A WEDDING WITHOUT A PRIEST by CARLOS CORTISSOZ

I won’t say what the best wedding I have been to is, but I will say what the
craziest no-wedding I have been to is. Let me make myself clear.
My wife and I have a friend in common named Nicolas. Actually, he is
the friend who introduced me to her for the first time. Two years ago, may
be more, he started to date a girl nobody knew, and just two months after
that he told everybody they had decided to live together as an unmarried
couple.
They argued they were not going to get married because they wanted
to know each other more deeply and so on and so forth but, indeed, they
showed a very negative opinion regarding marriage. They said they did
not believe in marriage because marriage is an obsolete religious institution,
and no one needs to sign a paper or to participate in a religious ceremony
to make a spiritual commitment with another person, etc., etc.
The day came in which they were going to move in together and they decided
to invite their relatives and friends to a lunch to celebrate the “union”.
It was supposed to be nothing special, just being together, eating lunch,
drinking a couple of beers and so, but when my wife and I came to this
house, dressed informally and ready to eat, we suddenly found ourselves in
the most hilarious situation.
We knock on the door and my friend’s girlfriend came out dressed in a
white, long dress, almost like a bribe. We were in jeans and shirt of course,
we never thought it was a formal thing. But that is not all. When we get
into the house, we found tables arranged in white tablecloths and, at the
center of the living room, a wedding cake with the traditional tiny figures
of a couple. The “bribe’s” parents were dressed formally too, and we could
not believe, having heard from them too many bad things about marriage,
that we were involved in a marriage-like ceremony.
Well, there was a lot of food, champagne—the “bribe’s” father made a
toast—, and the time was for the speeches. His father spoke, his mother too,
then her father and mother. They kissed each other in front of the central
table, etc. All the traditional wedding things, except for the priest.
A lot of people got surprised by the strange situation. But other people
seemed to be perfectly prepared for this “marriage” thing; as a mater of
fact, some people, mostly the “bribe’s” relatives and friends gave wedding
presents, which made us feel very ashamed.
Well, that is the story of the no-wedding we were to. Of course, after that
we spoke to our friend and told him “You did not want to get married but,
whether you want it or not, you are already married in God and everybody’s
eyes.”