As I recall, Sydney is supposed to be the one provoking the public, whereas I was supposed to keep you posted on the goings-on of our house. Resuming that role, we’re going to be traveling to Rhode Island tomorrow to see two of my college friends married. I’m really excited. For one thing, they’re the first of my set of friends to get married (thus far all of the weddings we’ve been to have been on Sydney’s side), so what with the wedding tomorrow and Heidi’s wedding coming up, I feel like we’re all growing up and moving on into new territory. Secondly, it will be the first Jewish wedding I’ve ever been to, so I teased the bride and groom that I’ll be wanting a translator and guide. Unfortunately, I can’t apply any of my language skills to deciphering Hebrew, and even Sydney, my usual source of help, will be just as clueless. Greek? Latin? Romance language? Germanic language? With any of those we might get along just fine, but I’m afraid Hebrew might be beyond our collective powers. Lastly, before I forget, both bride and groom were part of my political debate group in college, so I expect there to be something of a mini-reunion at the wedding as well.
I remember going to a Catholic wedding when I was very small; the only memory that I carry away from it is that people did a lot of standing up and sitting down, like one big wave of humanity with which Mom and I were on constant guard to keep up. Let’s see if I get any interesting impressions from this one.
Monday is apparently not a holiday for Cornell faculty and students, so we’ll be doing some serious early-morning driving to get back in town so that Sydney and I can teach. I realize that I have lots of holiday time the rest of the year, but not having one on Monday will put some serious pressure on us to book it home!
Erin
Alan Schmierer
Jews do the stand up/sit down thing as well (but no kneeling stage, fear not). Just follow along as best you can, read the parts in italics out loud, and say a lot of “mazel tov”s afterwards. 🙂
-L
Yeah, Sydney was thinking we should have read up on Jewish weddings before going, but it’s good to know you seem confident we won’t embarrass ourselves–or them!
Erin
Yeah, it’ll be shockingly similar to any type of service, except sometimes you won’t understand the words – picture spacing out in church, you just say “Amen” when everyone else does. 🙂 You’ll be fine. Just follow the crowd. If people are doing kind of a swaying/rocking thing, it’d be weird if you did that with them (it’s like when you’re hardcore praying), but otherwise, just go with a group mentality. 🙂
Oh, and they’ll smash a glass – that’s part of the ceremony, don’t be alarmed. 🙂
-L
Have fun! Weddings are great reunions 🙂 We’re Catholic, but not having a mass for our ceremony, so there won’t be any tricks.
What? I was counting on your wedding to help me see if I’ve learned anything about liturgy since then! 🙂 Ah, well, some other time, perhaps.
One nice thing about your wedding: I don’t have to agonize about what to wear!
Erin
http://www.ehow.com/how_2063574_behave-catholic-mass.html
note the difficulty level under the instructions.
Hold on, wait a moment. Something tells me my Protestant forefathers would spin like pinwheels in their graves if I took part in some of these activities. Genuflecting? Holy water? I would think it would be sacreligious (I can’t believe I had to add that to the dictionary in WordPress) to do so, in fact. Others’ opinions on the matter?
Erin
OK, first, its an “ehow” article. I just sent it because we were joking around about what to do, and last night I was looking for readings for our wedding and stumbled across this by accident. I thought the “moderate difficulty” level was kind of funny.
Second, though this article uses authoritative language, there are errors and the article does not purport to be written by the Vatican or any Archdiocese with the authority to speak on the matter. For example, suggesting that Catholics don’t kneel at Mass anymore it simply not true. Additionally, I don’t think any Priest would object to a visitor not performing certain actions, and many of them are no longer required of practicing Catholics either. Furthermore, even as a practicing Catholic, I do not perform all of these things.
Lastly, in certain instances (such as receiving Sacraments), you are actually prohibited from participating with Catholics, though you are *invited* to receive some alternative form of blessing, if you like.
So. The ehow article was supposed to be funny.
Sorry, Heid. I did catch the difficulty level (yes, it was funny), but got caught up in the content. Guess that’s what comes from living with Sydney and analyzing things for a living all day long. Oops.
I understand, its an occupational hazard. 🙂