structure and space

Churches are such interesting places, a microcosm of society. One cannot help but be enlightened by seeing and appreciating the merely funny as well as the absurd and the ridiculous in life. And seeing and appreciating the poignant and the beautiful and the serious things of life, too.

From time to time when I was in Pittsburgh (1987-1997) I would be asked to do a wedding at a location other than the church I served, Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church. Indeed, as I look back through my Pastoral Record, I see that many of those off campus wedding happened on campus, that is on the Pitt campus, at Heinz Chapel. A beautiful place.

One wedding that was off-site was at Phipps Conservatory. Now this is one of the benefactions of the Phipps family, who were contemporaries of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. They gave the city this collection of large greenhouse rooms, in which are ever-changing floral displays. So, reasons a wise bride-to-be, no florist costs there, if we have the wedding at Phipps.

This may or may not have been the impetus for the wedding I did there, I cannot say. What I can say is that the procession was perhaps the most memorable of all the 200-plus weddings I have officiated. If that bride and groom read this, I hope they will have been married long enough, now, to appreciate what I found humorous about the occasion.

I asked them about all the things one asks when one is a pastor preparing to do a wedding. When I asked them about music, they assured me that there would be string music, and I envisioned a string quartet, surely a lovely idea, to have some Vivaldi and Handel amid the posies and parterres.

When the day arrived I found that their string music was somewhat different. They had hired the violinist from their favorite restaurant, you know the kind, the strolling violinist who comes round to your table and plays sad or romantic songs while you dine by candlelight. Indeed, he did not prepare something new for this occasion, but instead a selection that I am sure had pleased many a dining couple in their day.

For as the procession began, he launched into a florid rendition of Irving Berlin’s:

“A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody”

It was almost like being at the Ziegfeld Follies.