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...

I Do

I would say Djinn and Richard's wedding went off smoothly, and pretty much as planned, and the general consensus was that it was a wonderful event, filled with a great outpouring of love.
The afternoon was quite busy - my main issues were first that Paul was away all day, so I couldn't fine tune the script or check a few details about placement of objects on the wedding table, and also that I couldn't for the life of me find a matching pair of candle holders for the bride and groom, who carry tapers to the altar, light them from the altar candle, then jointly light a candle on the wedding table. So we did it with non-matching holders, and of course it was fine. We also went with the script as was, though when Paul sat down he just started extemporising, with an Irish brogue for good measure, and this set the tone for the ceremony, warm and informal, 'charming', as Djinn's father put it in his speech afterwards.
I got lucky with my speech - I was sitting in the lounge having my mid-morning coffee and toast, reading the cartoons in the paper (a favourite activity combination), and I read my horoscope for the day:
"LIBRA (September 22-October 22): A friend of yours stands on the brink of a huge life decision. You know what it's like to freeze on the spot. Give him/her that final push over the threshold".
So I had a great introduction handed to me by the universe - even though of course Djinn and Richard needed no pushing from anyone...  I also mentioned that Richard and I had gone out for a Zen Center version of a bachelor party the night before - where a total of three drinks were consumed, two of them by me, and that having gone to bed, I had not been able to sleep right away, but while I was lying there, a thought came to me - I had been musing on couples at Tassajara, which is a place where people go to study the self. Now, as Dogen says, in a phrase most people at Zen Center know, to study the self is to forget the self. It occurred to me that when you forget the self, there is more room for love to enter. And, as everyone agrees, and many people expressed eloquently both during the ceremony and afterwards, Djinn and Richard both manifest a wonderful selfless love.
I wore a third hat during the proceedings, as well as being ino and best man, that of photographer, and here are three of my favourite pictures: Djinn, Paul and Richard in the courtyard after the ceremony; Djinn getting a hug from Myo, and the happy couple cutting the pavlova, which was a centrepiece of an abundant spread of food (Jeffrey and Dana, among many others, surpassed themselves creating this - in fact almost everyone at City Center helped to create the event, and to clear it up afterwards, which is a wonderful part of living in community).