What Was He Thinking?

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This weekend I went to wedding.  It can be a bit odd going to a wedding where you only know the bride (she won’t be talking to you much) and a few other people who have been seated at other tables.  But that isn’t what I wanted to talk about. 

During the ceremony, the minister did something that I felt was a bit odd.  He spent about five minutes talking about how common divorce is, how we don’t really expect marriages to last, how people often grow apart, and how now that we live longer lives it is much more difficult for people to maintain lifelong commitments to each other.  All of which are perfectly interesting topics, but I’m not even sure if I would consider them appropriate for the wedding reception.  I’m totally sure that it doesn’t make sense for the ceremony.  If the minister wants to talk about such things during the pre-wedding counseling he should have at it.  But at the ceremony itself?

A wedding is a supremely hopeful act.  It may be unrealistically hopeful in some cases.  But there is a balance between being clear-eyed about the challenges ahead, and turning the challenges into a self-fullfilling prophecy of failure.  He eventually made his way back to talking about how my friend and her husband had somewhat (he even used that word) better chances than most because they seemed well suited for each other and they were both lawyers (which was a positive aspect of the union?). 

Am I wrong in thinking that was a little weird? 

29 thoughts on “What Was He Thinking?”

  1. A little strange, yes, but not entirely outside of the genre of sermonly exhortation.
    The litany of dichotomies in the usual vows “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health” has always seemed a bit macabre to me, inevitably conjuring up a vision of a wife or husband getting fed up with the povery and dismalness of the married state and walking out on the other person the moment that incurable illness is diagnosed.
    Weddings are hopeful, but the best ones are also solemn: we are all gathered here today to bear witness to your desire to try, for a very long time, to maintain a meaningful relationship, and we all recognize that that’s a difficult endeavor and wish you the very best luck with it. The lawyer-compatibility gag, though, makes me wonder a little about the minister’s judgment.

  2. Well, finally watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this weekend…I wait for these things to come to cable…and my first reaction was:”It no longer even crosses young people’s minds anymore that they will die in bed with their partner.”
    If it is true (I could be full of it)…there is a sadness and loss of high romance but also an acceptance and pragmatism and independence.
    Actual fact: twenty years ago I looked at odds and personalities and my extended family of thirty couples (mostly cousins) and predicted 5 divorces in a conversation with an uncle. There have been zero.

  3. Yes. I agree. I would have thought it was a little weird, as well.
    If the couple has somehow made it clear to the minister before the wedding that they don’t consider the marriage necessarily to be a lifetime commitment, then the minister can either (a) back out; or (b) have them recite those vows I hate (“As long as we both shall love…”).
    Otherwise? Celebrate and be optimistic!

  4. I agree somewhat with jackmoron, sending a newly wedded couple off with “until death do us part” is a lofty goal at best. My folks have been married for 53 years, and I know they survived some tough times; economic and in matters of faithfulness. I have been married twice, the first was well intended. I was enamored with my first wife and still think I was in love. Even now, looking back, I can only surmise that my own immaturity was the culprit. We had a son together, but three years after we were married. We fell out of love a couple years later. I remarried three years later to my soul mate, my “death do us” partner. In addition to Sebastian’s wonderings about that particular ceremony, ObSiWi has been a healthy platform to discuss marriage with either its coveted sanctity or desired benefits to other couplings in our society. A more conservative take on that issue was presented in this article>. Should we not tinker with these vows that seem nearly impossible? Or is Sebastian’s minister merely a thoughtful realist who wants the blissful couple and their celebrants to know that young love is not always lasting love. Should the first marriage require a learners permit? What about the children that invariably come early? Three strikes and your out? My second grandchild was born this weekend and I’d love to see her parents live happily ever after.

  5. My apologies to Jackmormon. It wasn’t until I saw the extended link that I realize I screwed up your name. No it was not a Freudian slip, just me being in a hurry.

  6. I was at a wedding in which almost the exact same thing occurred. Ten minutes on divorce, falling out of love, etc. — all well and good subjects, but a bit odd at a wedding.
    Of course, the weirdest wedding I’ve been to involved a priest whose voice was identical — identical — to the Cryptkeeper’s voice.

  9. Half the weddings I go to feature this “advice” or “observation” that says more about the speaker than it does about the for now happy couple.

  11. It seems the proper place for those comments would be the meetings with the minister prior to the wedding, not during the ceremony. I could see him making a small reference to how difficult marriage is but the rest was overkill.

  12. Yep, a little weird all right. The topic of divorce should’ve been handled in pre-marital counseling, not when they’re standing before God and family and friends, taking lifelong vows. If the pastor had real issues with the couple, he could’ve sent them to another paster. The last wedding I went to, though, was also a little weird. It came across too much like the summation of a legal/business joint venture. To each his own.

  13. I have not heard anything like that yet, and would find it really strange. Future difficulties and traps one can talk about, but divorce…. nah. Not during the ceremony.

