A Church Lector Becomes the Bride

Today, I stood in as the Wedding Commentator in place of the scheduled one The assigned Wedding Commentator called me up before lunch today saying he felt like he was getting a fever. Rather than switch his Dec. 6 schedule with me (which I requested), he opted to give up his service scheduled for today instead. There were no conflicts on my schedule and so I readily accepted.

It so happened that another lector was standing in for the scheduled lector as well!


Costume Party at Wedding Reception?

The first thing I noticed about the attendees in the wedding was that a couple of them were dressed up as altar servers. None of them looked familiar to me. They looked older and had longer hair than our own parish's altar servers. And so I wondered if the garments (server alb) they were wearing was a costume of some sort that they would use at the wedding reception. Well, I was wrong.

When the wedding mass was about to begin, I heard the altar bell (mass bell or sanctus bell) ring signalling the start of the mass. We don't have that in our regular wedding mass because there are no altar servers assigned in wedding masses in our parish. Well apparently, those guys garbed in server albs were real altar servers.

It became even strange when the Readings came about. Our mass wedding lector wasn't there. As it happened, the wedding entourage had their own readers. The lector just disappeared. Then it only became clear to me when the priest gave the homily.

Close Friends of the Officiating Priest

The priest knew the bride and referred to her as one of their church's lectors in Paranaque. I don't know which particular church, but it seems the bride serves in the church where the priest was regularly saying masses. And so, it dawned on me that these readers (or maybe even commissioned lectors) and altar servers were friends of the bride who also served in her church. I suppose the bride wanted her wedding to have a personal touch by having her church friends serve at her own wedding mass.

This made me wonder though. If indeed the wedding party of the bride were church workers, why didn't they bring their own wedding commentator as well? I've not seen a wedding mass where the wedding couple had their own commentator. But there was, at least once, when I was scheduled as commentator but was advised by the parish not to come anymore because the wedding couple then had their own. So I suppose it is possible.