Lynda Simons (center) weds her daughter, Jocelyn, to her now-son-in-law, Ben Rodriguez.
Photo by Parr Photo Co.

Pandemic Produces
New Wedding Officiants
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
F or those who chose to marry amid the pandemic,
their special days were often an exercise in
miniaturized joy. Miniature parties, miniature
ceremonies and miniature guest lists proliferated as
the prospect of waiting out the pandemic for wedded
bliss proved too much for many.

One upshot of a radically contracted wedding is
that many chose to fill roles that would normally go
to professionals with friends, family and others in
the immediate circle of the betrothed. Consequently,
people like Michelle Kagel, a professional officiant
and coach for officiants, found themselves flooded
with requests for advice during the pandemic. Kagel,
a former Hebrew school principal based in Exton, is
inundated with questions from people pressed into
service as officiants since the pandemic began.

8 MARCH 25, 2021
“[There have been] at least eight times where it’s
been like, ‘Hey, look, we need to have more than a
five-minute conversation,’ and then probably maybe
five or six more where people have like, ‘Hey, I just
have one question,’” Kagel recalled.

Lynda Simons of Manayunk had a lot of questions
when her daughter Jocelyn put off her March 29, 2020
wedding. Would the couple be able to reschedule their
beach wedding in Miami? Were the vendors going to
give them a hard time? Would the rescheduled date
of Feb. 20, 2022 be enough time for the pandemic to
subside? As the pandemic wore on, those questions were
answered: yes, no, looking likely. But Jocelyn Simons
and her fiancee were restless, quarantined in a remote
Massachusetts forest and, eventually, they had a
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question for her mother: Would she officiate a small
wedding composed only of immediate family?
“I was very honored,” she said. “I’m used to some
things. I used to do some acting. Speaking wasn’t
what I was worried about. I was worried about saying
the right thing.”
That’s probably the most commonly reported
fear when it comes to officiating, according to Kagel,
who both marries and counsels couples with the The
Well-Tied Knot and the People’s Therapy Group. For
those who aren’t particularly worried by the act of public
speaking, true pressure comes from the content itself.

“They want their friends to have the very best,”
Kagel said. “They’re so honored that they’ve been
asked to do this really sacred, meaningful thing for
friends who they deeply care about.”
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After obtaining a single-day officiant license through
Massachusetts — a “very surprisingly easy procedure,” according
to Lynda Simons — the date was set: Feb. 20, 2021. As the day
approached, she consulted officiant websites, rabbis and whoever
and whatever material she could get her hands on. Three days
before the wedding, she’d finally figured out what to say.

“I no longer had trepidation for it,” Lynda Simons said.

But what does one say when, in the midst of the pandemic,
as you wed your daughter to her new husband on a snowy trail
in the forests of northwestern Massachusetts, the ceremony is
interrupted by a group of snowmobile enthusiasts roaring by?
“We waved them away,” Lynda Simons laughed.

In the winter of 2019, Jordan Bravato’s best friend gave him a
ring. The friend planned to give his fiancee a different sort of ring
in November 2020, and he wanted Bravato to officiate. Bravato, the
director of Camp Kef at the Kaiserman JCC, was happy to oblige.

“I was like, ‘I feel like this is this is a more important job than
the best man,’” Bravato said.

Soon after, he began preparing for the big day, researching
Pennsylvania’s “wacky” rules around officiants. What Bravato
found was complicated, varied county to county, and seemed
to be some sort of relic of the commonwealth’s Quaker roots.

Bravato suggested to his friend that he and his fiancee get legally
married elsewhere, and let Bravato’s role be purely ceremonial.

“He did not like that,” Bravato recalled. The friend insisted
that Bravato be the one to marry them.

As soon as he and his now-wife started
cracking jokes at me, I pretty much forgot
everything I had prepared.”
Jordan Bravato (center) joins his two friends together.
Courtesy of Jordan Bravato
JORDAN BRAVATO
After heroic levels of bureaucratic wrangling, Bravato became
an ordained minister online. So, just as he was finishing up, his
friend pushed the wedding until August 2021. It seemed that the
ordination process for Bravato might be further complicated.

But Bravato’s friends decided it was time to stop shmying
around and do the thing. At the beginning of December 2020, they
told Bravato they’d like him to officiate a New Year’s Eve wedding.

“And I was like, ‘Excuse me?’” Bravato said.

Getting the license was an adventure; writing the ceremony
itself was another can of worms. Fusing together what could only
be described as Matrimony Mad Libs, stories about the husband
and stories about the couple, Bravato prepared for New Year’s Eve.

It was a rainy night on Bravato’s friend’s parents’ back porch,
with the couple, the couple’s parents and Bravato shielded from
the storm by white satin curtains.

“And I botched all of it,” Bravato said. “As soon as he and
his now-wife started cracking jokes at me, I pretty much forgot
everything I had prepared and just kept looking down at my
script every minute or so to try to catch my place.”
Still, at the end of the ceremony, he had joined a couple
together in the eyes of the law. All’s well that ends well.

Brett Goldman, a consultant and lobbyist in Center City,
might want to ask Bravato for some advice. He’s preparing to
wed one his best friends this summer, and he’s making the same
rounds as Bravato and Simons: reading ceremonies online and
calling up rabbi friends.

He’s excited just to be doing something in person, away from
Zoom. “It’s really cool, I’m happy to do it,” Goldman said. ❤
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