  14. That does strike me wrong–sort of like giving your team a pep talk before the big game that says, “I don’t really expect you guys to win this one, but just do your best!”
    I’ve always hated the “death do us part” language, anyway. Talk about unrealistic pressure! I’m not the same person I was five, ten, twenty years ago–how do I know where I’ll be at the same number down the line? People change. Sometimes I think Heinlein had the right idea with contract marriages.
    Admittedly, though, I’m a big fan of taking the state entirely out of the “marriage” business, and instead simply handing out civil union-type contracts with whatever terms people agree on. That way the government satisfies its need for relationships to have a legally defined standing for various purposes, the religious types can breathe easy with the knowledge that government isn’t in the business of defining “marriage” any more, and gay people can be happy that they have equal rights under the law.

  15. I have had this experience before. When a couple comes to a church to get married they are submitting themselves to that particular reverend and denominations views. While many couples are just looking for a “nice” ceremony the particular reverend presiding knows its an important opportunity to educate on the crucial institution of marriage.
    What denomination was it, if I may ask?

  16. Yes, this is a little creepy. It’s a little like regaling your pregnant friend with stories of very rough and perhaps tragic birthings the week before their due date.
    Then again, it’s a little like those movies they would show you in high school of grisly, macabre car wrecks in driver’s ed class. Or maybe those films of grotesque sexually transmitted diseases in health class. I mean, I understand the bad news, but what’s the good news?
    Besides, I drove fast anyway, tried my best, but mostly failed, to do other things fast, too, and have been happily married for 27 (what?) years, so the warnings were to no avail.
    I do have theories about the suitability of lifelong marriage to one person, but they mostly involve temporary fun, and then there is the fact that I have been happliy married for 27 years, which shoots the theories to smithereens. But there you go.
    But the ghouls persist. Which brings me to Von’s anecdote about the Cryptkeeper’s voice and a vaguely related story about the skull being revealed through the mask during what should been a soothing ceremony to send my grandmother off to her eternal reward.
    We arrived at the funeral home in the small Midwestern town. The funeral director greeted us at the door with a ghastly smile, revealing extremely yellow, misshapened teeth like those Alec Guinness wore in the “The LadyKillers”. As he shook my hand, I looked down, and his shoes were caked with mud and his fingernails, all ten, were black with grime. Shiver.
    Then, when the church ceremony was completed and all but the family had filed from the pews, his assistant, a young female intern who was oddly tall and wore a long, black dress, and had colorless, pale skin (much like my grandmother at that moment) rose from her seat and proceeded to roughly remove my grandmother’s jewelry and, I thought, rather savagely, pressed my grandmother’s body into the casket and shut the lid with a bang. I looked at my mother as if to ask, can you get the downpayment returned?
    Incidentally, at the funeral home viewing, a hunched-over little old lady made her way through the receiving line, shaking hands, head down, and when she got to my brother, she raised her head, her eyes widened and she exclaimed “My, aren’t you beautiful” and then for two minutes sweetly and shamelessly flirted with him.
    Standing, oh, eight feet from my dear, horizontal grandmother (who did not react), I had the extremely odd sensation of envy for my brother, who at one point in his life could pick up girls at will.
    Later, at the cemetary, under the temporary cover at graveside, as the minister intoned and my grandmother was slowly lowered, the cloudless, absolutely still summer day was suddenly swept by a powerful 22-second gust of wind that tore one pole of the canvas cover out of the ground and threatened to knock the many elderly folks off their feet. Then it passed and it was still. I looked to my right, and there stood, slightly away from us, the funeral home director with his teeth, and his ghastly intern. They didn’t make eye contact.
    So, marriage, driving, and sex warnings had no effect on me, but I avoid funerals, especially my own, at which, 700 years from now, I plan to drink heavily at my friends’ expense.
    But I didn’t want to talk about that either.

  20. Reminds me of Thomas Hardy in Jude the Obscure:

    The banns were put in and published the very next Sunday. The people of the parish all said what a simple fool young Fawley was. All his reading had only come to this, that he would have to sell his books to buy saucepans. Those who guessed the probable state of affairs, Arabella’s parents being among them, declared that it was the sort of conduct they would have expected of such an honest young man as Jude in reparation of the wrong he had done his innocent sweetheart. The parson who married them seemed to think it satisfactory too. And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.

    But then, who wants to have their wedding ceremony performed by Thomas Hardy? Bleah.

  24. Bah. As long as the cape is just velcroed on it will be fine, dahlin! But you simply can NOT be seen in a basic black face mask. Too boring. I won’t allow it.
    BTW, I believe in ’til death do us part. Sometimes we need to have bridges burned behin dus before we have the courage to advance.
    (With the obvious disclaimer for criminal behavior such as abuse, etc).

  26. Sebastian,
    When my cousin was married (a little over a year ago, just after Christmas), the minister had a few minute digression on the difference between a contract and a covenant before proceeding to the vows. I thought it was a distinction well worth highlighting– I hadn’t heard it explained so clearly before… and it is critical to understanding what you’re promising. Especially the requirement to honor your promise despite a breach by the other. That part is very different from the fumblings about contract that high school history & government gives us.

  27. Jackmormon:
    Let me the second to apologize.
    If it makes you feel any better, my wife confuses “John Thullen” with youmoron all the time.

  29. They say that people should wait before marrying to try and see if they could stay committed for long. I don’t think this should be the case. People should marry if they want to. The fact that they’re considering marriage is the same as stating that they’re ready for a life-long commitment. Maybe the pastor was right about how high divorce rates are, but it’s really up to the couple if they want to stay together or not.

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