11.05.28 Michael and Jess

Michael Legleiter and Jess Bronk

Thank you all for coming all the way out here where they keep Portland for the wedding celebration of Jess and Michael. They want me to start by telling you all how appreciative they are for sharing this special day with them. We will forever remember this wedding as having occurred in the Spring, or towards the end of May even, but from here on out they will think of this day as the milestone of all milestones. Today, May 28, 2011. The day they officially plant their garden. The day the saplings go from the greenhouse to the earth. This day carries with it the expectation of the shade of that tree in the future.  Both of you are in big trouble with the other if you forget it from this day forward, so I will repeat it ( Mike): May 28, 2011.

I do ceremonies all the time and I have an exhaustive list of questions about exactly what a couple wants.  People idealize the day all their lives and often go crazy with details when it finally arrives. These two defied tradition and gave almost no input. They agreed on simple parameters. They want it short and sweet because they don’t want to put anyone out. They say they want to celebrate the union, not to tax the guests. And Mike knows I’m not capable of brevity, so he says, “I mean it, Dave. Short. Ten, twelve minutes.” I want to add at this point that nine days ago I emailed Mike and said, “I’m just glad I’m coming to a wedding as a guest for a change instead of performing the ceremony.  I’m gonna get my swerve on and crunk it the hell up.” He says back, “Yeah, you should. You deserve it. We just want someone to kind of announce that we are married, ya know?” I said, “Who is that going to be?” He became somewhat Bob Newhart-like and stammered, “Well, I uh, I was hoping you might.”

So ladies and gentlemen, friends and family, guests of the matrimonial nuptials  of Jess and Michael, please look at all times like you are having a blast so they don’t worry. They want this to sort of be an un-wedding. Try not to look hungry or bored or they will think you’d rather be somewhere else. In fact, I have a better idea. Let’s do something to prove we actually want to be here. I call this the group “I do.” Guests of this wedding, this bride and groom wish to be married today. They desire to become legally and spiritually bound. Let’s show our support by answering some simple questions. Do we, the friends and families of this couple wish to do more than merely attend this event? Say “I do.”  Do we wish to bless and encourage the union between Michael and Jess? Say “I do.”  Do we pray for them to have health and happiness until death do they part? Say “I do.” Excellent. Just for kicks, can I get an “AMEN.”

Okay, we got that out of the way, but I am a professional and I plan to keep it short and sweet. If twelve minutes is my ceiling, I want to selfishly use a few minutes now to say why I’m here, why I would allow someone at the final hour to treat me like a balloon-tying clown at a kindergartener’s party. My name is Reverend David DeChant. I have had the honor and the excitement of knowing Michael Legleiter since kindergarten, where we attended Robinson Elementary School together (now known as The Original Old School). Michael and I both remember that we built a box castle together on the first day of school, even. Later, near Christmas of that same year in 1975, we were in the play at school, him as Frosty the Snowman, me as Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. We have known each other for so long that I can tell you how small we were when we met. We were not tall enough to reach the floor when we sat in the seats in the cafeteria! I know this because I have a memory of us sitting next to each other at lunch. Our feet are locked together as we eat and our feet swing back and forth without touching the ground. That is how long we have known each other, and that is a good example of how closely we have known each other—since a miraculous period of childhood called naivete!  This is a person I consider something more than a brother. I am here today for the same reason I would be here if he called me and said he was living under a bridge and needed a couch to sleep on. I am here today as a humbled and honored servant in any way I may be of help. I am so happy that my oldest and dearest friend has found an other half. I have been like a Jewish mother fretting over my boy for these last four decades, hoping an appropriate match completes him. Today I am ecstatic that my dream for my little Michael comes true.

Our relationship had its first pecking order incident in first grade. I remember it well.  We were given an assignment—flippantly given the assignment, really—of copying a cartoon on the back of our weekly reader magazine. It was your familiar three-panel cartoon and all of us did our best. I knew mine was really good. Our teacher, Mrs. Young, gently placed her hand on my shoulder from behind me as she passed and said, “David’s is great!” I blushed with pride. But the next row up was Michael’s where she stopped dead in her tracks behind him and audibly gasped. “Boys and girls…look!” She held up Michael’s. It was a Xerox quality copy. The teacher was visibly confused at the level of art her first grader had achieved. She immediately walked out the door and to the principal, Mr. Larrison’s, office to show him. The teachers all looked at him like an alien from that day on, a freakishly talented alien.

But instead of despising him for it, I stuck to a strategy of simply sabotaging him with humor.  We rode the bus together every year, in fact were in each class together all the way to fifth grade. By the end we could communicate like wolves, at least in the sense that I could make him laugh by just looking at him. In fact, he had to survive many punishments just because he was with me. I got him in trouble. We became quite familiar with Mr. Larrison’s office.  Maureen, I should have said something years ago, but your son is a nice boy and was not the one who lit the bottle rocket on the bus that day, even if he may have been the one holding it. And it was me who threw the wet toilet paper balls all over the bathroom, not Mike, who was merely guilty of not being in class and also swinging on the bathroom stall.  I’m sorry Mrs. Legleiter.  He could have ruled the world and I ruined him.

