Seven years ago, Chris and Erin asked me to perform their
wedding.
I hesitated for a moment. “Is it legal?” I asked. “Yes,” they said.
“Will you feed me?” I asked. “Yes,” they said. “Will your parents be
pissed?” I asked. (We were just a few years out of high school, back
when that question mattered more.) I don’t remember exactly what they
said, but it amounted to a shrug. “Done,” I said.
It was the cheapest wedding I’ve been to and one of the best nights
of my life—on a few green acres near Bellingham, owned by some
hippie family, with a view of the mountains and a broad, quick, cold
stream running through the property. We all picked flowers, and I think
the food was basically potluck. Chris had friends at Boundary Bay
Brewery, which sold him some extremely cheap kegs of extremely good
beer. He was a professional fiddle player with touring bluegrass and
country groups, so the band was a rotating bunch of his friends playing
in the middle of a field late into the night. Once the grown-ups drove
back to their hotels, the rest of us danced in the mud, ruined our
suits and dresses, skinny-dipped in the stream, and slept under the
stars.
I’ve performed and attended a handful of weddings since
then—lavish, humble, and in between—and the better ones are
always, always officiated by a friend of the couple. Just some schmo
who, like me, went online and got ordained by the Universal Life Church
for free.
It’s hard to explain exactly why. A
couple’s minister-for-a-day
friend isn’t always the most inspiring orator or the best at designing
a ceremony. But I’m a romantic who thinks weddings are only
mostly theater. The most important part is—or should
be—something ineffable, something you can’t plan. A kind of charm
happens between the couple and the minister during the ceremony, a
charm that only works when all three people know and care about each
other. It’s a circuit you can’t create with a stranger.
Traditionally, the town preacher knew the people he was marrying and
could say something about the two people he was going to forge, that
day, into a new family. Unless you’re part of some close-knit
microcongregation—and I’m guessing you’re not—your local
preacher doesn’t know much about you; and odds are good that your
preacher, if you were close, wouldn’t be able to fly down to California
with you anyway. And forget rent-a-preachers. Even the best ones can
only reheat the usual pabulum about love and marriage. Plus, selling
people their wedding ceremony seems sad and wrong. Sell them flowers,
food, a rental hall, advice from prenuptial therapists, strippers at
the bachelor/ette parties—but don’t sell them the wedding
itself.
Choosing someone who knows you to perform your wedding isn’t
innovative: It’s what people have been doing for as long as they’ve
been getting married. And the Universal Life Church—which was
founded by a disillusioned Pentecostal in his garage in 1959—is
here to help.
Universal Life ministers can solemnize marriages in all of the 50
states. (Some states require a letter of good standing from the church,
which ULC will provide. Canada is weirdly strict about ULC marriages.
And, as long as we’re talking marriage law, guess the two states where
girls can get married, respectively, at 13 and 14, with the consent of
a parent and a judge. Utah? West Virginia? Nope: New Hampshire and
Massachusetts.)
I’ve got one more wedding on my schedule. Next month, I’ll marry my
friends Kirk and Emmy on a little farm north of Seattle. It’ll be my
last wedding for a while—at least until I live in a state with
marriage equality. I’m ashamed to admit it, but back when Chris and
Erin asked me to marry them, I didn’t think it was unfair to perform
legally binding hetero marriages if I couldn’t perform legally binding
homo ones.
I’ve changed my mind.
I’m looking forward to performing more free weddings once gay
marriage is legal in Washington. But when it is—not if, but
when—I’d rather you didn’t call me. Don’t get me wrong,
I’d be happy to do it, but your wedding will be better if you ask
someone you already know. 
