1
\nWhen you\u2019re asked to officiate a wedding, first consider who\u2019s asking, and why. You only know the couple through your partner, and because she went to them for support during your summer-long separation, they must already know you\u2019re not the ideal candidate to stand in front of large crowds and talk about commitment. When they say they want you to write the ceremony because they respect you, because they believe you\u2019re talented, accept the compliment. But consider that you may not have been their first choice. Consider that they may have been desperate.<\/p>\n
2
\nActually, you have very little understanding of what they\u2019re asking you to do. You grew up Catholic, which meant wooden kneelers, chalky wafers, creaky old voices warbling up to the rafters. Stuffy, guilt-drenched sermons, priests droning hymns. Weddings meant all this, too, but with rings at the end. Picture yourself in a black-and-white robe with a detachable collar. Fifteen minutes, the couple tells you. Completely secular. No blessing, no unity candle, no calling the parishioners up for communion. This, of course, is what you want to hear. And yet, a small part of you liked imagining the spectacle.<\/p>\n
3
\nDon\u2019t say yes because you find the couple inspiring, or because you value their friendship, or even because you want to make your partner proud. Say yes because it may benefit you. You know this is selfish, but you\u2019re no stranger to selfishness\u2014the cause of so many silenced phone calls, lost friendships, your summer-long separation. Selfishness and guilt: these two feelings have come to define you. Say yes, too, because there may be something redemptive about the experience. Because you think that it, like everything else you say yes to, might somehow make you better.<\/p>\n
4
\nThe first step in officiating a wedding is to ignore it for a month. Every few days, think of it with a shudder and let it drift away. This always happens: the idea of the thing is appealing until it approaches and its reality leaves you paralyzed, excitement turns to dread. When your partner asks you about your progress, shrug and make noncommittal noises. Tell her you\u2019ve been thinking about it. Say, Only fifteen minutes. Wonder if the couple might have someone else in mind, if there\u2019s still enough time for a replacement to relieve you of your duties.<\/p>\n
5
\nThe second step in officiating a wedding is to watch Youtube videos. Lots of them. Note that none of the Internet-ordained officiants are completely secular, even when their video\u2019s title labels them as such. They all slip, often just for a word: \u201cblessing\u201d or \u201cspirit\u201d or \u201cfaith.\u201d Worry that a phrase from your Catholic upbringing might slip mid-sermon, the muscle memory of the Apostles\u2019 Creed. Try to pinpoint the moment you lost faith and realize that this, of course, is impossible. The loss happened over time, both naturally and surprisingly, like the word \u201ceternity\u201d from the officiant who just wants his friends to be happy for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n
6
\nYou expect there to be a test, or something. Instead, you type your name and address into a form and pay forty dollars to register as a minister in the state of Michigan through a non-denominational, San Diego-based church called the Open Ministry. It\u2019s easier than signing up for a mailing list, and certainly easier than removing yourself from one. In a few days, you\u2019ll be sent a certificate to pass along to the couple, who will show it to the Saginaw County Clerk to prove they\u2019re in capable hands. After you register, browse the Open Ministry website for tips on writing a secular ceremony. With four months until the wedding, remind yourself that you have plenty of time, that you work best under pressure, even though you\u2019ve tested this theory enough times to know it\u2019s not true.<\/p>\n
7
\nYou partner can fall asleep instantly and sleep through the night, her body often twisted into painful-looking contortions. You, on the other hand, dread the nighttime. Once a runner, you now suffer from chronic discomfort in any position. You lie in bed miserably for hours, staring at the ceiling with your knees throbbing, stiffness in your back and neck. Your brain goes and goes, and on some nights you force yourself to stay up until three or four in the morning, until you\u2019re completely exhausted and certain sleep will come quickly. It\u2019s always been like this. When you were young, you would squeeze your eyes shut tight and think of heaven, trying to fathom the concept of eternity. Forever. Even then, it sounded like a commitment. Your mother reminded you it wouldn\u2019t feel like forever, that you\u2019d be so happy in heaven you wouldn\u2019t even notice, but still, it terrified you. Forever. Even as a child, there were times you wished you weren\u2019t locked into the promise, times you thought you might rather just reach old age and disappear.<\/p>\n
