My cousin got engaged some time back. And it seemed I was going to be asked to be the photographer. Most weddings in my family seem to be family affairs. I’ve been a DJ and a photographer and even in a few wedding parties. So this was not so surprising, even if just attending is an easier day.

So I figured on the nondescript tie. Doesn’t draw attention, projects authority and authenticity.

But I ultimately wore a different tie. On Tuesday of this last week I got a text about not shooting the wedding, but taking on some other role. These things are family affairs.

I have three theories about weddings: The first theory is that every wedding has its own character. Usually it is a flaw or something quirky or some environmental condition or something going on in the world that day. But its the thing that everyone remembers when your wedding ceremony comes up. Oh, a bridesmaid fainted? Yep, people will laugh at that for years. It was a 128 degrees at your wedding? That’s always the first thing people say about the lovely ceremony. (This one I know from firsthand experience.)

So I did some research and did some other work chose a different tie and then last night helped assembled the bulk of the wedding venue’s decorations. The bride had done a great deal, of course, and I’m sure her kids were kids and the groom was a groom and so I was up on the top of a 10-foot ladder in this event venue last night, clinging to a mount bar and stringing lace and tule and beads and lights for reasons that make sense to smarter people than me. And we did that because we’d already put all of the table centerpieces in place. I figure just doing the work, just being seen working hard, might mean something to the teenagers who are present, but who can say? I realized, too late, that if I’d just told them to do things, they would do them. They don’t always take initiative. Sounds familiar.

But I was happy to do all of that. Ask me to be anything but a wedding photographer. If you do ask me, I will take your pictures and send you a flash drive of unedited photographs and you can do whatever you like with them.

I have three theories about weddings: The second theory is that weddings are needlessly expensive. (I know, this is more of an immutable, universal law.) Just adding the word “wedding” to a vendor’s order increases the bill by several orders of magnitude. There is a reason wedding photographers get to charge what they charge. And that’s also the reason that I get asked to shoot weddings, because I can’t do that to family.

So after all that last night we left the venue and sat around and told jokes and the bride did last minute things for her wedding and then shifted to working on one of her class assignments. She’s a woman in her 30s who is raising a brood of kids and going to school and it is all a level of impressive that the rest of us who merely did college or parenting one at a time probably can’t understand. Also, she planned and pulled off her whole wedding.

And it was held at that place. The wedding got a late start, because fires and other crises had to be addressed. Photos had to be taken. Vows had to be written at the absolute last possible minute. And then the music played — one of my folks pushed play on the tablet, because these are family affairs. The playlist was shared, literally, as we were on the way to the venue. Oh, and also the matron of honor backed out, and the dresses were late, too.

Which is what I told them when they came to stand before me. Yes, I married them. This amused some people to no end. Others probably had different reactions. But it was a pretty decent service. And it had happened after a heck of a week. They’d lost their pastor, because that guy’s son had to go sign a college football scholarship. He’d set them up with a backup, but they didn’t like him. So they asked me on Tuesday if I would marry them on Saturday. So I wrote a ceremony that day and today watched as my aunt and uncle sat down at the front of the room. My uncle married us in 2009. I stood there watching him while everyone else watched the groomsmen and the bridesmaids all came down the aisle.

Before I started the service I said, just to them, “Do me a favor. Becky, look at Jeremy. Jeremy, look at Becky. Take a deep breath.” And I shared with them my third theory about weddings: At the end of the day, no matter what else happens, you’re still married.

I realized, midway through the service, what I forgot to add to it. I thought about ad libbing, but things were going pretty well and the bride and groom hadn’t mentioned it when they previewed the thing anyway. And, at the end, I realized that no one stood when the bride came down the aisle. And, sure, dresses were still getting hemmed moments before the service, and that even as we started almost half an hour late. Of course the pictures between the ceremony and the reception took way too long, so everyone was hungry. After all of that and more, which had happened in the weeks and days and hours just before this important day, they were still married.

So I signed the license and then played songs, because I somehow got tricked into being the DJ anyway. But I didn’t take the first picture. They still got married.