Meanwhile, while Michael did his thing in Kansas City, Jess Bronk was growing up in a solar-paneled natural wood house that her parents designed and built nestled in a hollow in rural Wisconsin. She has the type of parents that do that sort of thing. She is the daughter of two highly talented artisans–one a maker of wonderful, lovingly crafted leather goods, the other an award winning woodworker of stunningly beautiful wood furniture and sculpture.  Jess grew up going to all the midwest craft fairs her parents based their livelihood on.  It is certainly no wonder Jess was highly creative.  At home she had endless art materials and supplies inside, and the beauty of the woods surrounding her parents home outside. The whole world was a potential project. Jess never really had to question what she would be when she grew up, she was an artist right out of the gate. Jess remembers walking around the first grade classroom, helping the other children draw animals for their projects, until the teacher said “Okay, class, Jessy has to work on her own project now”.  Yes, she is another freakish artistic talent, as a matter of fact. I see crosshatching and shadowing in this couple’s future. I’m just channeling now, looking with my inner eye in and out of years to come and I clearly see a lot of pens and pencils in cups on desks, and smell a faint whiff of mineral spirits.

Although I’ve known Michael these past two score, I just met Jess on this trip. I had a phone interview with Mike about her ahead of time. I didn’t want to sully my good name as a Universal Life Church Minister by allowing him to get married to some regular person, some commoner, or worse, a Canadian. I had important questions for him. First question, of course, “Is she a Midwesterner?” He confirmed she was from Wisconsin. Thank God. I can support him marrying a Cheesehead. I myself married a Hoosier. As long as she is from the Motherland. Good. Second question, “Is she an only child?” This one is important because Mike grew up an only child and hung around me in my home where I was the youngest of eight. He didn’t understand siblings. Whenever my brothers picked on me he cocked his head funny like a dog hearing a curious sound. He thrived in the environment of no brothers and sisters, and I long ago sensed he would probably have to partner with someone who spoke that same language. And Jess does! She is one.

Third question, “Was there some kind of magic to how you two met?” He then relayed a story involving a group show of Polaroids at Powell’s books, called 16X20, 20 artists, 320 Polaroids. Jess had a set of 16 shots in the show and Michael happened to be in a few shots from another photographer. He mentioned Art, cubes of cheese, sparkling cider, “a better than mediocre evening.” After the opening they joined mutual friends for drinks and Michael found himself “quite intrigued by Jess’s hearty laugh, her beautiful smile and easy-going air.” I said, “That’s, um, sweet. No magic though? Did you Heimlich one of those cheese cubes out of her or anything?” He said “Magic indeed, for I learned many months later that her first impression of me was deciding she probably would not be dating me! Not knowing any better, I went forward as if she was just as interested in me as I was in her. Eventually she was.”  I think they call this The Castanza Method.

So despite a strained magnetism that first night, Michael and Jess were pulled to one another and began dating. I imagine they wound up together in the much the same way they planned this wedding.  Since the magic was building at the nebulous rate that it was, (and, I understand, after the added sin of a night of unadulterated BINGO), Michael rushed to propose just shy of nine years later. How many? No hurry.  And here we are today, the fairy tale a reality. (Back to my tree metaphor) this tree of Michael and Jess has been in the greenhouse for quite some time. Though their opinions may differ on where the plants will go, it was never in doubt whether they would build a garden together. They have been building a life with each other for nearly a decade, but today we help them put the root ball in the ground. If those of you gathered here today are willing to participate in their garden, if you good people wish to one day delight in the shade of this tree, and perhaps one day enjoy it’s fruit, say “I do.”  Now here comes the ceremony.

The rings of a marriage symbolize with a circle the unity of two souls into one, and do more than seal the importance of their vows.  Imagine the rings as the adjustable top of a compass and Jess and Mike as the points.  As they get further away from each other, they lean and hearken towards the other, but become straight when together.  The ring is the symbol of the distance traveled in that circle, and keeps the other foot from going anywhere that will not lead it back home.  As they are parted for their workday or traveling apart for whatever reason, this band suffers not a breach, but an expansion, as the gold is stretched to airy thinness.  These bands of the most malleable and precious of metals are now forever acting the top of that compass, ensuring a return.

Michael Sean Legleiter, do you take Jessica Lynn Bronk to be your faithful wife from this time onward, to join with you and to share all that is to come, to give and to receive, to speak and to listen, to inspire and to respond, a commitment made in love, and eternally made new?  [say I Do] Then take your ring and place it on her finger and say as you are doing so, “with this ring I thee wed.”

And Jessica Lynn Bronk, do you take Michael Sean Legleiter to be your faithful husband from this time onward, to join with you and to share all that is to come, to give and to receive, to speak and to listen, to inspire and to respond, a commitment made in love, and eternally made new? [say I Do] Then take your ring and place it on his finger and say as you are doing so, “with this ring I thee wed.”

So by the power vested in me I pronounce you husband and wife, Michael Legleiter and Jessica Bronk. Please kiss her, kiss him!  Ladies and Gentlemen, can I get another Amen?