The Scary Part About Wedding Ceremonies

October seems like the appropriate time to talk about something terrifying.

Wedding ceremonies.

Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic. I've never had a couple run screaming from the altar, and despite what movies have taught us, I have yet to ask if anyone objects and watch an ex-lover burst through the doors. But there is something about the ceremony that makes people nervous.

Over the years, couples have admitted plenty of fears to me. They're worried they'll cry. They're worried they'll mess up their vows, forget what they're supposed to do, stand in the wrong place, put the ring on the wrong hand or suddenly forget how to speak English while 150 people stare at them. Some don't like being the center of attention in the first place, which makes voluntarily standing in front of everyone they know for twenty minutes sound mildly horrifying.

Others worry about something less tangible: awkwardness. What if the ceremony is too serious? Too cheesy? Too long? What if a joke doesn't land? What if they don't know what to do with their hands? What if they become emotional and can't get the words out?

I understand all of those fears. Strangely enough, none of them are the part of a wedding ceremony that scares me.

After writing hundreds of pages about couples and standing at the front of rooms filled with people who know them far better than I ever could, I've realized the scariest part of my job is much simpler:

I'm afraid of getting you wrong.

There are plenty of things that can go wrong during a ceremony. Microphones can stop working. Rings can get stuck. Someone can miss a cue. I've officiated enough weddings to know that the unexpected is usually far less disastrous than it feels in the moment. Sometimes it becomes everyone's favorite part.

Those things don't scare me very much. Being trusted with someone's story, standing in front of their parents, siblings, grandparents and closest friends, talking about who they are and why they love each other, and having those words not sound like them?

That's scary.

It's probably why I spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about wedding ceremonies. I don't want to tell a love story simply by moving from first date, to first apartment, to proposal, to wedding day. I don't want to grab a beautiful paragraph I've used before, swap two names and call it personalized. I don't want to manufacture some profound meaning a couple never actually expressed. And I definitely don't want someone sitting in the third row thinking, Who the hell is he talking about?

I want the opposite. I want somebody in that third row to start laughing before I've even finished the story because they already know exactly where it's going. I want a parent to recognize something about their son or daughter they've watched for years. I want friends exchanging looks because what I'm saying is so painfully them. I want the couple beside me to occasionally give me that expression that says, I cannot believe you put that in there.

Somewhere between those laughs, though, I want everyone in the room to understand something deeper about why these two people work. That's the strange responsibility of being a wedding officiant. I'm given a relatively short amount of time to get to know two people well enough to talk about them in front of the people who have known them their entire lives.

Ironically, most of the things couples are afraid of are the things I wish they'd worry about less.

If you cry, cry. If you laugh halfway through your vows, laugh. If you stumble over a word, start again. If you put the ring on the wrong finger, we'll fix it. If you forget what you're supposed to do next, that's convenient, because I'm standing approximately three feet away and already know what comes next.

You don't need to perform your wedding ceremony perfectly. In fact, I don't really want you to perform it at all.

I want you to experience it.

Your hands might shake. Your voice might crack. You might laugh at a moment you weren't expecting to. One of you might completely butcher a repeat-after-me line that contained approximately seven words. None of that ruins a ceremony. Usually, that's the stuff that makes it real.

Maybe that's the funny thing about wedding ceremonies: couples and officiants are often afraid of completely different things. You're worried about messing up the words; I'm worried about making sure they're the right words in the first place. You're worried about something unexpected happening; I've learned that something unexpected almost certainly will happen, and we'll be fine. You're worried about standing in front of everybody you love and feeling completely exposed; I'm trying to make sure that when they look at you, they recognize exactly the people they came there to celebrate.

So yes, there are scary parts of a wedding ceremony. Crying isn't one of them. Neither is stumbling through a vow, laughing when you weren't expecting to or forgetting which hand gets the ring.

The scary part would be spending so much time trying to have the "perfect" ceremony that we accidentally create one that could belong to anybody.

I'd rather take the imperfections. Because when your ceremony sounds like your stories, your humor, your people and your relationship, there's really nothing to be afraid of.

Except maybe the best man.

He has one job. And somehow, that still makes me nervous.