CHAPTER 11

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Pronouncement and Kiss

This is the moment in the ceremony where we launch the party.

This is the moment when all the bartenders, servers, cooks, and staff take a deep breath, readying for the onslaught. Prayers are uttered. Discreet shots of Jaeger are downed. Rosaries are worried.

If you’ve followed the ideas from the ten chapters before this, you should be looking at a two-inch tap-in for Eagle. If that metaphor does nothing for you, try this instead: you should be looking at hundreds of balloons about to release on your say-so. This is a BIG MOMENT.

And yet as big a moment as this is, my advice is simply to just get to it. This is not the time to delay the happiness poised to erupt. The couple is excited, the guests are excited, the ceremony has been entertaining and meaningful, everyone in the room wants the couple to be married just as much as the couple does and everyone is ready to cheer. To delay this moment further would be like your grandfather launching into an anecdote about his youth right before you’re ready to pull out of his driveway and head back to the hotel after a long, politically adversarial Thanksgiving Day. Delaying here would be like the opening act at a concert doing one last song after the song they’d said was going to be their last song. The longer this part is delayed, the lower the guests’ estimation of the ceremony will be; finish it. We’ve filled the glass to the brim—any more vodka in there will just spill to the floor. The elevator is full; if one more person gets on, the doors won’t be able to close. We’ve won our Oscar, thanked everyone in our family, and the musicians are playing us off. We’ve filled the back seat with thirty clowns, loaded the musket with shot, pumped up the T-shirt gun, pulled the pin from the grenade, withdrawn from—okay I think you get the idea.

Pronunciation of Marriage (MARE•idge)

Here’s the most official-sounding thing to be uttered during the ceremony. Every ceremonialist around the world should have fun with this part, to make it unique to them.

By the powers vested in me by the Super-Duper State of New York . . .

. . . by the corn-growing hub that is Nebraska . . .

. . . by the hockey-mad State of Minnesota . . .

. . . by the undrained swamp of DC . . .

. . . by the insurance gurus of Connecticut . . .

. . . by the suntanned illuminati of California . . .

I hereby declare you husband and wife [married/spouses/partners in life]. You may kiss [the bride/each other/in public/like teenagers under the bleachers].

Note to whoever is doing the ceremony—get the heck out of the way so you are not in the kiss photos!

Presentation of the Newly Married Couple

Old-school couples will request that they be presented as “Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So” before they recess down the aisle. It’s another surefire applause line, and yet it can be re-imagined to be even more fun. This is a moment where any interesting, unique, funny details can be linked to the moment.

•Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the most generous tippers this side of Madison Avenue.

•Ladies and gentleman, I present to you the most recently married people in this room.

•Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the most romantic pair of left-handed black-jack dealers I’ve ever met.