http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-mag-may032009-weddingofficiant,0,3607154.story

From the Los Angeles Times

WEDDING ALBUM

Standing on Ceremony
The idea of marriage takes on a whole new meaning when you're asked to
perform one
by Sue Smalley

The Setup
I was guilted into marriage. My then boyfriend, Kevin, and I were
living together in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and my mother was livid. To a
conservative Lutheran from a blue-collar town in Bible Belt Indiana,
shacking up was a sin, and image-conscious mothers of girls born in
the ’50s did not want their daughters deviating from the path of
righteousness. I loved my mother, so her tears cinched it. “We will
get married,” I told her after one of her heart-wrenching phone calls.
“You just put it together, and we will be there.”

Kevin was my first and only true love. I met him at 15 in the summer
of 1970. He was a breeze of fresh air blowing through a stagnant home
of held-in emotions and pristine exteriors. With him, I felt free for
the first time and relished the passion for life he embodied. We met
and fell in love, and I knew I had discovered my soul mate just five
miles from home.

To the 1974 me, the idea of marriage was just that: one that had lost
its value in society. But to make my mother happy, we agreed to go
through the motions. We bought some hippie rings and headed to our
hometown on a weekend to get married. Before the weddingâ€"a small
family gathering at my mother’s churchâ€"Kevin and I attended a
mandatory premarriage meeting with the pastor. It was there I offered
my one input about the content of that day: I struck from the ceremony
a line he intended to include, “As man is to God, woman is to man,”
because it represented everything I rejected owing to my feminist views.

The Request
Flash-forward 34 years to 2008. My next-door neighbor Lisa Henson (co-
CEO of the Jim Henson Company) calls and wants me to take a walk with
her because she has something very important to ask me. Lisa and her
fiancé, Dave, are planning their wedding, so I assume it will be a
request to throw her a shower or help in some way with her two kids.
As we stroll, Lisa says, “Hear me out. Dave and I want you to marry us.”

What? This is so far off my radar screen that I actually discover the
true meaning of dumbstruck. She lays out their logic: “You are an
atheist like Dave, in that you don’t believe in a personal God, yet
you ascribe to Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and many teachings of
Christianity, Judaism and Islam like me. You are a friend to us
both...and someone happily married for 34 years.”

I love the idea of performing a wedding. It seems to be what my heart
wants to do, but my brain thinks otherwise. Can I do it right? I’m not
licensed to perform marriages, but I discover you don’t need to be
licensed in Colorado, where the wedding will take place. What about my
social anxietyâ€"particularly my fear of public speaking? While I have
learned to overcome it in my profession as a university professor
giving academic lectures, leading a marriage ceremony is something
else entirely. Can I be calm and have enough presence of mind to
conduct the wedding Lisa and Dave so rightly deserve?

It is my daughter who helps me finally gain the confidence I need.
When I tell her of Lisa’s request, she merely answers, “If Joey
Tribbiani can do it, then you can do it, Mom!” Haâ€"reduce the request
to a Friends episode! I tell them yes, and we are set. I am the
official officiant.

The Preparation
In the aftermath of saying okay, the first question Lisa and I have
is, “What should the officiant wear?” We go shopping at Carolina
Herrera, where Lisa bought her wedding gown, and I find a lovely black
dress with a small line of purple woven through the fabric. Check that
boxâ€"the dress is done. Now, what to say?

Because I have never performed a wedding, I approach it as if I am
teaching my first class or presenting my first science lecture. I
research. I buy books and collect data, such as information on the
couple’s first meeting, how they fell in love, what their dreams are,
how they inspire each other, how they’ve formed a family (with the two
children from Lisa’s previous marriage), what they learned from their
previous loves, the deaths of their fathers, etc. We are on our way.

The Ceremony
Very early one morning, I sit at the computer, and out it flows. My
speech will be about marriage as a bond, a sacred act in which we
leave our self-centered worldview and move into one where we are part
of something larger than ourselves. Marriage is a reminder of this.

Ironically, “As man is to God, woman is to man,” the sentence I had
removed from my own cere mony 34 years prior, is exactly the thesis of
the ceremony I have prepared...without the man, God and woman
nomenclature. The experience of God as self-transcendence can be
revealed in the relationship of love between two people. Marriage is
the communal act of declaration that you will share in this discovery
and support each other in its flourishing.

The Day
July 26, 2008. The families and 100 guests gather in Telluride,
Colorado, at a mountaintop chateau. The backdrop is a snow-capped
majestic peak seen through a floor-to-ceiling window. I begin the
procession, walking down the aisle ahead of Dave and the groomsmen. As
we move into place, the music starts, and Lisa enters, radiant in
happiness and followed by her bridesmaids. The words I’ve practiced so
intently flow easily in the timeless space created by the bond of
Lisa, Dave and their loved ones. It’s as if we have traveled beyond
the borders that shape our lives. We are encased in a bubble of loveâ€"
the eternal type, everlasting.

The Aftermath
Performing the ceremony changes my life. I realize how much I value
marriage and the sacred proceedings that seal it. What I saw as a
religious relic in 1974, and a concession to my mother, has taken on
newfound significance as a vital part of our shared humanity. For
years I rejected ceremony because of its connection to religion, but
ceremonies need not be religious. In times of great transition, when
change is front and centerâ€"birth, death, coming of age, marriageâ€"they
have the power to remind us of the unwavering nature of eternal love.

I finally get itâ€"the value of marriage, the value of ceremony, the
sacred space we need to embrace the eternity of love, all that my
mother knew so many years ago. Perhaps now I can thank her for guiding
me down that path in her own way.