A Lovely Ceremony

I’m back from St. Louis and everything went well. The groom’s family consists of 11 children and the bride’s family consists of 10 children. Any way you look at it, that’s a lot of people.

I wrote my best man toast on Wednesday night and read it a few times before the reception. The toast I ended up giving bore little resemblence to what I’d written. I got many kudos on the toast, so that means it was either really good or really bad (sympathy kudos). I’m going with the former.

Father Ralph O’Donnell concluded the rehearsal with a statement similar to this: No member of the wedding party is allowed to consume alcohol from the time they wake up until after the ceremony. If any member exhibits behavior that indicates they have consumed alcohol, they will be dismissed. If that member is either the bride or the groom, there will be no wedding.

Ouch. That’s harsh. I couldn’t really tell if that was a church rule or his rule. There was no such warning at the last Catholic wedding I was in, about 10 years ago. I remember passing around the flask in the parking lot before that ceremony.

The other issue we encountered was for communion. Father Ralph said that non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics should cross their arms as they walk up for communion as a sign that they would not be taking it. After the bride and groom, I was the first in line and the groom’s brother was behind me. Neither would be taking communion. The groom’s brother was trying to convince me that we couldn’t go 0-2 right out of the gate and that I needed to take one for the team. I don’t think either of us would have been fooling anyone, so we both went up arms crossed.

I hope to get back to some Excel related posts this afternoon. I’m trying to look up all the artists that were left as comments to my last post. I was surprised at how few I knew.

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4 thoughts on “A Lovely Ceremony

  1. So I think we can safely assume that they didn’t serve wine with communion.

    Welcome back, Dick. Now get to work and give me a daily dose of Excel. Preferably, something I don’t already know.

  2. Welcome back.

    I would say that I agree with the Father’s admonition.

    Over the past 17 years I have performed many weddings (including my mother’s to my step father). But I performed one wedding that I wish I had never done. The groom was pretty well tanked by the time of the service (because of the setup I wasn’t aware of it until the service started). It was an embarrassment for him, the bride, and the family. It was the only time I ever stopped a sermon in mid sentence – he was starting to talk back… After that I made it routine to give the same talk – no alcohol. Weddings are too important to squander with a perceived need to “have a drink”. I would rather have someone offended by “No alcohol” policy than to be obnoxious at a wedding.


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