Non-Religious Wedding Ceremony Script (Friend Officiating)

Ignacio waits at the front with Kaito. Della walks in with her mother, holding a small bunch of dried lavender instead of a bouquet.

The music stops. Kaito waits until Della is standing across from Ignacio.

Please sit down. Thanks.

Hi, everybody. My name is Kaito. I've played bar trivia with Ignacio every Thursday night for nine years, and I'm the one he calls when he needs someone to settle an argument about state capitals.

Thank you for coming. Della and Ignacio know a lot of you drove a long way, and a few of you took a day off work you didn't really have. They noticed. They'll tell you so later, probably more than once.

A quick word on what this is. This ceremony isn't religious. There won't be a prayer or a reading. Della and Ignacio believe that what makes a marriage is the two people in it and the people around them, which is all of you. So you're more than an audience today. You're the reason they wanted to do this out loud.

Five winters ago, the Rusty Kettle on Grand held its usual Tuesday trivia night during a snowstorm. Nobody should have gone. Two people did.

One of them was Ignacio, who lives three blocks away and had already shoveled his walk twice out of boredom. The other was Della, who had driven twenty minutes in a car with bald tires because, and I'm quoting her, she'd been studying flags.

The host looked at the two of them, sitting at opposite ends of an empty bar, and said they could either go home or be a team. They picked a name in about four seconds. Two Is Plenty. Della wrote it at the top of the answer sheet in very neat capital letters.

They came in first, out of one team. The prize was a twenty-dollar bar tab, which they spent on fries and a long talk about why Ignacio has never once finished a book he started. He still hasn't. He reads the first half of a lot of books.

Della kept that answer sheet. It's folded in a drawer in their kitchen, under the takeout menus. Question nine was the capital of Australia. Ignacio said Sydney. Della crossed it out and wrote Canberra, and next to it she drew a very small, very judgmental face.

I've watched the two of them as a team for five years now. Della comes to Thursday trivia when she can, and here's what I've learned. Ignacio guesses fast and he's wrong a lot. Della waits, and then she's right. When she's not sure, she lets him go first. When he's not sure, he looks at her before he writes anything down. They've worked that out without ever talking about it.

Outside the bar it looks about the same. Ignacio is the one who says yes to the road trip. Della is the one who checks the tires. When her father was sick last spring, Ignacio drove her to the hospital forty minutes each way, every day for three weeks, and he learned the name of every nurse on the fourth floor. When Ignacio's job went away last year, Della was the one who sat at the kitchen table with him and said okay, so what's next, and meant it.

That's the thing I'd want you to know about them. They're good at trading places. Whoever's strong that day takes the hard question.

Della and Ignacio, there's no rulebook for what you're about to do. Nobody hands you the answers. But you already know how to work a problem together. One of you guesses, one of you checks, and you both put your name on the sheet.

Marriage asks you to keep doing that on the days it isn't fun. On the snow days. On the days when one of you is sure it's Sydney. You don't have to be right. You just have to stay on the same team and keep showing up to the table.

Della and Ignacio have written their own vows. Ignacio, you're up first.

Ignacio reads his vows. Then Della reads hers.

Junie, Della's college roommate, brings the rings up from the front row and hands them to Kaito.

These are plain gold bands. They asked me to point out that they're the same size of plain, because they're a team. Every time you look at them, I hope you think of two people at an empty bar, choosing to sit together.

Ignacio, place this ring on Della's finger and repeat after me.

Ignacio: Della, I give you this ring. You're my team. I'll show up every time, and I'll let you check my answers.

Della, place this ring on Ignacio's finger and repeat after me.

Della: Ignacio, I give you this ring. You're my team. I'll show up every time, and I'll let you go first when I'm not sure.

Ignacio, do you take Della to be your wife, to tell her the truth, to take the hard questions when she can't, and to stay on her team for the rest of your life?

Ignacio: I do.

Della, do you take Ignacio to be your husband, to tell him the truth, to take the hard questions when he can't, and to stay on his team for the rest of your life?

Della: I do.

Della and Ignacio, you've made your promises to each other in front of the people who know you best. By the power vested in me by [the State of ___], I pronounce you married.

You may kiss.

They kiss. Somebody in the back row yells the team name, and the room laughs.

Everyone, please stand up. For the first time as a married couple, here's Two Is Plenty. Della and Ignacio.

The recessional song starts, and they walk back down the aisle together.

Kaito, Della, Ignacio, and two witnesses sign the license at the bar before the cocktail hour. Junie is one of the witnesses.