June Bride

Early adopters of this blog, as well as those who have joined more recently, but have ploughed through older posts, will recall that Greg was even more enthusiastic than usual on the subject of officiating weddings.  More of you might remember last summer's lovely do with Djinn and Richard, in which I got to play a couple of roles; well today I got to officiate my first wedding, and I can totally see what Greg means. The happy couple - and I should say an infectiously lovely couple they are too - Chris and Vivian, are friends of David from the Saturday Sangha, and while this was a totally non-denominational wedding, they were happy to have me on board. I had met with them last month to go over the ceremony, as they managed to get their honeymoon in Europe in before the wedding; they only got back last night, so by four o'clock this afternoon, the adrenaline was definitely being held in check by the jet-lag.
So there were no precepts, no incense, no robes, and we weren't in the Buddha Hall. In fact we were in the spectacular rotunda at the Palace of Fine Arts, which is a glorious setting for such a thing. The sun was even shining, though the wind was also racing through the columns.
I had been worried about my voice getting lost in the wind, but when I went to check it out beforehand, the two musicians who were off to the side were able to hear me. During the ceremony itself I made sure to keep reading slowly and to project - a few times I could hear my voice bouncing back from the high roof, so I figured I was doing alright for volume.
I had no problem remembering to smile at them. It was a very lovely and moving event, and I was really happy to have had the opportunity. I managed to sneak in a few photos as well, before and after, and most importantly, remembered to bring my pen to sign the marriage certificate. And while I was not in my okesa, I was quite snappily dressed courtesy of Jim - I took the only suit I had here back to Europe for my brother's wedding last year, and since I hadn't had occasion to wear it since 2002, I left it there. Jim's suit was much classier anyway, and it was nice to get to dress up in a different way for once - people didn't recognise me when I came back into the building...