WHERE HAVE ALL THE BRIDES GONE???

Well, I can answer the above question easily.  The brides and grooms have gone to Friday.  My friend Joe married 11 couples last Friday morning.  And today, who knows how many he will marry.  Fridays have always been the busiest day for couples to come in to marry.  But Monday used to be a close second.  Not this summer.  I am lucky to have more than two couples come in to be married.  The County Recorder's Office has been very slow on Mondays and Wednesday. 

Monday I had two couples, Wednesday only one.  It was so slow I feel asleep at my desk.  The couple I  married Wednesday ticked me off.  It was a for legal purposes only marriage. 

The couple was Jewish.  He was wearing yarmulke, she was wearing a shawl.  Their witness was one of the pushiest women I have ever met.  Every question I asked the couple, she answered.  She even was telling me what to do in the ceremony.  I finally told her it was not her wedding, they were the ones getting married.  She backed off some then.  They told me they had had a religious ceremony and they wanted the legal part of the marriage ceremony totally separate from the spiritual.  Thus the two ceremonies.

Except they had brought their book from the religious ceremony.  They wanted to read the vows they used at that ceremony.  ???  Separate, no crossing the line from legal to spiritual???  So they stand up front, the bride wraps them both in her shawl.  They stood there looking bored, they had big smirks on their faces.  No way are they doing their marriage in a respectful way.  They start reading their vows, which had nothing to do with marriage or love.  The vows sounded as if they came out of a peacenik's  tree hugger's rant. They read in a bored tone, sometimes reading really fast as if to be done with it, sometimes plodding word for word.    And they kept the big smirks on their faces.   They made a mockery of their religious vows and of the legal/real wedding. 

I was glad to see the back of them.