By: Tony

In November of last year, I was asked to officiate a friends’ wedding.

I’m not a big fan of weddings or any other formal social gathering, so naturally I responded with an enthusiastic “yeah, for sure.” At the time, I had a fully functional car and a decent chunk of PTO just waiting to be burned. A solo road trip to the tundra of Idaho in the dead of winter sounded like a lovely vacation. I would need to get ordained, and probably learn something about actually officiating an actual wedding, but those were minor details. I was making plans on the type of robes I would need to wear.

About a week after I was asked to do the ceremony, my car died a fiery death. I won’t go into much detail here, as that saga is for another day. The title will probably be something like, “Even Though You Hate Insurance Companies, Getting Collision Insurance Is Still Probably A Good Idea.” This speed-bump on the journey to possibly starting a witch-cult was soul-crushing and started a drawn out existential crisis and many days of riding the bus and staring out at cars longingly. I was a little distracted from my research.

I was able to get ordained with almost no trouble at all from the good people at the Universal Life Church. It took a nominal fee and came with some pretty sweet stuff, like a book on how to actually run an actual wedding. “This book seems lame,” I said out loud, and tossed it on a pile of books my mom sent me about being a modern Catholic (whatever that is).

As December Lumbered On

I started having dreams about accidentally starting a cult. People in the back chatted about where they were going to dinner afterwards as we passed out black robes. The dreams had a subdued businesslike quality, like a work luncheon where everybody had to wear large hooded robes instead of name tags. The dreams always ended before the actual ceremony started, so they were no help in that department. About a week out, I still didn’t have much in the way of a plan. We had put together a basic outline of what needed to be in the wedding, but nothing terribly specific. I had managed to sew some pretty sweet black and yellow vestments for the occasion, my thought being “look the part, be the part.” It would be a lot easier to officiate a ceremony if I felt and looked ceremonial.

Winter Solstice, the day of the ceremony, was on a Thursday. I was scheduled to fly out of Portland on Wednesday afternoon. I live in a small house in the woods south of Portland, which is in the opposite direction of the airport. Without a car, getting to the airport was a 2-day journey. I went to work ready and packed on Tuesday, then stayed on a friend’s couch in St. Johns, then completed the final part of the first leg of the journey by bumming a ride. The journey doorstep-to-doorstep was roughly 36 hours, including a full shift at work.

I packed a mostly black wardrobe, a few reference books, and my grimoire. Two things remained unfinished when I left my house Tuesday morning:

1. I did not have anything written for the wedding.
2. I had not scrawled anything in the ominous grimoire I decided to read from while conducting my duties.

I stress-read the complimentary book on officiating weddings on the bus to work, and spent a lot of time confounding google with my shotgun method of research. I’d say equal time was spent on coming up with the ceremony and writing it with an old-timey pen-and-inkwell into my grimoire.

(I decided to call the giant book I’ve been writing in a grimoire because part of my research involved finding a badass word to call my giant book.)

So I arrived.

We spent the first night in preparation, which consisted mostly of decorating cupcakes and rehearsing. And watching Hellraiser. We watched Hellraiser because one of the brides-to-be wanted to dress like the character Julia from Hellraiser 2 when she doesn’t have any skin. I hadn’t seen any of the Hellraiser series and was worried I wouldn’t understand the context if we jumped straight into the sequel. This was a very important step in the wedding preparation.

We had a lunch reception with the brides and their close family at a nice sushi and asian fusion restaurant that turned out to be buffet style. I wore my nice clothes that I brought, which were all black. In my head, this sounded like a good idea. Black shirt, tie, pants. This would make me look serious and official, which would be a good thing when officiating a wedding. In reality, this made me look like a waiter.

As the day wore on and we approached that time of the ceremony, friends and family started arriving. Normal, everyday people who had only a vague idea of what they were in for. Normies. As I have stated before, normies really put me on edge. I feel like I am a spectacle to them and expected to astonish and/or offend with every interaction. I have a growing suspicion this is just the result of social anxiety. I was wearing a giant black robe and carrying around a strange book and all of these people were just here to support the union of two delightful people. I felt like an intruder, but also felt the expectations that they held for me. I haven’t ever performed as a musician or comedian, but I am going to guess that it was a similar feeling.

The Father of the Bride declared that he would not be hugging any trees.

The ceremony itself went very smoothly. I only stumbled over a few of the words, and both brides read their vows with grace and love. People spoke of the whole affair as being “serious” and “having a lot of thought put into it,” so I think it went well. I was later informed that the type of ceremony would be called a Broom Jumping. Although a cult wasn’t started that day, I like to think that it was a small spark that may have led to other events (but that is another story).

At the reception, the Father of the Bride confounded all present with a traditional drinking/dice game called Three Man Out. I am still not convinced that there was an actual set of rules. I took extensive notes, but their meaning eluded me upon waking the following morning. We watched Hellraiser 2 because we needed closure, and I ate as many cupcakes as I drank shots of whiskey.

The next day, we had bagels. One of the newlyweds ordered an (I wrote it down so I would be accurate in my recounting) egg, tomato, onion, cucumber with chipotle spread on a cinnamon bagel. I was impressed and intrigued, but my hangover decided it was a bad idea. I threw a bagel and some coffee at the pounding in my head, and we explored the Basque Block in downtown Boise in the throes of Winter. Honestly, I had expected more snow. We rounded out the tour by going to the Capitol building to file the official paperwork and Hard-style in front of the Idaho State Senate Chambers.

A few months later, I asked the couple how they were adjusting to married life, and they said,

“Married people things are just normal things. I mean, people eat dinner every day.”

-Tabitha

Profound wisdom.