July/August 2001

Don't Try This at Home

by Greg Hartman

Let me tell you about the time I married my sister Lisa. No, no-holster your redneck jokes. Lisa married someone else; I just performed the ceremony.

This was a bit of a surprise to my extended family, many of whom I hadn't seen since my own wedding in 1988. Most of them didn't know I had been ordained.

Lisa had called me several months earlier to tell me she was engaged and asked if I would marry her. "Sure!" I said without thinking, which is my favorite way of speaking. I'd never performed a wedding, and it never occurred to me how terrifying it might be to do my first wedding before my own family.

A week or so before the wedding, I purchased a minister's wedding handbook, with sample ceremonies, vows and so on. Lisa and Rob, her fiance, said they would mail me some Bible verses they wanted included, and would I please throw in a little five-minute sermon? "Piece of cake!" I said.

Well, Lisa and Rob got a little busy, and they didn't send me the verses. Not that I never procrastinate myself -- at 3 a.m. the night before I left for Kansas, I sat at my computer, staring at a blank screen and desperately racking my brain for sermon ideas.

I arrived in Kansas City at 1:30 a.m. The rehearsal started at 6:30 that evening, and we hadn't even started planning the ceremony. My wife, Sarah, and I went to Lisa's apartment at 5 p.m., sat down with her and Rob and started putting together the ceremony.

The whole thing must have been a little weird for my parents. It's one thing for your children to participate in each others' weddings. It's quite another for your son to perform the ceremony for your daughter, especially when, to be blunt, he doesn't know what he's doing.

My mother had somehow gotten the impression that another minister (ideally, one who had done weddings before) was going to be involved. She was a little nervous when she realized I was flying solo, so to speak.

She came into the room while we were working on the ceremony and overheard me say, "Do I ask everyone to stand before or after I pronounce them husband and wife?"

"Why don't you ask the other minister?" my mother interjected.

"What other minister?" I said. "Say, Mom -- you look pale. Are you okay?"

My jokes didn't help. Later, when my mother popped in again and asked how it was going, I told her we were deciding what color war paint to use during the Native American part of the ceremony. I also said we were shooting for the grand prize on America's Funniest Home Videos.

I imagine her feelings were analogous to going to the hospital for brain surgery and having your doctor arrive in your room with one of your own children. You note with horror that your child, whom you clearly remember being unable to cut his meat into bite-size pieces even as a teen, is wearing a surgical mask.

"You've got to start sometime," your doctor says to your child, pointing at you. "Why don't you try this one?"

The rehearsal, of course, was a disaster. Everyone waited for me to direct things, which I would have been happy to do if I hadn't left the wedding book and all of my notes at Lisa's apartment. Overall, I'd say the rehearsal exhibited all the stately dignity of the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

God is merciful, though; the wedding went off smoothly. Sarah told me my voice only went up two octaves. When Lisa came up the aisle with my father, I had to remind myself that preachers are not supposed to cry at weddings.

Rob said he and Lisa were honored to be the first couple I ever married. He was wrong, though: The honor was mine, all mine. 

-- Greg Hartman

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