So, you're thinking about officiating a wedding. How would you like tens of thousands of witnesses?

That was a Sacramento, California pastor officiating that wedding during Bad Bunny’s historic Superbowl halftime show. Before they chose Antonio Reyes of Project Church South Sacramento, Bad Bunny’s team had visited nearly three dozen other churches.

“It was emotional, it was moving,” said Reyes. “I had to keep it together several times because I was going to cry.”

It was, of course, about so much more than the wedding. But the wedding had to go smoothly, without a hitch, and Reyes practiced for ten-hour days with the hundreds of dancers and the crew.

The wedding took place five minutes into the 13-minute extravaganza at Levi’s Stadium, with a smiling Reyes declaring the couple married, and the husband and wife sharing a kiss that anyone could tell was genuine and joyful. 70,000 stadium fans witnessed it, and 128.2 million people watched it on the air.

According to the Associated Press, “[Bad Bunny]. . . signed their marriage certificate. There was a real cake too.”

When you officiate, do your best,  but don't let the pressure get to you, either. Enjoy the adventure, as Reyes apparently did. No matter what comes up, at the end of the ceremony, once the license is signed, your couple will be married.  Touchdown!

As a wedding officiant, I had concentrated for a dozen years on the ceremony itself. As the mom of the bride, I got to spend 18 months up close and personal with details of the wedding reception. I've concluded that the reception is successful when the guests have had fun! 

The planning was fun, too, since my daughter, her fiance and I were able to stay on the same page. Our somewhat modest budget was set, and we went a little over. Our bride was clear about her three most important elements: Food, Flowers, and Photos. 

She also knew the vibe she was shooting for: simple and romantic, intimate, and casual. She was happy with how it turned out, and our son-in-law was happy, too. For me, the guests' faces said it all.

I happily endorse everyone we worked with.
Wedding and reception venue: The Mountain Terrace, Woodside, California. 
Flowers:  Karyssa Miller's Floral Expressions
Photography: Honey Stills Photography
Officiant: Reverend Maggie Beretz
Dress from Trudy's Brides in San Jose, California.

I'm happy to announce that my publisher, Chronicle Books in San Francisco, teamed up with Echo Point Books and Media (in Vermont) to create an audio book of the Wedding Officiant's Guide. My editor, Alex Galou, says it is now available on all major retailers, so I did not like the above illustration to any one retailer. Choose your favorite!

I had considered narrating the book, but with my daughter Peggy's wedding, there was a lot on my plate during the weeks they wanted to record. And frankly, it was risky because I am not a professional narrator. Echo Point kindly gave me clips from six narrators and I'm very happy with the voice they chose. She kind of sounds like my better, wiser self. 

In other news, I no longer have an account on Facebook (still on Instagram, though). This lack of the public platform Facebook provides could make it harder to promote future books, though I'm looking at alternate media. But the alternative was worse! The algorithms got the better of me. First, my Facebook feed became more and more politically charged and dramatic, and then one day I found myself behaving badly, trolling someone!  I deleted my trolling.  

In preparation for dropping off, I made a list of all the people I was connected to on the platform, ones I still wanted to connect with. Then I deleted my photos and posts. Then I went into the rabbit warren of options (they do not make it easy) and deleted my account.  Facebook keeps your account in a holding pattern for 30 more days in case you want to rejoin. A couple of weeks later, I realized I felt A LOT LESS STRESSED, even though life's ups and downs continued. I still bug my congresspeople and read the news and go on marches, but I am a calmer person.

The wedding dress, freshly steamed, hangs from the highest point in our living room.  Patio chairs are stacked inside, waiting for the rains to stop. Favors are packed, vendors have been paid, driving and shuttle directions have been broadly cast. Weddings officiated by me: more than a hundred. Weddings as Mother of the Bride, just this one.

I'm a little awestruck that people are arriving from all across the United States to celebrate this couple. I'm completely impressed by how organized and sensible the bride has been. Now we move through this week one day at a time. My lectio divina practice is especially helpful every morning -- as are frequent walks.

What's that feeling behind the excitement? Oh yes.
Joy.

I'm close to completing my latest manuscript, a biography of a feisty, determined 19th century novelist who wrote her ten books after raising four daughters. I've been working on this book since 2021, fascinated by the development of Julie P. Smith's writing process and publishing confidence. But another huge part of this book is the importance of writing letters.

What are letters, after all, but a conversation that uniquely requires absence? And because we throw our voices across the distance, our marks on paper must be filled with spirit, filled with  interest and humor and news.

When I was six years old my mother moved from San Francisco to New York, and although we visited, she never came back and I never lived with her again. Yes, that sucked. But I have a pink binder filled with her letters to me totaling hundreds of pages. Scrawled postcards, typed single-spaced and numbered pages -- telling me that I was in her thoughts and she loved me, and asking a million questions about my life.

