Tuesday, October 28, 2008

My new wedding policy

A few weeks ago in my church, we experienced the wedding from hell. Well, one of them, anyway. It got the pastor and me to thinking, and I pounded out a wedding policy that was approved forthwith. I am quite glad to have a pastor that will approve this; most I've worked with are too chicken. Here are the salient points (comments in brackets and parenthesis are added for the purposes of this post):

1. Please contact the organist at least two months prior to your wedding date if you have any specific requests. You need not feel obligated to plan the entire ceremony. The organist can make use of as little as or as many requests as you have. [Just as Jeffrey suspects it with funerals, I suspect that many wedding couples plan every detail because they feel they must. I'm trying to disabuse them of that notion, and actually very few couples come to me with more than one or two specific requests.]

2. Only sacred music can be played at the wedding ceremony. Music such as pop tunes and Broadway selections are not allowed to be sung in church.

3. Only musicians are admitted to the choir loft. Photographers, videographers, etc. will not be given admittance to the loft.

4. Please let the organist know if you would like a soloist to be present for the wedding. Soloists from outside the parish are allowed but not encouraged, and in any case should have obtained adequate musical training to perform effectively. [In other words, I'm not going to spend 45 minutes futilely trying to teach your sister-in-law how to sing Barbara Streisand's Our Father.]

5. The fee for the soloist is $___. The fee for the organist is $___. (Note: I've cut specific amounts to avoid that tedious debate.)

6. If you have any further questions, please contact the organist.

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