8
\nThe winter before the wedding, you and your partner bring your parents together for the first time at a restaurant outside Houghton Lake in Michigan. During dinner, your partner\u2019s mother mentions the wedding and asks your mother how proud she must be. Your mother raises an eyebrow. She and your father are Catholic, and while you don\u2019t know the Church\u2019s official stance on nondenominational ordainment, you imagine it\u2019s not something they\u2019re fond of. \u201cIs that right,\u201d your mother says when you elaborate. And it\u2019s the last you speak of it to each other, even after the wedding pictures pop up on Facebook, when she reminds you she\u2019s watching with a conspicuous \u201cLike.\u201d<\/p>\n
9
\nAsk yourself what you know of love. Filter this, like everything else, through your obsession with sports. Think of the quote by former major-league pitcher Jim Bouton: \u201cWhen I first came up, I thought major-league pitchers had pinpoint control, and I was worried that the best I could do was hit an area about a foot square. Then I found out that\u2019s what everybody meant by pinpoint control, and that I had it.\u201d Because you suffer so deeply from imposter syndrome, you apply this quote gymnastically to all facets of your life. For you, love develops like this: first, impossible, because it isn\u2019t so loud or obvious as you are led to believe it will be, because you are not so excitable as lovers are supposed to be, because you steel yourself against it and are gradually worn down. You push love away until it\u2019s impossible to deny you\u2019re immersed in it wholly. You reject your own love story until you can\u2019t, and even then, you are always looking for reason to doubt. Surely others have loved deeper, more meaningfully, more easily. Write this down and scratch it out. You can\u2019t start here, you can\u2019t admit this to anyone, for fear they\u2019ll doubt your love is real.<\/p>\n
10
\nYour summer-long separation began the night of your college graduation in Michigan, hours before you were to board a plane for East Asia, leaving your partner alone and broken without the shock of a trip to distract her. You made the decision weeks earlier, at the worst moment of your breakdown, when you were most sure your move south was a move you needed to make alone. When you came back from your trip, everything about you was unstable and disjointed. You regretted the separation, then regretted your regret. That summer, you and your partner were separated by a hundred miles, two hours on the interstate between your parents\u2019 respective homes. By the time you made up your mind, she\u2019d already given up on you, preparing to move south for a teaching job not forty miles from the university you\u2019d be attending. When you moved down a week after her, it felt like you were chasing her. Your father stayed two days to help you settle, and the minute he left, you were driving east across a still-foreign state to see her. You nearly gave up when you saw how cold she\u2019d grown toward you, how you\u2019d forced her into a version of herself you hardly recognized. The healing happened slowly, with week after week of hour-long drives, nights alone in her guest bedroom, patience and tears. The most frightening moments were when you thought it all might be hopeless, when you feared that the mistakes of your past were permanent and irreparable. Forever. When your summer-long separation ended, when you regained your partner\u2019s trust, neither of you knew how to talk about it with others. Her co-workers asked you if you moved down together, and to make things easier, you just said yes.<\/p>\n
11
\nStart writing the ceremony only when there\u2019s no time left to procrastinate. First, create a basic outline. Processional, greetings, speech. Vows, rings, pronouncement of marriage. Kiss, closing remarks, recessional with music. List headers on a blank document until everything is in place but your speech. Try to ignore your fear that you\u2019ll bungle the ring exchange or forget to instruct the newlyweds to kiss. These fears are not irrational, but their consequences are minor. Obsess anyway. Take this obsession, your fixation on self-perfection, your acute sense of guilt, your terrible fear of judgment and commitment, and try to blame it all on religion. You know it\u2019s not that simple, but you rationalize anyway, holding onto religion long after you swear you\u2019ve left it behind, using it as a crutch you only realize you\u2019re leaning on seconds before you crash to the ground.<\/p>\n
12
