Do you like weddings?  I do.  That is why I have married several different women.  No, it isn’t what you think.  Cindy is my first and only wife, but I have officiated at many wedding ceremonies for friends and, in some cases, people I did not know until I was asked to celebrate their marriage with them.

The first was Eldon, who was the store manager at the Wendy’s restaurant in Joplin, MO.  Cindy and I moved there two weeks after our wedding.  I worked at that restaurant from May of that year until September, when I left the Wendy’s of Southwest Missouri family.

Eldon and one of our employees had decided to get married.  They were going to have the wedding at her church, but for some reason, her pastor was unable to officiate at the ceremony.  Eldon asked if I was legal to perform weddings.  At that time, Missouri laws were much stricter about who could officiate a wedding.  I checked and found that you did not have to be ordained but only licensed to the ministry, which I was.

That was my first.  I have done weddings for my brother Sam and his wife, my sister-in-law Sharon, my cousin Troy and his wife Coleen.  I was even able to help another friend I worked with one Valentine’s Day.  She had told me that they wanted to get married and had even gotten the marriage license. 

On Valentine’s Day, she told me they were going to get married that day.  Larry, her fiancé, was at the courthouse trying to find a judge to officiate at the ceremony. I told her to let me know if that did not work out. Later that day, she came back to my office and asked if I could help. We had the wedding that afternoon, and every year on Valentine’s Day, I wish them a happy anniversary.

Not every marriage that I have helped to begin has lasted this long. One may not have made it as long as celebrity weddings. The day after the ceremony, the bride called and asked if I could tear up the marriage license. The copy I left with had already been mailed to the county recorder. I always drop them in a mailbox when I go home after the wedding. I can be fined if it isn’t postmarked within a certain period. She asked what she could do, and I told her she would need to call a lawyer if they could not work it out.

I had only been able to have one counseling session with them because of the time crunch they were in. After that, I was skeptical about officiating at weddings for people I do not know. Since my second daughter was married and I performed their ceremony, I have not done a wedding. Their oldest daughter turns nineteen this year.

Marriage is not what it once was. Today, in Missouri, a twenty-one-year-old and a seventeen-year-old cannot be married even with parental consent. That apparently isn’t important to anyone but me. Cindy was seventeen, and I was the dirty old man of twenty-one when we were married in Springfield, MO, and her mother signed our marriage license.

This is the reason that my state representative will not have my vote this year. He voted for that bill. You may ask why I am so adamant about this. Laws were already in place that prevented parents from filing statutory rape charges for a child who was seventeen and had sex with someone of majority age. Now, the parents of this same person do not have the right to authorize a wedding. To me, that is sanctioning promiscuity.

©Copyright 2026 by Charles Kensinger