Nice day for a zoom wedding
“JC! Is there something you’re not telling us!?”
I had selected the song ‘Marry You’ by Bruno Mars to play in a collaborative Spotify playlist at work in answer to the question: what will you do when lockdown is over?
Any disappointment that followed in my explanation that, no, I wasn’t getting married (at least not yet), but that I will be officiating marriages between other people, quickly turned to excitement at the formation of the slack chat group “wedding of the week.”
My coworkers and I thought it would be a great lunchtime activity for me to conduct fake marriages over zoom to practise. This was not for assessment. This was just for fun.
One wedding a week was a bit ambitious though; it was difficult getting two volunteers to fake marry each other every week. In the end, I conducted three fake marriages. None of the couples were actual couples and many of them were already in committed relationships with other people outside of the office. Regardless, each of the six different parties to the three marriages performed their roles very well. Each wedding got bigger than the one before it: the last wedding featured an elaborate fake proposal.
My favourite part of each was writing and delivering the couple’s special story.
The first couple had requested their story to be performed in Middle English singsong. I was up for the challenge but concluded that no one (likely including myself) would understand what was being said. Instead, I wrote a rhyming poem, which was well received.
The second couple also requested a rhyming poem, which made the guests cry with laughter. Having been in lockdown for two solid months by this point, it was a privilege to be able to bring this level of joy into the homes of my coworkers.
The third couple, which had the elaborate proposal, had also requested a more elaborate form of poetry, written in iambic pentameter. After I looked up what that meant, I got to work on writing their story. I am proud of this work due to the additional challenge it presented. My creativity always thrives when there are restrictions placed upon it. This is why I like writing parody songs, Weird Al style. That’s a story for another time…
In the meantime, if you are interested in checking out the poems mentioned above, you can find them here: