An Officient at Starbucks

Strange that I should start a blog today as it has been a long time since this journey began back in December '07. As you can tell by the title of my blog, I have recently been joined together with a unique piece of jewelry. LOVE IT! Since the two of us have come together, we have become quite inseparable...more about that later.

Today, we met the with our potential officiant or hopefully the guy that will marry us...Very nice guy. In fact, he was what you would expect and exactly what you would want. Let me explain...

On a typical Saturday in Northern New Jersey (if you live here you know what I mean), there is a rather - how do i say it - diverse clientele at the average Starbucks. With that said, there we were - me and the boy - sitting in the comfy couches by the windows staring out at Route 3.

OK - keep it normal, nothing CRAZY. Two Light Grande Caramel Frapaccinos...no, make mine a Mocha. Now, sitting at the table, waiting for the Officient to arrive (we have no idea what he looks like) this is good...no, wait...this is good if it was just me and the boy-that would be normal. By the way, we're meeting with an officiant because the boy was raised Catholic and I was raised Methodist...but that's not why. We were trying to get married in a church but MY GOD, those churches want you to wait a YEAR before you get married in them. Come on. We've known each other for almost 8, we're been dating for 3 and we've been engaged for nearly 5 months...and we're getting married in 6. In the words of Jack Bauer, we're running out of time. We decided to get married at the same place we're holding the reception and to do that we had to hire an outside 'consultant'....the Officiant.

So today, we are waiting to meet the Officiant we have never met before because we were referred to him by theweddingchannel.com. Now you get the idea - looking out the window waiting for random people to walk in and greet the adorable couple sipping their Grande Light Caramel Frapuccinos. Hello handsome fellow....is it you? No? Oh OK. Is it that guy? YUCK, I hope not. It is...OH God, please don't say it's that guy with the droopy pants and the Hawaii '97 t-shirt...wait...it's not, thank God. Is it? Yes, is it? Yes, it's the gentleman in the suit with the salt n pepper hair. Wow - i feel much better now. OK, we can do this...

We offered him coffee which he doesn't drink - in fact, does he drink anything? No, he's completely normal and completely nice and put us both at ease with his seemingly normal banter and interesting questions about how we "met" and how we wanted our ceremony to run. He gave us lots of handouts about the flow of the ceremony, who should read, who should read what, and who should walk down the aisle when and how fast. What he doesn't know is that I want to walk down the aisle to an instrumental version of "Don't Stop Believin'"

The irony is that after hearing this my fiance still wants to marry me. I found a good one girls.

We discussed timing, the officiant is sending us some sample ceremonies and wants our feedback and his pricing fits into our budget (Thank God) and we're finished our coffee. Then he says, "Some trivia for you folks, you're getting married by a multi-millionaire."
Flashback to a pyramid scam - immediately I think I'm getting suckered into "deal of a lifetime" something I can't turn down", but he tells us that he's happy to officiate weddings on the side b/c he's made millions in the stock market and has retired early. Weird story, but thanks for sharing.

Well congratulations Mr. Officiant. We're not millionaires, but if you'd like to contribute to the wedding fund by knocking a couple bucks off the Officiant wedding tab, have at it.