I’m an ordained minster, and I love doing weddings.

For this wedding, I got to have some fun with the ceremony, as the wedding was…fake. It was an event meant to showcase a handful of small Vermont businesses, and so although the photos depict real people having a REAL GOOD TIME, the whole thing was designed as a promotional shoot.

I didn’t need to write a fake ceremony in order for the ceremony to be photographed, but I wanted to. Because when you’re going to wear neutral colors and drink wine and eat fabulous food with your friends, you might as well take the opportunity to make them laugh while standing on a rock outcropping in a pond. As I always say.

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ORTENZIA + JASPER

We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Ortenzia Caviglia and Jasper Ankle. Theirs is a love so perfect—so well-designed—that it almost appears to have been manufactured by an agrarian creative studio. Their love extends beyond the physical world, beyond simplistic ideas of “reality” and “real people,” and enters into the realm of the sublime.

Do these two people truly exist? Is this a real marriage? Does anyone have cell phone service? Is Kanye West a “good person”?

The answer to these questions, my friends, is no. Does that make this party any less fun or this love any less worth remembering? Of course not.

This day shall be remembered as a day when two people pretended to be two other people, and other people in attendance also pretended to be other people, and photographs were taken, and food was eaten, and beverages imbibed, and later on, when other other people viewed the photos, they sighed to themselves, and they swooned, and they purchased things for sale in the photos.

May the love between Jasper and Ortenzia fortify our convictions that love is real, that parties are delicious, and that yes, we can all have successful businesses in rural Vermont. As Jasper once said to Ortenzia, quoting the rapper 50 Cent in his hit song “21 Questions” featuring Nate Dogg: “I love you like a fat kid loves cake.” And Ortenzia replied, “Samesies.” And the whole world sighed in contentment.

And now, without further ado, I will turn to these two people, people, who, in another life, perhaps, were already married to each other and already had a baby and congratulations on that by the way, and say:

By the power vested in me by Two of Us Photography, Longest Acres Farm, Big Picture Farm, Stitchdown Farm, Farmrun, Free Verse Farm, Woodbelly Pizza, Ardelia Farm, La garagista, Vermont Tent Company, and Who is Sylvia,

I now pronounce you: HUSBAND AND WIFE.

You may now kiss the bride.

(“21 Questions” by 50 Cent plays in the background)