August 19, 2009 - The Great South Carolina Wedding

      He had proposed to her in a romantic way, she had said, “Yes!,” and they were in my office to prepare for their upcoming wedding. This was a new experience for both of them, and both had waited past the marriage of their friends in order to “find the right person.” She was 31, and he was 29, and her father had asked only one question of his daughter at the announcement of their engagement, “Is THIS what you have been waiting for?” In our premarital session, “she” did all the talking. She had made all the plans. She had taken notes through all her friend's weddings. She had music picked out anywhere from Handel to Hootie and the Blowfish. She would wear lace and leather, her flowers were a combination of daffodils and diazanon, it was to be an outdoor wedding in July in South Carolina, and she wanted them to write their own vows. His contribution to the premarital counseling was to hold her hand and to smile a lot. He had no idea of what he was in store for.
     At one point in the conversation, “she” excused herself to the rest room, giving me the chance to express to him in an earnest way, “Run, Forrest, Run!.” He just smiled and said nothing. Fear or ecstasy, I cannot rightly decide which it was, was the emotion behind the expression on his “big ole head.” He was in for the long haul, and there was no counseling him out of it.
It was hot the day of the wedding, which is an understatement for describing the uplands of South Carolina in July. South Carolina has less shade per square inch than any other state in the Union. There is no shade tree worth getting under in all the state, and if you do somehow manage to find a possible candidate, you will be discouraged to find that the leaves have holes. Just before the keyboardist played “We’ve Only Just Begun," by Karen Carpenter, as the accompaniment for the procession of the bride, I turned to shake his hand and to offer him my pity, which he took as a blessing. I suppose “blessing” and “pity” look the same. His hand was already unnaturally wet and clammy, feeling like a frozen cow's tongue with aloe. His face looked unusually distant. I feared we were in trouble.
     The bride wore something borrowed, blue, and new, along with many other pieces of flair she had seen other brides wear in their wedding. She was a one woman band of wedding attire jangling to the beat of the Karen Carpenter imitator who sang, “we’ll find a place where there's room to groooow," which I hoped was not a dismal prophetic statement for their already out-of shape physical proportions . Her make-up had already begun to run through the sweat courses of her face and to disappear beneath the neckline of her dress. I feared we were in trouble.
The service moved along handily, and the diazanon seemed to keep the bees and chicken flies at bay, but THEN we came to the vows. I looked at the groom to find a head that was dripping with sweat, looking for “all the world” like a cantaloupe with dew after an attack of the slime snails. I asked him to repeat after me, but his lips just curled above and below his gum line and froze with what I assume was either a stuck smile, or a frozen appeal for help. No sound, in the way of vows, issued forth from his lips. I tried several more times with the no visible change. The expression on his face may have been one of happiness like that of a gopher in soft dirt, but his mind was somewhere else.
     I altered this service in two ways. First, as opposed to his repeating vows, which he could not do, I read them all to him and simply asked him to paw twice if he agreed. His big old slimy cantaloupe of a head managed an affirming nod. Second, I point blank asked the bride if she loved this man. I know this statement is located in the service amongst other questions, but I did not want her to play the “congress and president game” by loading up a popular proposal with a bunch of other conditions that would never pass on their own. She said she loved this man. Her father just shook his head as he very quietly expressed his fear under his breath, “I feel like I am giving a Stradivarius violin to a gorilla.”
     The couple “was hitched," we all asked for God’s blessings on them, and the bride drove them away in her pick-up to a honeymoon at some undisclosed, but close, destination.
     To this day, when I stand before an altar, and remember this couple. They probably had the appropriate demeanor for any of us who stand before God. The awesome presence of God, our requesting God’s blessing, and our covenant-making before the God of all covenants is an emotional time referred to in the Bible as that of fire, smoke, lightening, thunder and great peace. We laugh at this couple, because they look like us as we have found ourselves standing at God’s altar: unworthy yet requesting. And just like them, we have had our unworthy requests blessed by the gracious God of many children.
     Like our covenant-making with God, the wedding vows of this couple will be remembered by God, and their wedding day will be remembered by the permanent stain of mascara and grease paint forming the outline of her shoes on the concrete where she had stood. Her make-up had disappeared down the neckline of her dress but had then reappeared in a great pool that eventually congealed around her feet. The paw prints will forever remind us that God’s promises are eternal.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com