Anything But Crazy

Saturday evening (8.22), I officiated Chanel and Ben’s wedding ceremony on Zoom. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

Chanel and Ben first contacted me back in early 2019, and from the get-go they knew what they wanted to open their wedding ceremony with, Let’s Go Crazy by Prince. I feel like there is something prophetic about this choice. 

Why do I say that? Well, weddings have many expectations attached to them in this country. Many a bride and groom will hear that there is a certain way to do things, or at least parameters, within which their choices need to be confined. 

Prince, on the other hand, says, in a word, nonsense, or in three words, let’s go crazy. It’s your wedding. Forget about what everyone else says or thinks. You do you. I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume that Chanel and Ben did not realize how crazy it was going to get, but there you are!

Seriously, though, there are tremendous lessons here for life. After all, despite the word play that opens the song, Prince is not really talking about weddings, he is talking about life. This might be the non-prophetic reason that Chanel and Ben chose this song, in the first place, and the reason they ended up choosing to conduct their wedding in the iconoclastic way we are conducting it today.

Ironically, the best wedding ceremonies are those that make clear what this couple felt from the start: What we are doing here today is but a preamble. Chanel and Ben’s marriage, the life that they will live together from this day forward, is what really matters. 

That is why when I asked Ben why he wants to get married now, his answer was, “I could have waited… but why? I’ve found the person who I want to be with, who I want share great news with first, who compliments me. who pushes me, who makes me want to be better every day.”

That is why Chanel’s answer to the same question was, “We openly put it on the table, what we wanted for our lives. From the beginning I knew what kind of man Ben is. A serious one. When I say serious, I mean a man with goals and values... a good, kind, reliable, and patient partner to me… We’ve been consistent with one another through it all. So, when I try to answer, ‘Why, now?’ my answer is, ‘Why, wait?’"

That my friends, it seems to me, is anything but crazy.