I married my cousin last week!!

That is, I was the officiant in a marriage ceremony between my cousin and his now-wife. I didn’t actually marry my cousin but I did receive lots of Alabamian jokes from everyone I threw that line on (3/3).

Thursday morning, Wedding Day Actual – Grand Lake, CO. September 08, 2022

We started drinking early cause there wasn’t much for us guys to do. I was rewriting my speech on note cards because I needed to clean up some spotty handwriting and more importantly, I didn’t actually memorize even key points of my speech or even most of it.  All of those elective speech classes and me just letting them down. Nobody is shocked Pikachu at all.

The task completed, we started getting ready for the wedding. Which at the time our one job involved drinking for a couple of hours to kill some time and then fixing my hair, putting on pants, a shirt, and a jacket. Like 3 minutes of intense prep work and it’s done.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the house the makeup artist has arrived (she declined a beverage), then the photographers (they both declined beverages), and in the middle someone asks my future cousin “hey what’s that robe thing you’re wearing?” 

“Uhhh a robe” lmao.

We’re still beverage’d up and making sure to stay hydrated, naturally. It’s hard work sitting on the sidelines.

Most of the afternoon consists of taking pics of people, drinking some more, then the guys get delivered to the  site of the ceremony <map location> and although you couldn’t tell by the pics it was just off the main road through town. An otherwise idyllic but maybe not “otherwise” cause hell it took seven minutes to get there from this pretty good Airbnb (electrical problems were the only issue).

We had to walk down to the little beach from the parking lot and all I can think is that man, this place is gorgeous. Clear lake, slightly overcast skies, and 74 degrees. Hell, I bet you could do all sorts of PT in the water there. But luckily/unluckily that’s not why we’re here (I had my silkies on underneath so I was ready just in case). One can never be too ready to *not* do PT. I’m not doing PT right now. It’s great.

Backtrack to earlier this year or even late last year I was asked to officiate this event in their house. I don’t remember much then as I proceeded to drink myself into oblivion thereafter. I have no experience marrying people so not sure why I got the call up (other than familial relations) and more importantly, I wasn’t authorized to do so back then. Much like school, I asked someone else for help and then basically copied their homework. Thanks Tom for the great words! and Phil for being there in the chat I guess. Also, the American Marriage Ministry for making it easy for a regular scrub to become an authorized scrub. 

As the ceremony begins we start rocking some Savage Garden and I’m down for that. I don’t know anyone who isn’t.  The Bride starts descending and I’m kinda standing around for a beat and realize hey I’m driving this stagecoach. I’m kinda nervous but not really because there’s only a few lines you have to say before BAM, fuckin’ married and shit. I guess that’s like casting a spell to call forth fair farming weather, summon some demons, or smite your enemies. Either way, you can actually speak some of that into existence (note: none of my examples).

My favorite part of the ceremony (and I beat this into everyone then) is when I got to the part in Tom’s speech where he asks The Groom and The Bride if they want to say any words to each other. “Sometimes the bride talks for 5 minutes and usually the groom says like two lines.” I can work with that guidance.  I asked them earlier in the week if they wanted to say anything and they were both like “lol no.” Like, Hell No. The text message noise didn’t even finish playing before I got the reply with the “NO.”

So anyway, I’m telling everyone that “earlier this week I asked them if they wanted to say something and Yong replied ‘no’ immediately but luckily, Angelar said ‘yes!’” and some mild pandemonium broke out. I was looking right at her and her half of the party and LOL such a wide range of emotions <mariah carey emotions>

• Bride – shocked and absolutely not ready for that
• 2 of her friends were like “WTF NO WAY!!”
• 1 of her friends was all “OOH I WANT TO HEAR THIS”
• Lots of screaming

Unfortunately I had to break the news that that scenario wasn’t at all what was going to happen and then people realized I wasn’t a serious or professional person after all. Well, maybe not realize but that was the nail in the coffin that there was any hope for me after all.

Despite being given the speech from my buddy Tom, I used the tone from a scene in one of my favorites book series <Mutineers’ Moon> where the hero makes a joke and then moves on to a serious moment so I said “well, on with it then.”

I’m not actually a hero but I can crack a joke at inappropriate times and then talk about something. Which is really all you need to marry/officiate a thing. Luckily the fate of the world did not hang in the balance but things were about to get real. 

After they had accepted their vows, exchanged rings, and I said some cheesy lines nobody will remember, I was able to pronounce them husband and wife due to the power of the Internets.

The ceremony was brief and extremely cool because they asked me to do it.  I lack the stamina for long endurance events these days. 3 minutes, #donedeal

After that you take like a million pictures and as much as I was/am happy for them that shit takes forever. Like ,dudes let the rest of us go drinking ‘cause that’s why we’re here.

Oh yeah congrats and shit.

Links:

The American Marriage Ministry – https://theamm.org Mutineers’ Moon – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutineers%27_Moon