how to ruin a wedding 101

Step 1: accidentally read about prostitutes at a Catholic wedding… which is exactly what I did.

To set the scene, it's important to know the anticipation that went into this wedding. It was 2006, and I was just a 10-year-old without a fashion sense with two dreams. One was to marry Zac Efron. The other was to be a flower girl. Right as I was aging out, my aunt announced her engagement and told me I would be a flower girl.

Except a year passed and still no date had arrived. And then it was just something we all forgot about.

Flash forward to 2018. I'm a senior in college, and I get the usual text from my mom reminding me of how to be a functional adult. At the end of her reminder for me to pay rent she casually drops a bomb that date has been set. After 12 years of engagement. I had waited my whole life for this moment.

I still had hopes of being a flower girl in an ironic (but secretly non-ironic dream-fulfilling) way. Instead, I was asked to do the second reading (Catholic wedding). I said yes; it was a decision we'd all regret.

I get sent the passage I'm reading, and it's the classic "Love is patient... Love is kind" Corinthians reading that every wedding has that I initially thought was from the Mandy Moore vehicle A Walk to Remember. I felt like a really bad Catholic when I later realized it was a popular verse from the bible.

I practice and perfect my delivery, careful to read with emotion but not an uncomfortable amount. I'd flown across the country for this wedding; I'd had 8 hours of a job interview followed by 8 hours of flying the day prior. Nothing was going to get in the way of me getting to be part of such a special moment in my aunt's life.

The Wedding… and the cringiest moment of my life

Right before the mass, the priest gave me clear instructions: come up after the singers finish the psalms, bow, the book will be opened up to the page, and read. I'd gone to Catholic school for 13 years; it all seemed straight-forward.

Then when it came time for the singers to sing the psalm they looked at the priest confused, responding that they hadn't been told that they were singing. There's a long awkward silence; even the many zoning out suddenly look around confused. So the priest meanders up to the lectern and awkwardly reads a psalm. Right as he finishes I begin to make my way towards the altar; not seeing me, he very obviously motions me to come up.

I get up to the lectern, and the priest points to a page and tells me, "Read." I look at the page and feel my stomach drop: it's not the Corinthians reading I'd practiced. I look back at the priest with confusion. He nods his head and says, "That's what you're reading."

I look again and think, well... it's the bible. How bad could it be?

This is what I read out loud to 100 people verbatim during my aunt's wedding:

'“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies."(1 Corinthians 6:12-6:20)

The more I read, the more I realized the horrible thing I had just done. But now, there was no stopping. People always talk about out-of-body experiences. Normally they’re talking about near-death experiences, but this was a death of all my remaining dignity.

It was a train wreck, and I was the conductor. And I knew it as it was happening. I even faced a dilemma as I read: do I read with my normal energy and enthusiasm... about sexual immorality at a wedding? Or do I tank it and read with a purposefully monotone voice. Then again, have you ever read sexual immorality bible passages with a monotone voice? It comes across pretty serial killer-esque, so I quickly switched back to my more pronounced speech pattern of a former middle school theater kid.

Occasionally looking up, you could immediately tell who was zoning out. Because they were the only ones without confused and concerned expressions. Except my sister, who looked at me with a poorly suppressed smile and raised eyebrows. I could also tell when people came up after the wedding and told me I did a lovely job reading. No one actually paying attention had that thought.

And finally, it was over. I felt the collective relief of the room. Then, as I was closing the book, something caught my eye: I saw the passage I was supposed to read. It was on the next page...

As I walked back to my seat I made panicked eye contact with my aunt, giving her my classic sorry-I-read-about-prostitutes-at-your-wedding expression. She looked back with a mix of awe and horror. 12 years had led up to that moment.

At the end, the priest made an announcement explaining his role in the mix-up. That was a bit of a relief as I think few things would make me feel more like I deserved a place in hell than throwing a priest under the bus. I apologized profusely to my aunt, and although she didn't seem thrilled at the content change, she was also just married and happy about that.

It was so surreal that it took me months to fully process what I did; my fuck-up is forever part of someone else’s major life milestone. So shame on the incompetent dream team of me and the priest? We accidentally turned my aunt's wedding into an episode of 30 Rock.