Don’t sweat it.
You: “Do you two want to get married?”
#1: “Yes.”
#2: “Yes.”
You: “You are.”
Bumping this one – as coincidence would have it, I’ll be performing my first marriage at the end of this month!
Cool! Where will the ceremony be? A friend of mine (also a Reverend whom I ordained, coincidentally) got hitched at Morikami Park. He didn’t ask me to perform, the bastid…
We were thinking the little structure overlooking the Intercoastal, in the golf club next to Gumbo Limbo Park (that’s a heck of a description!). It’s a Peruvian bloke my wife works with, marrying an American gal. His mom’s coming down from NY and everything, so I guess this means I’d better be sober & fully dressed …
I know the area (I go to Gumbo Limbo occasionally) but never really noticed the golf club.
Oh, you know – plenty of fresh air and sunshine, a charming vista, full of Boca-y goodness … a perfect place for a wedding!
(Slight hijack) Part of my job as a registrar is to perform civil weddings (this is in Scotland). No religious aspect to it, and although they usually go for the whole white dress, march-up-the-aisle ceremony thing, it can be as simple as 'Do you take her, do you take him…:, sign the register and Bob’s yer uncle. I was nervous for the first one, but generally it’s a good atmosphere, everybody’s happy and if you mess up it’s likely nobody’ll be the wiser. Enjoy it!
I once performed a fake wedding, to fool both sets of parents so that the happy couple could move (to Alaska, I think) and live together without objection.
In college, my best friend had another friend who I didn’t know. He was moving to Alaska (or wherever it was) and he and his girlfriend wanted to set up housekeeping there, but they didn’t want to scandalize their parents by doing so without the benefit of wedlock (this was the early 70’s but these folks were pretty conservative, I guess). Since no-one knew me, I agreed to perform a fake ceremony, pretending to be a Methodist minister from another state. I don’t know all of the backstory they told everyone, such as why they picked a minister from out of state to do the wedding.
It all went off fine, and I didn’t stick around for the reception. I made sure there was no license, so that I didn’t accidentally really marry them. And they paid me a few bucks for the performance.
If all this was highly illegal, I hope the statute of limitations has run out. I never did hear again anything about this couple, or how it worked out for them.