not "added sugar", so it's okay, but the diet is called GAPS, it says autism is called by a bad diet, and it forbids sugar "of any kind". But allows honey. It looks like several people I went to high school with are on this diet. One said he went off his diet by eating an apple pie but then said he was kidding about going off the diet, it was okay because the pie came from a natural-foods store.
177 is exactly the kind of woo I like. Much better.
There is also some discussion of the difference between "natural sugar" and "artificial sugar" or "processed sugar". I think I'm going to quit reading more now.
Icelandic autism is caused by Sigur Rós.
Oh, thanks for wading through. Very interesting. Summary here. So very, very much crazy.
As foods are introduced, you can do this (bogus) sensitivity test: put a drop of food on the wrist at bedtime. If there is an angry red reaction in the morning, avoid that food for a few weeks, then try introducing it again starting with a small amount.The original craziness sounds a lot like a legitimate diet that goes by a similar impenetrable acronym. And, of course, relies on an imbalance in the microbiome as well as detoxification from heavy metals and a soupçon of anti-vax. Excellent work, essear. Truly a wonder humans haven't caused their own extinction.
I wouldn't think there are many foods that cause a skin reaction with external application and are safe to eat?
Speaking of medicine, I just figured out that MERS is a different thing from MRSA. I didn't notice a whole new disease.
185: Just because it is/was Middle Eastern doesn't mean you can ignore it.
But, unlike MRSA, I'm guessing I won't have to take an online training about it.
I'd guess that you can eat poison ivy without harm, so long as it doesn't touch your skin. I know that works for mango allergies.
184. Nettles. But you should cook the nettles before you eat them.
But, if you put cooked nettles on your skin, will you get a rash?
Of course not. Boiled nettles are indistinguishable from boiled spinach.
If the same process required to make it palatable makes it safe to touch, I don't think it counts as a counter example.
189: So you're saying I should throw out these mashed potatoes?
Icelandic autism is caused by Sigur Rós.
You mean too much Siggi's surely?
192: nope nettles have a nuttier flavor. Make excellent pizza, with some capers, bit of garlic and young Italian sheep milk cheese.
You can make wine with nettles. Either that or some things mentioned in Harry Potter aren't real.
178 and following: I have a couple of friends on the GAPS diet. They also didn't vaccinate their kids, and moved from California to Utah because California had been ruined in some unspecified but I think maybe antigovernmentish way. I called them "friends" above but I actually have no idea how I would interact with them now as they've gone so far off the deep end. The male of the couple just posted something bitching about how Obamacare Medicare standards are killing people.
197. You can make wine with nettles, but wine made with grapes is generally considered superior.
I have little doubt that the death rate among Medicare recipients is much higher than among those who don't qualify.
And further that your odds of dying go up every additional year you're on it.
This was something about how they won't authorize some procedure that could save otherwise perfectly healthy people's lives in order to save money. Also probably chemtrails are involved, god knows. He's a kook.
They also didn't vaccinate their kids, and moved from California to Utah
Well, Utah sure needs more idiot anti-government anti-vaxers, as we've only had a couple of massive outbreaks of measles and pertussis. We have autism clusters near the refineries, too, but it's probably due to all the sugar.
I drank too much vodka today. It was cathartic, but still. Sigh.
204: Most surprising is that that there exist people in the real world named Dirk.