Weddings
Weddings are supposed to be perfect — also ambitious and highly personalized — and can be hard to pull off, given the expectations. Yet in dozens and dozens of weddings, in the decades between the early 1950s and the early 2000s, Ed felt like he batted 1000% since no rings were lost and no catastrophes occurred on his watch.
Ed performed weddings for Wake Forest couples, for friends and for family members. Over his career, weddings filled the full range — formal and informal, indoor and outdoor, large and small, held in churches and in courthouses, sometimes sharing the podium with another minister or rabbi. Ed officiated at the Yale University Chapel wedding of Ed Reynolds in the late 1960s and at a wedding held on the top of courthouse steps in Sylvia NC almost forty years later.
Children attendants often created unexpected moments. At the Sylva wedding, for example, the flower girl stopped mid-way up the steps and would not go further; her father had to carry her the rest of the way. Another time, the child serving as ring bearer stopped to sit down with his mother. The resourceful mother handed the ring to the boy’s sibling who successfully delivered it to the front of the church.
Dog attendants also added novelty. At a garden wedding in Clemson, the groom’s dog accompanied the wedding party up the aisle, and when Ed spoke the groom’s name, the dog barked in support of the union.
Twists come even at the end of the ceremony. At the wedding of a faculty member, Ed had to ask the groom if he’d remembered the pronouncement. He had… On another occasion, the bride kissed Ed after the pronouncement. Ed said, “why don’t you kiss him (the groom), too.”
Did Ed perform your wedding? What do you remember?
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