Nice Day For A Mass Wedding (Pre-Nuptial)

I don't know if I believe in luck. My relationship to it is like how a third-grader might believe in Santa Clause. I'm old enough to know that a man, let alone a tubby man, can't fly around the world in one night delivering toys to all the good boys and girls of the world. But, what if I'm wrong, and the presents don't come Christmas morning? What if my disbelief starts some kind of shunning of the otherworldly giftgivers? No more dollars from the Tooth Fairy? No more candy from the Easter Bunny? I can't afford that kind of risk so I have to believe, no matter the temptation to believe in logic, and no matter how much I really want to find out if it exists.

Though, how would I test luck? Stitch a rabbit-foot coat and leap into traffic? Break a mirror with a black cat and see what trouble befalls me? And that's all contingent upon properly recognizing whether the outcome of my experiment is either the providence of good luck or the horror of bad luck. I mean, what if me getting run over leads to the development of better car safety. Is that good luck? What if by killing that black cat with the mirror, that I saved some child from his hypersensitive allergies. Is that good luck? I'd say yes, so long as you agree with me that luck is a good outcome from an unexpected sources and places.

Look at most lottery winners to see this confusion even more. Countless winners of those bloated jackpots had their lives ruined because of what, at the time, seemed like a huge windfall...until the wife leaves with Jorge, the tennis instructor and half the winnings. So, are those people victims of bad luck? Or good luck? Or maybe luck is some kind of cosmic zen that tries to balance the world on a fulcrum of justice. Sure, you hit the lottery, but since that's so incredibly, monumentally, lightning strike lucky, that you now have to contract a rare form of herpes to keep the universal ticking along. Is that right? Is that how it works? What controls luck? If it is something that works, then it must have a mechanism of some sort. Anything? Anyone? If there were ways to manipulate luck, then wouldn't everyone do it and there'd be no poverty, disease and war? Except for the people you don't like, to hell with them, they're asking for it.

What's even more interesting is that people plan for luck. Everyone does it, otherwise no one would play the lottery, or go to casinos, or pick up pennies off the ground. So, was it really that strange that when July 7, 2007 rolled around on the calendar (that's 7/7/07...lucky for slot machine players and Christians alike) that many people, by the thousands actually, rushed to get married? What's more important than love, and wouldn't a little luck to bless that marriage be a wonderful thing? Maybe. The divorce rate alone suggests that before anyone takes the plunge into wedded bliss or institutionalization, we should deck ourselves out with every lucky trinket at our disposal. But, if it's love, truly love, something special shared between two people, how much luck is needed to keep them together? How can luck amplify love? And would that be bad luck, or good luck, and how can you tell? And what does that say about those people who got married on 7/7/07? It seems like they don't believe their love is enough to hold it together, so they are calling out to luck to make sure their choices are correct. Are they pessimistic, or hopeful realists?

And then some of those who decided to get married with luck on their side decided to get married in the Mall of America. With fifty other couples during a mass wedding. And hundreds of strangers watching, and laced with media outlets doing human interest stories. And their doubting the permenance of love becomes a public spectacle. I had to see that.

I e-mailed several friends who might be interested in witnessing this and in the area. I even pestered one of my professors to join me. If there was going to be a mass wedding, in America's largest mall, on 7/7/07, I would have hitchhiked there to be a part of this. Luckily (ah ha!), my friend Natalie had a lunch date in the area and agreed to drive me to the ceremony. I packed my digital camera, and we arrived in plenty of time to scout a good spot to watch.

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[more writing to come]




PHOTO TIME:



Below is the program handed out at the event, in the correct order. So the first picture is the front cover, and so on. Note that the wedding, the special day for all those people, is sponsored by a country station among other things. And, if you download the third photo, you should be able to read the names of everyone who was married that day, including a fellow named Seven. You should also note the number of recommitments that took place that day. And, also note that the program is incomplete. During the warmup to the ceremony, in which one of the DJs from the country station seriously tried to whoop the crowd up like at a concert (he said things like "Hows everyone doing!" and the crowd cheered in response...you know, typical wedding decorum), said that 51 couples were being married. So three couples, and six people, have gone unrecognized because they must have been late adds to the list. Final footnote to the pictures, on the second page, if you can read it, at the very bottom it says "Please remain seated until Dusty Drake performance concludes." I'll talk about Dusty Drake later, but you get the feeling that the organizers didn't have much faith that Dusty Drake, country balladeer, couldn't keep the people riveted during his performance. Go ahead and search out a Dusty Drake tune...you'll understand.