Solemnizers Are Not Called “Jo”

I still get kind of freaked out by the Singapore title for people legally empowered to marry others off. I mean, “Solemnizer”… It sounds like a professional mourner or something. Somebody that stands there with a dour face and makes deep, throaty grunts with a quick nod or shake of the head and a penetrating gaze that looks into the pit of your soul and says, “You’re going to die soon.”

However of course, that is not the case. Well, it might be depending on your outlook of marriage. I suppose if the impending nuptials are run by an angry father who wants to make sure his carefree daughter gets married BEFORE her belly starts to show visible signs of pregnancy, then such a ceremony, with resentful party guy and devastated good time girl would be a solemn occasion indeed, and no one would be especially happy with that day of days. Of course, that’s not our situation, so to me, having someone be all solemn to officiate the wedding just strikes me as weirdly baroque, and something that would better fit in an Anne Rice novel with people bemoaning–or outright challenging–destiny and the cruel fates it has in store for everyone.

So anyway, today my search for a Solemnizer finally ended. I had about three pages worth of listings on people who were licensed to do it, and I went through it in rapid succession with many, many, MANY “No’s” because it seems like quite a few people require this same service on this particular day, or the people who perform Solemnizations had decided to leave the country on that particular day. As I kept scratching off more and more names and feeling the noose tighten, I finally managed to luck out with a nice woman on the other end who, contrary to all previous expectation, was completely available, ready, willing and able. I promptly signed her on and told the Fiance “We got one!” only to have her horrified reaction a moment later when I told her the woman’s name was Joanna.

This apparently is not on, because my future Mother-In-Law has an extremely phobic reaction to people who’s names begin with “JO”. I don’t know the full details, and I’m not even sure I want to know, but apparently after a consistently bad run with men and women who have “JO” in their name, my mother-in-law to be has more or less refused any and all interactions with people that have those two dreaded letters in that particular order, and so there was NO FREAKIN’ WAY, that she was going to allow her daughter to be married by such a hideous person.

Right.

So I called her back and told her we needed to cancel on grounds of Warding Evil, which she graciously accepted, albeit with a lot of puzzled laughter. The Fiance was apologetic about the whole thing, but we got saved when the woman called back to offer that her husband was also a legally empowered Solemnizer and his name was Gary, so that’s all right then, isn’t it?

Apparently it is.

So after a couple of days of frantic searching, we now have someone that is willing to marry us on the appointed day at the appointed time. We just have to meet up with him so he can discuss a few ceremony-ish things, and sign the approrpiate forms that can be submitted to ROM (Not the Space Knight, but the Registry Of Marriages) and then we’ll be all nice and legal for October.

My only concern now is that the person who was arranging the venue for the ceremony itself was a woman named Jontel. But oh well, I guess we’ll just see whether that’s just cause for a trauma in the future or not…