I love doing weddings if “doing” is the proper verb. “Officiate” sounds too formal; “celebrate” may be closer to the task. But I think it’s really a matter of “doing” because the role requires so much to be done. There’s getting to know the couple, sometimes counseling, planning the ceremony in a meaningful way, polishing the wedding so it’s just right and a lot of handholding through the stresses and strains of the normal process. And then, of course, it’s showing up and actually “doing” the wedding. You can always count on something going “wrong.” It could be the weather is all wrong, the mother of the bride has a breakdown, grandpa needs to use the bathroom in the middle of the processional, the flower girl reverses her tracks because she feels she must pick up all the pedals after they have been strewn. I’ve had at least half a dozen people pass out at some point in the wedding, and a groom who delayed the wedding by an hour because his nerves did not allow him to leave the toilet.


I have recorded my weddings in Salt Lake City; to date: 985. With twelve years of ministry in Boston before arriving in Zion, my total easily surpasses the 1000 milestone. The most money I ever received was my very first wedding in 1975 in Cambridge. My hair stylist (back when I had hair and it mattered), asked me to “do” her wedding at midnight on the vernal equinox and to bring a camera because I would double as photographer. I was 26 years old and never thought weddings could be such a bizarre sideline of ministry.


Since then I’ve done weddings for politicians and movie stars and radio personalities. I’ve been flown to Chicago and New York. I’ve pronounced couples as married while standing at the very edge of a high cliff at Capitol Reef National Park on a terribly windy afternoon. I’ve worn skis to do a wedding and hiked six miles to the wedding altar. All this is to say that I had my most difficult and meaningful and pressure-packed wedding to date on May 22, 2010 when I “did” the marriage of my stepdaughter. I fully understood for the first time why surgeons may not operate on family members and therapists should never try to shrink their kin. Ministers should also adhere to such sound principles because the fear of scarring a family member can paralyze.


Facing skeptics from her dad’s Irish Catholic side of the family; atop Mount Tamalpais on a very brisk afternoon; the wind having knocked over the flower arrangements; efforts to control my own tears of happiness; ignoring the mother of the bride because one glance at her and I would become unglued; it all came together in story-book fashion. But I was certainly glad I had a few wedding experiences under my belt.


After a fine dinner and crazy dancing with tunes mostly from the 80’s (they went for nostalgia), and kissing and hugging and welcoming a whole new family into our own family, we realized heading back exhausted to our place in Bolinas that they were married. And that was all that really mattered. Even if I had said “Mawidge,” or the bride tripped, or the groom fainted, the most important point of it all, often forgotten, is that in the end a new family has taken root. This is cause to celebrate, and nothing can really ever go “wrong” when the ultimate goal of uniting two people is accomplished. TRG