In answering back, is it any wonder that over the years I became a reporter, persuader, researcher, poet? And Julie during the Civil War, separated from her husband eight months every year -- her yearning helped her to become a lively, sharp-witted writer. He was no slouch at writing either. Oh to have a letter from someone you love. To be able to touch their handwriting, fold the page, keep it in a pocket near your heart. To reread it, and perhaps see the salty mark of tears. I would not have known Julie's story if I had not found the box of letters.

Other letters round out my pink binder -- letters from my Dad while I was away at summer camp, letters from my brothers and sisters when we grew up and away from each other. Letters from my grandfather describing his New York childhood in the early 1900s. His voice arises from his handwriting. He's thrown his voice not only across a continent, but also across the decades.

If you love someone, write a letter and send it to them through the mail. What a gift they will receive. And you never know where it will end up.

In addition to congratulations, good wishes, laughter and gifts, the bridal shower is an opportunity for the bride to benefit from collective feminine wisdom . At the shower for my daughter, generations were well represented by the bride’s mother, sister, niece and aunt, several peers, family friends and three little girls. I particularly liked the cards, collected in a recipe box, on which guests wrote favorite recipes, date night suggestions and hard-won tips about marriage. I can assure you that none of the recipes were elaborate, and as for marriage tips I contributed, “Always wear comfortable shoes.”

It was a time to shower our bride with love and small luxuries before her big day. The gifts were fun and thoughtful, the favors were pretty. But on reflection, this three-hour event provided other subtle benefits.

1. It was a mini wedding. Similar to the theater of a wedding, the shower has costumes, props, prescribed activities. In this sort of rehearsal, hosts and guests could meet and play without the solemnity of the wedding, and experience how awful shapewear feels. The best symbol of this was the making of the paper-plate-and-ribbon confection known as the rehearsal bouquet. The rehearsal bouquet would not exist but for the gift wrappings of the shower, evidence that women came together to celebrate and support the bride-to-be.
2. Forming a new tribe. While friends joyfully caught up with each other, strangers become acquaintances and collaborators. They will see each other soon at the wedding and hopefully will rise from their reception seats to meet each other and chat.
3. Surprising and intangible gifts. Bridesmaids and shower hosts got to exercise their secret talents. One may be a project management powerhouse, while another becomes the chauffeur and gift secretary extraordinaire. The shower hosts got to practice setting things up as well as possible, then letting go completely – and the wisdom (date night suggestions, recipes) and humor (games, kids, blingy underthings) that arose were unique to the group. I came away feeling that the prevailing spirit of the event was generosity on many levels. A good way to prepare for a wedding.

This is a photograph of my maternal great-great grandmother, Helen Yale Smith, when she was known as Nellie to her parents. I've been reading family letters for three years now, as I've been writing a book about her parents, Julie and Morris Smith. Those are all fresh flowers -- many orange blossoms -- in her hair and on her white satin and brocade dress, trimmed with tiers of lace. The blossoms behind her must have cast a great sweetness wafting as she passed.

Nellie was marrying into a much wealthier family, and her mother, Julie, did everything she could to dress her daughter in the opulence that was socially required -- without having to sell the family carriage to do so.

Nellie needed not only the bridal wear but also traveling and at-home clothes that would befit her new life. With Julie shopping as carefully as she could, and making the clothing at home, the wedding gown, veil, shoes and other outfits cost altogether about a thousand dollars, which would be around $32,000 today.

On May 5, 1878, Julie wrote to Morris:
"The usual allowance of dressmakers and seamstresses all the week has kept me on the alert. Nellie’s last dress is nearly completed, but it will take another week of hard work to do up the underclothes and finish all the last stitches. You see, I have tried to have everything done at home and it has been very hard work. I have worked all the while and had my head full besides. But the things are prettier and have cost less than if made out [by a dressmaker’s establishment in Hartford] or purchased in New York City."

A minister once likened a wedding to making a mountain summit, and a marriage to a desert marathon. The wedding is on a set date.  You plan and provide for all kinds of elements to come together on that date -- venue, costumes, scripts, photography, transportation, food, flowers, starring and supporting roles. Party favors! Weather! Even if it was once a whole year away, that year melts and suddenly the day is right here. You have climbed and steadily gained altitude, and found things you needed, or needed to discard, along the way. And then -- It Happens!

After that, you are done. With the wedding.
But, with no set end date in sight, the marriage commences.

A desert marathon does not sound comfortable, so let's remember that there are many oases and camels and other wonderful resources already there, waiting for you.  There are many, many adventures ahead. But whereas the wedding date needed your drive and momentum and list-making to get there, the marriage needs something else.

It needs your ability to be in the moment and stay there, rest and abide there. It needs your flexibility. Understanding. Patient listening. Sometimes there are sandstorms. Sometimes you have to allow mysteries to remain mysteries until they clear up and you can move forward again. Sometimes what worked in your first ten years of marriage needs to change for the next ten years.

