Catholic Weddings

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending my uncle’s wedding. His traditional, Catholic wedding. If anyone ever invites you to a traditional Catholic wedding, do yourself a favor and stab that person in both eyes with a knitting needle. If they still invite you to the wedding, at least you can be assured that their faith is real, as only a true Catholic would remain unwavering in their original conviction despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

One thing I will say about the Catholics, they know how to have a rollicking good time. A wedding is a celebration of two people who are stupid enough to get the law involved in their love. In that vain, we were a bit celebratory in nature as we entered the church. It was the first time that all my aunts and uncles on that side of the family have been together in six years. There was hugging and talking, saying hello to people that we haven’t seen in a while; fairly expected family behavior at a wedding. The priest gets on the microphone and admonishes us: “Please keep the conversation quiet, as this area is reserved for quiet contemplation.” I just turned around and walked out. I grabbed a Communion wafer on my way out, as I figure, hey, it never hurts to have some Jesus with you, you know? Maybe I see someone suffering from hypoglycemia; I can shove the wafer in his mouth and yell, “The body of Christ compels you!” Jesus saves.

So after rinsing my face in the Holy Water, I went back into the church and took up my place in the pews. We stood as the wedding procession entered, and remained standing for approximately the next three days, as the wedding party walked down the aisle, lit the candles, walked around and was seated, the singer sung a song or six, some of which we were encouraged to sing along with (though apparently you need at least four years of musical training to figure out to read a damn hymnal: Are we here? No wait, he jumped over here. Did he just skip that line? No, it drops down… what the hell does Coda mean? Do I sing it? Damn, wasn’t supposed to, ok… Oh, everyone has stopped singing, I should probably stop too). When we finally were allowed to sit, I found myself longing for the days of standing, as church pews are the most singly uncomfortable piece of furniture one could reasonably be expected to sit on. They could light a bed of nails on fire and it would be more inviting.

I find it’s best to try and learn something new when exposed to a culture you are unfamiliar with (and I am not terribly acquainted with Catholic ritual). For example, I learned that it is unwise to let a priest, who is theoretically chaste, officiate a ceremony that is entirely based around love. His speech consisted primarily of stumbling around looking for words. I shit you not, an excerpt from his speech went as follows: “Marriage… well, marriage is… well, I guess you could say it was kind of a celebration… marriage is about love… it is a celebration of love and commitment… and it is this marriage, this celebration… also of devotion, but love… and…” Look, I know love may be a new concept to you, but try to prepare something beforehand Father! Just think of an altar boy and the words will come. As if that weren’t bad enough, he went on to read forwarded e-mail jokes, one of which was about divorce… a joke about divorce at a wedding! Awesome! And then he referred to the newlyweds as “Mark and Tom… wait, that’s not right.” Shit, I guess he was thinking of the altar boys! What a fucking travesty of justice that shit was…

I had the good fortune to be seated next to my mother. My mother really gets into church. She was singing along to all the songs. It didn’t matter if it was meant for the whole congregation or just the professional singer they hired; hell, she even sung along to an instrumental. But she didn’t bother singing words. We had the words right there in front of us in the hymnals, didn’t matter. She was just humming “la la dee doo dah,” off-key, often not even to the same tune as the music (I swear at one point she was doing Baby Elephant Walk). I couldn’t keep a straight face. My uncle is walking down the aisle with his new bride and I am laughing hysterically because my mother will not stop humming carnival tunes behind me. Awkward.

Speaking of Catholic drinking songs, one of the hymns we sang contained the lyric “Blessed are those that come in the name of the Lord.” I did not realize that was all it took to be blessed. The first thing I did when I got home was write JESUS on my trashcan in big, bold letters. Now I’m coming in the Lord’s name five or six times a day. I’m jerking for Jesus! I like to think of each one as a little blessing in the palm of my hand… Hey, I’m earning my ticket to Heaven. And on that note, I think I have some offerings to make. This one’s for you Lord!