Ordination as a Church of the Brethren minister gave me opportunities to assist friends in their weddings. I didn’t do many ceremonies as I was active as a minister for only a short time. As a long-term care chaplain, I served more funerals than weddings. So many that I became a go-to funeral guy in the community where the facility I served was located. It became my specialty, if you will. I gave comfort and was comforted that I could perform the service.
However, the few weddings I officiated in were sort of weird, a little strange. If I had kept on in the ministry I might have developed another specialty. In both the cases I’ll relate, Cinny served as the congregation and witness.
One ceremony was performed in a river near our cabin in Tennessee. The couple had been married in Illinois but wanted me to perform a service for them. So we walked into the river and their vows were stated a second time. It was a beautiful scene in the river current, canopied with leaved trees overhead. All four of us were touched by the commitment and the lovely setting. Unusual and lovely.
A second ceremony was performed at the Penuel Ridge retreat center property. Cinny was working as manager of the center and we lived in the retreat house, so it was handy to go back to the pond on the grounds and have a wedding.
This wedding was for the minister of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Nashville, divorced and marrying a person he had met on online. They didn’t need a big affair. I was the maintenance and grounds person at the church so it was easy to ask me to perform the ceremony. He also invited me to preach on occasion. Again, that made sense. I mowed the lawn on Thursday and unplugged a toilet on Friday. Why not do the sermon on Sunday?
We had a simple ceremony by the pond with the couple saying their own vows to commit to their life together. I just sealed it with the perfunctory words.
Again, unusual and lovely. Both couples are still together after 20 years or so. I guess their love and water experiences did the trick.
In more recent times I was asked to perform a wedding for a young couple. I was working then as a tennis pro and I knew the bride’s family from the tennis club. “You taught me how to hit a backhand, why not do my wedding?” Again, made sense. I did not do that ceremony due to the horrendous credential requirements of the state. It was too much to go through for a onetime deal. The couple went to someone already in the state system. Why is the state into the wedding business? Anyway, I am out of that concern at this point.