OM Og, I've been asked to perform a marriage!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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About 35 years ago, I became a minister, more or less as a joke. I sent off a dollar to the Universal Life Church in Modesto, California. The Rev. Mr. Hensley sent me an ordination. I wrote to the Secretary of the State of Indiana to ask if any paperwork had to be done to transfer my rights from CA to IN. He wrote back to say that Indiana has a reciprocal deal with all other states. I had the right to hold services and perform marriages here.

I never held services, (aside from waking up and saying, “Oh, God!”) and even though my house was officially a church, I never tried to claim any tax advantages.

Tonight, I got a phone call. It was Coleman, the son of an old friend, and named after a jazz great. He wants to get married, and he wants me to preside. After Coleman talked to me, his dad came on the phone to say, “We’ll talk later about trying to talk him out of it.”

I was in the minister’s office just before my older brother’s first wedding, a hasty thing right out of basic training. Old Dr. Taggart said, “I want you to know, it’s not too late to change your mind.” My brother should have changed his mind. His bride sued for divorce while he was in S. Korea. Scars on his chassis when he was just a kid.

As far as being in charge of a ceremony, I can handle that. I’ve run meetings, and spoken before a group of unhappy union members. I’ve never married anybody, though. Does the minister share responsibility if it doesn’t work out? :smack: I sure hope not. :eek:

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You had to pay a dollar? the ULC gives out ordinations for free now, IIRC.

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Yeah, this was pre-internet. A dollar “free will donation” got you in back then. I even paid another $20 to be a doctor of divinity, and they never even gave me a recipe for that whipped candy. :smack:

4

And people say gays are destroying the sanctity of marriage…

5

By that, do you mean a quasi-legitimate Phd?

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I to am an ordained minister of the ULC of Modesto California, however I don’t believe in God.

I imagine the lad in question was named after Coleman Hawkins, who released a seminal jazz single in 1939 that included his tenor sax solo that set the tone for all jazz to come. Interestingly for the purposes of a marriage the song was Body and Soul.

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It’s a D.D., actually. As for quasi-legitimate, my course of study consisted of sending a check to the church; they sent me a certificate and a pamphlet. :dubious:

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That’s the one I meant, but the lad is really named after a different jazz great. To respect his privacy, I’m calling him Coleman here.

Sometimes I feel a little silly with all this assumed-name stuff. With a bit of tinkering, you can probably find out who I am and where I live. Coleman doesn’t know I’m telling thousands of my closest friends about him, “putting his business all out in the street,” so I changed his name.

9

Oh, that “Coleman.” Good kid – I wouldn’t worry too much.

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I signed uip for ULC in the mid 1990’s as a joke. Then, a good friend decided to get married in 2004. I jokingly said I could perform the ceremony. He took me up on it. He asked me what I would want to do it. I said, “a beer.” Done deal.

They went online and found some template scritps to tweak to their liking. I just went up there and read it.

It was a fun experience. Enjoy it.

11

I’m also a ULC minister, I guess since the early 1990’s. My buddies started calling me “Reverend Tim”, which is where my username came from.

I’ve yet to perform a marriage.

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Well, they call me “Preacher.”

Heh. Only kidding. But I’m ULC, too! Revtim, we should open up a storefront church in Deerfield or something …

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I rummaged through a stack or two of stuff in my office, and I found my credentials, from 1969. In the one that certified my former house as a church, I discovered that the uncle of the groom-to-be is the church secretary! My, my. How things do rotate around.

14

Hey, ask Sublight about it. He’s a gen-u-ine expert on not-so-religious marriages. Does about half a dozen a month.

15

I misread the title as “OM Og, I’ve been asked to perform a miscarriage.”

Carry on.

16

“As far as being in charge of a ceremony, I can handle that. I’ve run meetings, and spoken before a group of unhappy union members. I’ve never married anybody, though. Does the minister share responsibility if it doesn’t work out? I sure hope not.”

Since you haven’t received too many responses to this question I’ll give you one. Ultimately no, you aren’t responsible for the subsequent actions of the couple you marry – people make their own decisions and sometimes mess up their own lives. Having said this, though, I’ll also say that if you do perform their marriage and if they do end up having a bad split, you will likely find yourself wondering if the favor you tried to do them was worth it.

It’s been almost 20 years since I performed my first wedding ceremony and the first few I performed were done primarily because I wanted to be a nice guy to the people who asked me. A number of those early weddings (including my wife’s brother’s) ended in horribly messy divorces, and as I watched some of those marriages dissolve I had to admit to myself that I had a sense that all was not well with some of those couples even before they were married. That led me to a serious reassessment of the conditions under which I would consent to marry a couple. I stopped worrying so much about giving a couple what they wanted and started being pretty selective about couples I’d work with. It’s caused some hurt feelings and awkward meetings, but now at least I can perform those ceremonies that do meet my requirements without the worry that I’m making a bad situation worse.

Now when I’m approached by a couple wanting to marry, no matter if they are strangers to me or the children of good friends, the first thing I do is give them a copy of what my secretary calls my “scary letter.” It clearly describes the requirements I have for pre-marital counseling and emphasizes that I will not commit to their service until they have completed most of the requirements. I’d guess that the requirements scare away about a third of the couples, but its allowed me to perform the rest of the services with a quieter conscience.

It doesn’t sound to me as if you are planning on doing a great many weddings, so I wouldn’t think that you need to codify your conditions quite so formally, but I would suggest you keep a few things in mind: First, remember that no matter how lightly the couple seems to be taking their arrangements, when all is said and done they will be legally married. I’ve known couples who have had non-traditional ceremonies (one on a roller coaster comes to mind) with the unstated understanding that such a service somehow made their whole marriage less formal. Not facually the case, true, but if I were you I’d sound them out on this. Are they asking you because they think that having you perform the service makes it somehow less binding than if it were performed by a JP? If you think this is the case, you need to set them straight on this.

Second, you really need to look at the couple as objectively as you can and ask yourself if you are really doing these people a favor by marrying them. Do you have a sense that their marriage will last? If not, DON’T do it. This is personal experience speaking. I married my brother-in-law to his wife in spite of misgivings because they were pregnant and my in-laws wanted their grandchild to be born to married parents. The marriage dissolved messily five years later and now my wife and I are raising the children of that relationship. It’s true that if you say you won’t perform the marriage you may hurt some feelings, but that’s preferable to aiding and abetting a train wreck.

All this having been said, I hope the arrangements work out for you. Not having a problem with public speaking is a big advantage, but be prepared anyway. For some reason, when I perform a wedding I seem to be prone to spoonerisms. Think of the priest in Four Weddings and a Funeral but without all the fumbling with the little hat. I hope you’ll post and let us know how it went.

Curate

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Never performed a marriage, but I have been proposed to twice, which is odd given that I’m 19 and male. I wasn’t even dating (or otherwise verbing) the first one.

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I am also a ULC minister, as is my best friend from college. I ordained her in my car in the parking lot of our college in 1996, and then we agreed to perform each others’ weddings if/whenever they happened.

She performed mine in 2003. We wrote our own script, and she read it like a champ. Easy as pie. :slight_smile: She isn’t married yet, but if she ever takes the plunge, I’ll be there.

19

We don’t call that “ordaining” anymore. :wink:

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Yeah, after I posted that I realized what it sounded like. Is it funnier if I tell you I was ordained in a Denny’s? :smiley: