CHAPTER 5

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Special Thanks

Never delay thanks. I learned this from either the Dalai Lama or Pinterest. It’s good advice. So, thank you for buying this book!

Is it important to thank our parents?

Hmm, let me think about that for a quarter of a second. Yes, of course!

Parents

This is a great spot to thank your parents. No matter how fraught the dynamics of your relationship with them may be in real life, if they show up for the wedding, then you must thank them for anything positive they’ve contributed to your lives. Also, often, your parents are the ones paying for most or all of the wedding, so thanks are very important here.

When thinking about what you would like to have your officiant say about your parents, ask yourself what they did for you during your life. Did they make it possible for you to live indoors? Did they keep you fed? Did they give you clothing to wear? These are things deserving of thanks.

Did your parents expose you to different activities? Did they drive you to soccer practice, or violin lessons, or camp? Thank them for assisting you with these first-world pastimes.

Did your parents send you to the very best private schools and bring you to exotic beach towns for vacations? Did you take sailing lessons with an Australian named Brian? Did they celebrate your sixteenth birthday with a grand party at a villa, complete with your favorite food, a waterslide, and a performance by your favorite band? Thank them for introducing you to Coldplay.

Conversely, did your parents force you to pickpocket audience members while they did their magic act at carnivals, driving you from town to town, so the only friends you could make were lion tamers, magicians, and acrobats? Thank them for teaching you that everyone is a mark.

Did your parents allow you to sleep indoors only on weekends? Thank them for prepping you for your career as a Park Ranger.

Did your parents push you onstage at an early age because your throat condition made you sound like Tony Bennett? Thank them for leading you to your career as the manager of a cabaret.

Were your parents absent during your childhood because they were Fortune 500 CEOs? Thank them for helping you see that being single-minded in pursuit of more money than one would ever need can make you a real a-hole. Then thank them for offering to pay for your honeymoon—don’t worry, they’ll forget that they hadn’t.

Everyone’s relationship with their parents is different, but regardless, if they had anything to do with raising you, you should thank them for it, even if you just thank them for trying.

Friends

Make sure you have your officiant thank your friends for being at your wedding. Chances are, your friends have seen sides of you that you would have preferred to have never been seen. Your friends probably guided you and helped you in ways you may not appreciate now, but you will one day, and you’ll really wish you’d thanked them at your wedding.

We’ve already covered how important it is to thank people for traveling a long way for your wedding, but it is even more important to do so if the people traveling are not blood relatives. Friends had a choice. Friends could have turned down your invitation and made up any old excuse, but they didn’t. They flew across the country, took time off from work, and dressed up in their best clothes for you and your fiancé(e) because they love you and want nothing but the best for both of you forever. Or they owe you money. Or you went to their wedding. Or all of the above. The point is, once you remove that familial link of obligation, it becomes even more impressive if friends show up at your wedding.

You don’t need to thank them by name. You do need to make a fuss about them generally. Have your officiant give a shout-out to something local and unique to your friends. Is there a football team you all cheer for? Allude to some cheer for that team. “Go Huskies!” for example. Was there a brand of shot that you would do with them at a significant point in your life? Either allude to that brand or, heck, let’s do a shot right now at the start of the ceremony in their honor!

Having a pre-ceremony shot with the couple can be a deeply bonding ritual.

