The reason I have a blog

This entry is about the best day at City Hall.

I noticed a couple watching me as I walked to the bathroom outside the office one day, and when I was on my way out, one of them stopped me to ask if I might be willing to be the witness to their wedding, in one hour. They had arrived from Berlin the day before and immediately made an appointment to be married, but hadn't realized that you need to find someone to take pictures--it's required by law, so as to capture the glory of City Hall.

Frankly, I was just flattered. I mean, of all the people who had to pee that hour, they thought I was the most respectable! They wouldn't mind having me in their photos! I looked like I might have a signature that would look good on their marriage certificate!

Because I'm not a heartless wench, and because I was already thinking I might have a blog and that this might make a great entry, I agreed, and an hour later met them at our designated place, carrying everything I thought they might need for their wedding. Having not much time to prepare for my duties as a best man/maid of honor/photographer to two German strangers, and, furthermore, having only the supplies on hand that I could find in the desk of the aide I was filling in for, this meant I brought along a camera, my Chapstick and some gum.

Torsten and Sonja seemed shocked that I'd shown up, and right on time. I felt pretty bad for them, because they were obviously nervous, and on our walk over to the Clerk's office they were trying really hard to chat with me in their second language. If you combine the confusion of filling out paperwork in English with fitting your European address onto the American forms with explaining Germany's unemployment system to your curious witness, you're in for a pretty stressful day.

But I'll say this: If you're looking for a quick wedding and a good photo opportunity, San Francisco's City Hall is the way to go. First of all, all the other couples waiting seem like a fun group. No bridezillas, lots of kids, some really extreme outfits and a kind of general air of "We just saved $20k!" (The bathrooms at City Hall on Fridays, by the way, contain some of the best people-watching you'll ever do. It's pretty routine to see women change into bridal gowns in front of the sinks. What's most fascinating is the number of women who don't account for needing a new bra to accommodate their strapless, backless dresses. The most common stage of undress I've walked in on is definitely the dress-on-but-unzipped, cramming-the-bra-straps-down-the-bodice stage.) (Sonja was wearing the type of dress you pack when you're going on vacation to California and plan to do a lot of walking around.)

Second, you can choose any location in the building to get married. (I wonder if the third floor was available the day the shirtless firefighters were doing their calendar shoot?) I thought Torsten and Sonja would have spent more time scoping this out--after all, they'd come this far. But maybe it just didn't matter that much to them. They had agreed to get married after 12 years of dating and nine years of living in the same building (but not the same flat--why give up personal space?, she argued, which I think is totally fair and I'd subscribe to if I didn't like Adam's taste in furniture and cooking so much, and if he wasn't amenable to watching all my terrible TV shows with me, and if he didn't smell so good almost all the time). The tipping point, Sonja told me, had been that Torsten had suggested a vacation to California, and she had decided that it should be a honeymoon. Therefore, they should just get married as soon as they got here. That seemed OK to him. And I guess the staircase at City Hall was OK to them, too.

The ceremony itself was pretty laid-back. The guy who was assigned to officiate that day was lost, or something, so some other dude showed up and kind of shrugged the whole thing off, like the City and County of San Francisco routinely loses staff and someone else has to pick up the robe and knock out a couple of weddings. We all headed over to the stairs, nicely asked the last couple who had already gotten married and was still taking pictures to get out of the way, and the five-minute ceremony kicked off.

The thing you don't realize about the wedding vows is how gramatically messy and antiquated they are. It's pretty apparent, though, when you listen to a German repeat, kind of quizzically, "I thee wed..." Oh, shit, what did I just agree to? The OTHER thing that was awesome about the wedding was the little detail of Sonja's right hand--she doesn't have one. The officiant ACTUALLY SAID, "Please join hands...I mean, hand." Luckily, that set both the bride and groom off giggling, which saved me from the shame of being the only one.

Torsten and Sonja didn't send me any photos of the actual wedding (which I guess would be kind of weird, since we still can't really say we know each other), but they did send me this one. They also invited me out for drinks to celebrate (I went back to work, instead) and stopped by to see me on their last day in California. I feel like I'm a really important part of their life, but, you know, that's probably temporary. After all, as Torsten wrote me in an e mail, "Faster that we were thinking we came back to the usual days in Berlin and the daily routine has catched us."

And sometimes the daily routine catches me...but it's nice when it does so as an unexpected wedding.