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A couple weeks ago, the Monk and I tagged along with a couple friends to a wedding that would play host to the awesomest display of a horrible wedding sermonthing ever known. It was exuberant in its excruciation. In fact, it was as if the presiding minister, lifted up on high with face burned into sour malevolence and grave shadow, brandished his phoenix-tail-and-baobab wand with gleeful abandon, shouting over and again the harsh cry of "Crucio! Crucio! CRUCIO!!" until all before him kneeled, abject and terror-stricken.

It was difficult to suppress my own fitful humour as I watched this dark master at work.

But that is not why I write today. No, I thought that in lieu of weightier exercises, I would share the wedding card we offered in congratulations to the happy couple.* Now keep in mind that I knew neither of the participants (that pleasure belonging wholly to my companions for the afternoon's jaunt). As the four of us went halvsies on a gift, I prepared a card in all of our names. Never knowing what to say to those of whom I have been entirely ignorant up until the days leading up to the event I would be attending, I decided to go with something simple and effective, tried yet true, and several other clichés.

So, in light of the cutout sunflower card we had purchased (below replicated to the best of my abilities), I decided upon the most obvious. I decided to invoke Sauron.

I suppose The Monk should be congratulated for her willingness to allow me to take care of the greeting card duties. Our companions should also be congratulated for actually trusting me and not opening the card to make certain I wasn't going to be an embarrassment to them and their future fortunes in which the fresh-minted couple might figure. In the interest of fairness, tonight The Monk was expressing much regret, proposing that it was quite possible that the newly wed would have not the cultural cache to make sense of the card, either remaining oblivious to the identity of Sauron or not being savvy enough to recognize that the sunflower we had used bore an uncanny resemblance to the dread lord's much-ballyhooed eye.

In a way, I think The Monk's fear, if realized, makes the card that much cooler.

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*note: though not happy for long if the minister has any say in the matter.

Wedding Dumbness: Episode 2

Not to harp too long on the inclusion of the Divorce Lecture that's wormed it's way into many contemporary wedding ceremonies, but - well, yes - I'm going to continue. You probably know what I'm talking about if you've been to more than a couple wedding in the last couple decades: officiants warning the bride and groom of the solemnity of marriage admonishing them based off the statistics that say about fifty percent of Christian marriages end in divorce.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't discussion of the likelihood of divorce at a wedding incredibly tacky? I mean it's one thing for the wedding guests to quietly have a pool going on how likely they believe the couple are to last, but for the pastor to bring it up during the ceremony? Classy. And so much for celebrating, huh?

I mean look at it this way. At a baby shower, you don't announce to everyone that, statistically speaking, there is some probability that the baby could be still born. At Grandpa's eightieth birthday, you don't ask everyone to celebrate in earnest, because, you know, it could very well be Grandpa's last. And why don't wedding officiants then also produce some word about adultery - after all, statistics show that it is certainly not improbable. And really, adultery within marriage is worse than adultery without, so what's the deal? Why don't we mention these things?

Because it's in bad taste.

Really, what pastors are saying is: "Look. I know you're happy now. But you won't be soon. And statistically speaking, there's a betting chance that you guys won't be married five years from now. So really, let's try to make it okay? Please? I know that I've said this same thing to all those other couples - some of whom are now divorced - but I'm gonna say it anyways, 'cause, well... you guys have seen that Jesus movie right? You know that part where Pilate washes his hands? Yeah. That's me right now. I know it's tacky and that I've cast a black pall over what should have been an entirely joyous occasion, but well. I just don't want to feel guilty down the road when things aren't looking so rosy."

Blargg, I say. Blargg.

Wedding Dumbness: Episode 1

So at maybe a full quarter of the weddings I've been to over the last decade, somebody (whether pastor or father or hired wedding/rodeo clown) suggests that it would really probably be a pretty good idea for the couple to tear from their dictionaries the page that includes the word, divorce. It sounds rather superstitious to me, but I've been advised that the idea might be that if a couple never uses the word, the idea of divorce might likewise be absent from their minds - which would be especially valuable after a wife says, "I hate you and wish that Janie McIntyre, who introduced us, had never been born!" and her husband blandly responds with "Oh yeah. Well, what're you going to do about it?"

Really, I kinda like the idea of crossing things out of dictionaries to prohibit them from happening in your life. It's kinda neat in a sci-fi sort of way. Like I would totally cross out heartburn and acne and syphilis ('cuz, hey, you can't be too careful) and murdered and broke, poor, poverty, and unhappy ('cuz yeah, why not?).

Or even, really, more with the heart of those advising such dessication of the English language (that is, promoting the foreignness of immoral choices), why not just get it all with one fell swoop. "Now, Ricardo. Cheryl. I speak solemnly when I offer you this advice. It was offered to me when I married my first wife and I offer it to you now in the same manner. When you go home tonight, I admonish you, with vigour and with the knowing smile that you now see on my face, take down your twenty-six-volume Oxford Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language and abridge it. I recommend strongly, in this age of prominent divorce, in this era of failing marriages, to tear the word, "sin," from your dictionary."

Remove "divorce" from your dictionary? Really. Such pansies. When I get married, I'm gonna remove the dictionary from my dictionary.