The marriage can endure as you both grow and change, and you can have a really good time with it. Maybe even a little list-making doesn't hurt.

I've been thinking a lot about marriage lately. Peggy's wedding is a mere nine months away. Mark and I will be celebrating 20 years married this October. And I've been writing the love story between Morris and Julie, pictured above. 

In their marriage, she raised four daughters in New England while he, youngest brother of many, had to spend most of every year at the family business in New Orleans. Boy, did they miss each other. They wrote more than a thousand letters to each other, letters that were saved. We get to read how much they loved one another. How hard it was -- and yet -- each of them grew into the adults they had to be. They often signed their letters, "I love you dearly." With twelve hundred miles between them, they made and kept a good marriage.

My daughter, Peggy, and her sweetheart, Monty, got engaged over the holidays.  We are all happy and excited for them.

I won't be at the wedding in my old Officiant capacity -- for the first time, I'll show up as Mother of the Bride. This turns out to be a completely different role!

What to do when facing a completely new role? I'm studying, of course. And Peggy is in charge. We had a launch meeting at the local breakfast place; we each have lists. Engagement photos, bridal outfits, tasting -- we're in for a fabulous, if sometimes hair-raising experience.

The accomplished, Bay-Area-based events planner, Alison Hotchkiss wrote what seems to be a quintessential planner, soup to nuts: All The Essentials Wedding Planner, and Peggy is working through it. She's also using Zola online.

This planning is stirring up memories of my own two weddings, very different from one another and from this one. And I'm remembering all of the hundred or so wedding ceremonies that I led as officiant. It really is a watershed rite of passage, a slow mystery -- becoming a married person.

I feel so lucky that The Wedding Officiant's Guide is again, at least for today, placing top in Amazon's Wedding ceremonies, vows and toasts category.  And fifteenth in Romance Fiction Writing Reference! Chronicle Books makes excellent books, and I'm proud to be one of their authors.

I've been building scaffolding around writing a book: supports to give my project many chances to succeed.

The first eighteen months of starting this book involved resting, wool-gathering, reading. Writing questions to myself in a small black journal dedicated to the book. Mulling things over. An apt image would be a large, shallow collecting basket for those fragments of herbs, bits of shiny stuff and strands of half-stories.

Another crucial part was taking a summer off from researching the book-- something that I could never have done in my corporate career. But I was so burned out; it was a huge relief to just be a human being and not a writer for three months. I spent hours outdoors. I painted with watercolors and swam, cooked, spent time with family and traveled. When fall came, I was rested and ready.

I had to get my house in order. I gathered all the books on my topic into one area. I printed some of my notes. I taped photos of my subjects to the wall in my office.

Next came the talisman. From Etsy, I bought and tied on an inexpensive thread bracelet as a reminder of my commitment to this book. I made a double square knot. Either the bracelet wears away and falls off, or the book is completed, whichever comes first. This is my own invention and I have done it for three books so far. Also in the magical realm, I remembered a lesson from writer and teacher Kate Evans and wrote a permission slip, posted on the wall, which allows me to say yes to the everything that helps me write the book, and say no to mostly everything else. You can call on ancestors and angels for help in the permission slip, too.

Another author/teacher, Joan Rose Staffen, recommends writing a manifesto, an extended permission slip where you note which hours work best for you, what your rewards might be, and what you have at stake. Both methods strengthen one’s writing self. As author and journalist Cathleen Miller often told her students, “Only YOU can write this book.”

Then more practical steps. I blocked out writing time during weekday mornings in my phone calendar. On the whiteboard I created an 18-month timeline, breaking the time into chunks for drafting scenes (relatively quickly, 12 weeks) and more time for revision and polishing. This schedule gives me December off for holidays and family. Also April, to take a breather before more edits.

On yellow pads I listed actions to take. The lists are not necessarily in order. As composer John Cage famously said, “Begin anywhere.” This year, for the first time, I opened a large monthly calendar on paper where I briefly log in, by hand, what I accomplished that day. I created documents for chapter one, the table of contents, the introduction, the bibliography, the chapter notes. And I created a tracking sheet for elements of the book, including the index and acknowledgements.

Here's a writing accelerator: I bought Ann Randolph’s Unmute Yourself writing class, 9:00 am Monday through Friday, to join anywhere from fifty to a hundred other people on Zoom while we write. This is my second go-round of structure, ritual, and fellowship. The class lasts a month and the low price is well worthwhile to jumpstart the morning writing routine.

Three weeks in, I’ve completed drafting Chapter 1, and parts of Chapter 2 and the introduction. Once I’ve finalized the table of contents, I'll review the notes from the past year and tuck them into a tickler file, confining them to their chapter.

The process I’m describing evolved over time. It gives me enough processes and rituals and tools to keep addressing the work, morning after morning. Each day that I log progress, I feel some satisfaction. I wrote, and the book is moving in the right direction. I hope something in this laundry list might help someone else as they think through how to attack their own next book.