I was there promptly at 10.45 am on a Saturday morning, a time at which (like so many others) all right-minded persons should be in bed, and ROM was crammed with people. Some couples nonchalantly in jeans but most in a rehearsal of bridal wear - muted white or pink dresses for the women and dark suits for the men - and all surrounded by a clutch of relatives and friends, most of whom looked hot and uncomfortable. We saw one white-clad woman stretchered into an ambulance.
After gathering everyone we were ushered into the waiting room, which in every way resembled an airport departure lounge - the same sense of imminent departure deadened by the long waiting time, the same suppressed excitement, the same awkwardness. There were groups of bridal parties standing in corners talking and taking photographs. A plasma TV showing what was probably an MCYS video on the joys of marriage. Signs around the room which said "Silence Please, Solemnization in Progress". There were three - meeting rooms? - in which one could be married, and they all had names: Love, Cherish and Joy. (I read "Cherish" as "Chastity" at first, assuming that it had to be a noun.) A loudspeaker announced the names of the next couple to be married: "Will Mr X and Miss Y please go to love."
Love itself was as bare as a senior civil servant's office. The presiding officer (registrar?) sat behind a large desk. The bridal couple sat/stood in front of her, and the witnesses sat at her left. A rostrum and a few mismatched settees were backed up against the other walls for the guests. The presiding officer read out her lines - matrimony in any religion, she said, was the union of ONE man and ONE woman (with clear emphasis on the number). The couple exchanged vows taken straight from the Christian service, except with all mention of God expunged and updated for the young and modern. "With this ring, I marry you." What happened to "I thee wed", which sounds better, even if only because of the burden of history of that phrase? If the Registry of Marriage, a Statutory Board of a secular government, had to appropriate the words of the Christian service, it could at least keep them in their old-fashioned beauty.
But there was a grace to the exchange of vows, which cannot be suppressed by unlovely surroundings or ungraceful words - especially mine. I think if anyone will they will be happy together, which seems to be no little achievement.