Fed up

protested before Adrianna could finish. “I just wanted to mix it up a bit. You know, do something untraditional. We don’t want a formal, stuffy wedding ceremony, right? So I came up with something unique!” Owen handed me a folder that contained a sheet of paper with handwritten vows.
    I eyed him suspiciously and braced myself. Owen’s idea of untraditional or unique was most people’s idea of crazy. I dragged a kitchen chair into my small living room and let Ade and Owen take the couch. Ade sat on one side of it with her head tilted and resting on her hand, while Owen sat at the opposite end of the couch with his hands solemnly folded. Despite the separation between the two of them, I could see that Adrianna was muffling a smile.
    I skimmed through Owen’s proposed vows. Oh no! “Seriously?”
    Serious was exactly what my question was not. As if there were any possibility that I’d deliver these lines! Incredibly and ridiculously, Owen had composed wedding vows a la Dr. Seuss:
     
Do you take Ade as your bride?
Will you stay loyal and filled with pride?
Will you love her all your life?
Even in times of marital strife?
Will you take out the weekly trash,
And provide for her some ready cash?
Is it your wish that I proclaim,
That she shall take your given last name?
     
    I couldn’t bring myself actually to read the rest. Instead, I ran my protesting eyes down the sheet of paper. After catching sight of an especially hideous rhyme—something about a wedding ring, wanting to sing, and making Owen feel like a king—I gave up. Staring at Owen, I said, “I’m looking at you now, Owen, and you look like a perfectly normal human being, but it turns out that you are not.” Owen, in fact, looked not only normal but even handsomer than usual. Maybe Ade’s pregnancy glow had rubbed off on him. His cheeks had a rosy tint that brightened his fair complexion, and his black hair could’ve been primped by a GQ stylist. In case I’d failed to make my meaning plain on the first try, I said, “You’re an idiot, Owen. I love you, but you’re an idiot.”
    Hallelujah!” Ade shouted and clapped her hands. “A voice of reason!”
    Come on, it’s funny. Don’t you think it’s funny?” Owen pleaded.
    A wedding ceremony is not supposed to be funny,” I instructed. You don’t have to use the traditional vows, but no way in hell am I reading this.” I crumpled up the paper and flung it at his head.
    “Yeah, and what was that business about giving me cash?” Ade demanded. “You don’t talk about money in a ceremony. Or trash, for that matter.”
    “Okay, okay, I give in! But it’s a happy occasion. I want everyone to have fun.”
    My voice suffused with the authority vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I said, “This is the first and probably only wedding at which I’m going to officiate, and I’m not going to make a freak out of myself by reciting a bunch of dumb rhymes.” Fortunately, although I hadn’t expected anything quite so preposterous as Owen’s doggerel, I wasn’t caught off guard. Suspecting that both Adrianna and Owen were more attached to the idea of writing their own vows than they’d be to the process of composing them, I’d done my wedding-vow homework and consequently was able to hand them copies of material I’d assembled from Web sites and written myself. “What about these?”
    “I don’t want that business about obeying the groom in there,” Ade said as she reached for the papers.
    Owen’s face brightened. “Maybe we could put in a vow of dis obedience. I will never do anything Ade tells me to do!”
    “You better watch it,” Ade warned him. “Your frivolous attitude is making me worry. Did you get your tux yet? I swear, Owen, if you got some garish tuxedo in loud colors, I’ll scream.”
    “I wouldn’t do that.” To my ear, Owen sounded all too serious. “I got the boring black one like you told me.”
    I’d have bet good money that Owen was lying, but Ade apparently believed him, and she didn’t need to be more riled up than than she already was. As she read the vows I’d put together, Ade kept nodding, and even Owen agreed that although my suggestions didn’t rhyme, they would work.
    “Do you trust me to put together the service?” I asked them.
    “Yeah, we do,” Owen rubbed Ade's back. He looked at her and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Babe, it’s going to be a wonderful day.”
    I said, “Good. I’ll do the whole wedding