Thanks for Missing an Important Sports Event

Sometimes a wedding can conflict with a major sporting event. You’ve probably joked about this with a significant other at some point if you have any interest in sports: “What if your team had the chance to win the World Series on the same night as your wedding?” It’s an interesting question, almost as interesting as the question of whether Schrodinger’s Cat is dead or alive. I’m going to call it Shelley’s Sporting Conflict. Here you are, marrying someone who should know how important it is to you that your team win the World Series. I mean, that’s one reason you’re marrying her, right? Think of the comparative likelihood of the two situations: of course, she’s going to marry you. She loves you, you’re perfect together, you support each other, and you’re best friends. Her wanting to marry you is very likely. Your team playing in a deciding game of the World Series is very unlikely. Let’s go ahead and say that most weddings take place on Saturday night. Playoff games are often scheduled for Saturday nights. So, you’ve got the potential for a conflict. The game will probably start at 8 p.m., right around when you are sitting down to dinner, supposing a 6:30 p.m. ceremony start time. The issue may not even be with you, the couple; millions of Americans are baseball fans. Chances are, some of your guests would prefer to be watching the game, and if they have money, they may even have tickets to see the game or have bets placed on the game. (For my international audience: what if a wedding conflicted with the UEFA Championship? Fans of soccer/futbol are going to want to see this game no matter what. How dare you schedule a wedding during the UEFA final, or the Euro Final, or god help you, the World Cup?!) The only way to salvage any kind of face if you’ve made the cardinal sin of scheduling your wedding during a majorly important sporting event is to acknowledge it and cater to it any way you can. They can put TVs anywhere these days. People can watch games on their phones—and they will!

What can you do during the ceremony? I once officiated a wedding for a bunch of golf fans, early on a Saturday evening during the Master’s Tournament. A handful of the most popular golfers in the world were all within a stroke of each other (I swear this is normal golf language) and many guests were wondering about it at ceremony time. I employed the help of the musicians, a brilliant and fast-learning duo called NY Ceremony Music. Anyone who has ever seen the Master’s Tournament on CBS or encountered a commercial for it can recognize the music, a gentle plucking of acoustic guitar played over images of Augusta National Golf Club: greens, trees, sand traps, fairways, flowers, very Rich-People-Zen. The musicians learned the gentle riffs, and at a point early in the welcoming remarks I had them underscore me as I adopted the hushed voice of a golf commentator, thanked the guests for showing up for the wedding during such an important sports event, and updated everyone on the current leaderboard (which I’d checked on my smartphone moments before we began the ceremony).

(Most sports events last for hours and hours, while a ceremony is twenty to twenty-five minutes. The short answer to this section is, tell your guests to suck it up and get their priorities straight.)

Missing other important life events can go beyond big games or award shows. Grandma can miss her Pilates lesson. Aunt Paula can miss her book club. Your brother can miss sitting in the basement playing World of Warcraft with his online buddies in Sweden. Find out what people usually do during the wedding time and have your officiant make something of it if you want to. If anything, it’s helpful for people to put things in perspective; it’s hard to think of a life event more important than a wedding.

HONOR THE DEPARTED

In a book designed to make weddings more entertaining, you may think I’d just skip the part where we acknowledge the departed. The thing is, some of those dead people may have made the proceedings much more fun. If the person we’re remembering would have been the life of the party, let’s keep their tremendous spirit alive.

Maybe the late great Aunt Harriet had a way of bringing people together. Maybe she had a special expression she used when greeting people or thanking them for being present.

Maybe the late great Grandpa Charlie used to sing a song that would make everyone laugh, or cry, or both. If the song is the kind of thing he would have sung at your wedding were he alive, keep his spirit alive by singing it at the ceremony. As long as it’s brief and relevant, everyone knows it, and it’s guaranteed to bring a smile to people’s faces, it’ll be a great way to connect the generational dots.

When honoring the departed, it is best to do so briefly and then move right on to the love story. Still, if the couple have departed family members or friends who played a major role in their lives and they want to specifically communicate something about them, then do it! Let the couple lead you on this. Some couples only want to generally acknowledge the departed, without naming names. Some just don’t want to bring up anything depressing and skip it altogether. Others may want a lengthy remembrance for their departed, especially if the death was recent and/or unexpected. Whatever they wish is best. It is their day. One of the trickiest parts of this business is figuring out how to communicate the fine line between appropriate remembrance and funereal preoccupation. Weddings are not funerals, but too much lingering on the departed can make them feel like they are. The only way to make this section celebratory is to highlight the most positive aspect of the departed person or persons, to remember quickly and fondly the kind of contribution they would have made to the evening, and then move on.