\nSkype with the couple a month before the wedding. Discover their origin story: he, a guitar player and she, a singer in a rival band. They are both your partner\u2019s age, a year older than you. She works as registered nurse while he waits tables and works toward his college degree. She and your partner were college roommates, and the four of you occasionally went to see live music at downtown Saginaw\u2019s Hamilton Street Bar. Though the couple has always seemed so perfect, you discover they are more like you and your partner than you thought. He, like you, had moments of doubt, poor and hesitant to commit. She, like your partner, was always a step ahead, financially stable and ready to settle. Ask the couple when they knew they\u2019d found the one and try not to be surprised when they both say it happened in the first three months. When you ask them to respond to your generation\u2019s often skeptical views on marriage, don\u2019t let it slip that you are, or at least you\u2019ve been, one of the skeptics. They tell you that even though they both grew up in families torn by divorce, they see marriage as a way to evolve. They define marriage as one person saying to another, \u201cYes, I\u2019m going to give you everything,\u201d and though you want to be skeptical of such a reduction, their energy almost makes you believe.<\/p>\n
13
\nThree days before the wedding, take a Greyhound bus from Columbia, South Carolina to Detroit. Your partner drove up a week before you, and she makes the three-hour trip south from Cadillac to meet you at the station. For this, treat her to dinner at your favorite place in the city, a Thai restaurant in a converted Eastern Market firehouse. Stay the night in the suburbs with your sister, the married mother of two children. A woman who, six months later, will laugh as you fit a collar on your dog, whispering loudly to your partner that for you, dog ownership is \u201cgood training.\u201d The next morning, drive the hour-and-a-half north to Saginaw, the city where you went to college and the city of the wedding. Have lunch with one former professor and tea with another. Arrive late to the rehearsal with your partner only to find you are still the first ones there, that the couple won\u2019t arrive for another twenty minutes. As you lead an informal rehearsal, try not to feel like an outsider around a bridal party of close friends. Ignore the eyes of doubtful parents evaluating your age. At dinner, the couple gives you a gift bag\u2014a six-pack of your favorite beer and a glass embossed with your initials. Accept their gratitude for something you\u2019ve yet to do. Try to be convinced when they tell you they\u2019re sure you\u2019ll be great.<\/p>\n
14
\nPeople have described you as \u201cmuted,\u201d and it\u2019s true you\u2019ve repressed emotion your entire life. There is no origin story for this, though you hear it defined as a distinctly Catholic trait, even distinctly Midwestern. You repress pain, longing, happiness, and especially love. You\u2019d like to think of yourself as measured, but you keep even yourself at such a distance, you often find that you\u2019re embarrassingly oblivious to the workings of your own mind. This is ultimately what\u2019s responsible for your summer-long separation: a gap between what you thought you wanted and the truth you pushed away, deep into your own recesses. This is why your words sometimes feel hollow\u2014they are fragile things that mask your confusion. Occasionally, though, these fragile things shatter and let loose a flood of repressed emotion, a startling and overwhelming sense of clarity that makes you feel whole. This happens repeatedly over the course of your trip, triggered by something so simple as a hug from your sister or a kind word from your professor: a humbling epiphany of the ways you love and are loved, a realization that though you often know little of what you feel, you have been feeling it for a long time, terrified of letting anyone know.<\/p>\n
15
\nStay relaxed the morning of the wedding. Check into the historic Montague Inn on the Saginaw River, then drive back across the river to campus for a haircut and lunch. Your partner is a bridesmaid, so she\u2019s otherwise occupied when you come back to wander the grounds of the inn, review your script, sip water and scan the library for titles you recognize. Decline the groomsmen\u2019s invitation to down tall boys in the carriage house, but silently approve of the level of drunkenness they\u2019ve achieved by mid-afternoon. Greet your partner\u2019s friend and your partner\u2019s parents in the courtyard for cocktail hour. When your partner\u2019s father drinks too much too quickly and quips that he\u2019ll only pay for a wedding if it happens in the next two years, just laugh with him. Smile. Drink slowly. When the groom-to-be asks if you\u2019re ready, ask him the same, and watch his grin stretch as wide as you imagine yours to be.<\/p>\n
16
