A New Person

Saturday evening, I officiated Salena and Greg’s wedding ceremony at the Ruthe Jackson Center in Grand Prairie, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

Salena makes a very interesting statement about the inception of her relationship with Greg, “I knew after our first date that I was going to marry him (pause) even though he didn’t.” 

The next big milestone in their relationship had a bit of slapstick to it. “He accidentally told me he loved me (pause). He called me to chat because he missed me and I had him on speaker phone with my mom and he said it and then the shock set in, so he quickly said goodbye and hung up before I could respond. I said I loved him once he came back, and he immediately said it back.”

About the big milestone that brought us to today, she simply says, “He proposed to me on February 8, 2019, in Austin, Texas at a Panic! At The Disco Concert.” That old trope. No seriously, there’s more to it. 

Greg choreographed this pretty carefully. He got floor seats, center stage. He proposed just as Brendan Urie, her favorite singer, was walking through the floor seats singing Death of a Bachelor. In case any of you still weren’t clear as to why we were here today, she did say yes.

Brendan himself says that his own marriage to his wife, Sarah was central to the composition of this song and indeed to the entire album it lends its name to. “I would say the title track, ‘Death of a Bachelor,’ is pretty much why I called the album that. [It] just really meant a lot to me. I mean, that kind of summed up how I feel now. I feel I am a new person and I’m able to talk about the past because I’m not that person any more. It’s nice to be able to set aside the past and look at it objectively instead of being stuck in that world. So that was really an eye opening experience for me.”

I doubt Urie, who grew up LDS and left that church in his late teens, realizes this, but this idea is central to the Jewish tradition. Ashkenazic Jewish men, like me and Greg, for instance, will not regularly don a prayer shawl during morning prayers, until they are married, because there is a recognition that full personhood is achieved when we find our soulmate. (BTW, many Jewish parents feel that their children have not reached full personhood until they graduate from medical school, but that’s an issue for another time.)

Traditionally, in line with what Urie says, many brides and grooms fast on their wedding day, like we do on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and recite special confessional prayers that are only recited on the High Holidays. This is because your wedding day is seen as a day when God wipes the slate clean and forgives you of all your sins. You are a new person from this day forward. 

The challenge of marriage, and if you can do this, Salena and Greg, you’ve got it made, is to never fully let go of this feeling and to renew this feeling of, “Happily ever after, how could I ask for more?”