A Friend Officiated Our Wedding And Now My Husband’s Dead
My husband Cameron and I got our friend to officiate our wedding. We didn’t want a stranger up there with us on our special day. We wanted someone we knew, someone with whom we were comfortable, someone who wouldn’t charge us money.
And while none of our guests understood a word our friend said because he stood too far from the microphone, he had no idea when to have us exchange rings, he didn’t write any prepared marks and chose to free-form stuff about love, he tried quoting ‘Princess Bride’ while doing a lame impersonation of that speech-impediment priest, he knocked over our unity candle, setting the Maid of Honor’s dress on fire, and when it turned out that his Universal Life Church ordination was not valid in our part of New York State, our marriage turned out not to be legal, at least he didn’t charge us any money.
Even though he completely ruined our ceremony, it was personal, it was someone we knew. And that’s all that matters. And we saved money.
We also elected to have a friend cater the wedding, because he’d had us over for barbecues so many times before. We wanted to know that the food had been prepared by someone close to us, someone who knew our dietary particulars. And while he prepared burgers and hot dogs despite our specific request for a choice of salmon or chicken, and even…