\nStand at the end of a tree-lined gravel path with your back to the river, facing an arrangement of fifty chairs and a small standing crowd. When the bride walks down the aisle, instruct the crowd to stand. When she and the groom face each other, both weeping, welcome the crowd and thank them on the couple\u2019s behalf. Talk about how the couple met, how they\u2019ve stayed together over the years. Talk about cynicism and love. Say that if there is a couple that might restore lost faith in marriage, it\u2019s this one. Mean everything you say. Be vulnerable with people you\u2019ve never met. Say this: \u201cThe more we interrogate love, the more we poke at it and prod at it, look at it from different angles, the more we begin to understand about ourselves and our partners.\u201d Wonder if this is more for the crowd, the couple, or yourself. Cite Ambrose Bierce\u2019s cynical definition of love\u2014A temporary insanity curable by marriage\u2014and refute it with better definitions. Quote Frost, Rilke, Rumi. Quote Baldwin: \u201cLove does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a growing up.\u201d Pass the microphone for vows. Handle the rings cleanly and ask the couple if they take each other, lawfully, forever. By the powers vested in you by the World Wide Web, pronounce them husband and wife. Send them away to applause, realizing only when they\u2019re halfway down the aisle that the crowd has been standing since the procession of the bride because you never instructed them to sit.<\/p>\n
17
\nThe was nothing about your summer-long separation that wasn\u2019t your fault. If there\u2019s a sign of your personal growth in the past two years, it\u2019s visible only in perspective: you are more clear to you now. You know now that you took your own anger and fear out on your partner, convincing yourself she was the reason for your unhappiness, that her absence would solve you. The night before you left for East Asia, you told her you never missed her when you were apart, as if that was any explanation, as if you weren\u2019t about to spend the next three weeks trying to convince yourself it was true. You made mistakes. You are at fault, but not forever. The most challenging thing you\u2019ll ever do is not to beg her for forgiveness, but to forgive yourself. Learn that there\u2019s inherent judgment in forgiveness. Learn that when your partner says she forgives you, she\u2019s seeing something in you that you can\u2019t see.<\/p>\n
18
\nTake a deep breath and walk back to the reception tent alone. You receive a handful of compliments, but mostly, people are ready to drink. The wedding is young, Gatsby-themed, and it\u2019s a smooth transition from ceremony officiant to another partier on the dance floor sucking down 7-and-7s. The bouquet toss is rigged in your partner\u2019s favor, but you are easily boxed out for the garter. Note the surrealism of hearing Ginuwine drift over from the dance floor to the deep backyard of the historic inn, echoing off the moonlit river. Get drunk enough to forget about signing the marriage certificate until the end of the night. When it\u2019s time, steady yourself on the table and squint one eye to make sure your signature stays on the line. Drunkenly appraise the night with equal parts satisfaction and relief. Be glad that you followed through.<\/p>\n
19
\nYour partner briefly dated another man during your summer-long separation, and later you learn that he was at the wedding, that he saw the two of you in the drink line, and when you turned to order your drinks, he told your partner she broke his heart by going back to you. Later, you learn he was the couple\u2019s first choice to officiate the ceremony, until he fell out of their favor by sleeping with a married woman, a friend of theirs. Though you were right to assume you were a replacement, consider that your selection wasn\u2019t necessarily a sign of desperation. Consider that their choosing you may have been a purposeful sign of faith, redemptive in its own right. Try to suspend your judgments, but do allow yourself to indulge in the clich\u00e9d belief that perhaps you were the better man\u2014if not better than him, then at least better than the man you were before.<\/p>\n
20
\nThe next afternoon, you and your partner get in her car and begin the thirteen-hour drive home to South Carolina. You came up separately but you\u2019re going home together. This feels so symbolic and revisionary and perfect that even getting stuck for hours on I-75 isn\u2019t enough to sour the mood. During that time, your partner raves about how well you did at the wedding, how glad she is that the couple asked you. For once, accept her compliment and her joy. If she is blinded by love, as you too often allow yourself to think, that blindness may offer more truth than the censure of your harshest critic. Smile, close your eyes. Trust her to guide the both of you home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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