Editor’s note: The views expressed in I Am So Popular are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the IST network.

Just as I was once an amazing pet sitter who nevertheless had a hard time keeping my own animals alive (back off—they were guinea pigs), I am now the wedding officiant who cannot manage to stay married for more than ten months. I tried twice, each time marrying a different facet of my father (round one: the bully, round two: the narcissist) but when husband two walked out, that cured me of any “need” I felt to be hitched. Interestingly, it was during the very month I filed for divorce (he left the dirty work to me), I had to perform eight weddings.

It’s true, people, I’m not just popular, I’m a minister. Actually, you can be a minister, too. It takes about two minutes at the Universal Life Church web site. And the cool thing is, once you’re ordained, you are legally qualified to join people in matrimony.

Back in 2004, I was up in Jersey, visiting my bio family, and a few days before they chased me down the beach yelling about Jesus, prompting an earlier than planned departure, I was reading the New York Times and I saw an article about a growing need for wedding officiants by non-denominational and mixed-denominational and secular couples. The gig involved writing, public speaking, being useful, making people happy and cold hard cash and so the article caught my attention since these things are all very important to me.

I got into the officiant business with the help of Kim Isom, owner of the lovely Unbridaled bridal shop on South First Street. Kim showed me the ropes and pimped me out for a year or so. Now I pimp my own badass minister self out.

I rarely do Christian weddings, mainly because I guess the Christians have congregations to which they belong and preachers in charge of those congregations. I get the mixed religion, no religion, mixed culture weddings. I get the intimate affairs. I get some big ones, too. It’s always interesting. Sometimes I weep. And while I don’t go out of my way to tell potential clients that I’m twice divorced with a permanent restraining order against one of my ex-husbands, I don’t feel like a hypocrite for being the non-marrying type who just so happens to spend an awful lot of time marrying people.

Wedding biz is in full swing right now, right on through til late May or early June, when things taper off a bit courtesy of the heat, and then pick back up again in October. For now, my recently adopted habit of “secular Sabbath” (this new trend I was partaking in even before I found out it was a trend, whereby one ignores email and cell phone and all work over the weekend) has been abruptly curtailed. I have rehearsals and ceremonies coming out the wazoo.

Last weekend—the holiest weekend of the year to Christians—I cranked out three rehearsals and three weddings. On Good Friday, I did a lovely wedding at Laguna Gloria, for a Jewish bride and her adoring groom. Jimmy Vaughan played the processional music, confessing to me later (I get confessed to a lot, being a preacher and all) that since the bride made it up the aisle in record time, it felt like “the longest two minute song” he ever played.

On Holy Saturday, I did a very sweet, very short, very awesome wedding at Green Pastures, this restaurant I’m not even sure most people under 40 know about. The couple swapped rings before exchanging vows and heading up the aisle, so they could do so with equality. It totally rocked.

Wedding three, Easter Sunday, was a Middle Eastern affair for a family I already knew. This was their daughter’s wedding. I’d performed their son’s wedding last year. I split with the Catholic Church a good quarter of a century ago, I’m wildly allergic to Christian holidays as a result, and so I was glad for this Easter alternative with a family I already knew to be plenty of fun to hang out with. And this, I think, is something that really keeps me going as an officiant-- for the little while I’m there, I’m sort of part of the family.

Being a part of other people’s families is something I have strived for. Part of the reason I believe I am so popular is that there was never any pleasing my father. And so, desperate for approval, I launched myself out into the world, ever the entertainer, often at the dinner table of a group of people who might, I hoped, adopt me if only for the course of the meal.

Sunday’s wedding was especially interesting for me, seeing as immediately following the ceremony, I’d received a call that my father had died. This wasn’t a surprise, nor did it make me sad. I’d sort of prayed for his demise the first thirty-five or forty years of my life (from the perspective that I thought he was a total asshole) and then, later, I tempered that, still wishing for his death, but now because Alzheimer’s had taken his mental ass out of the damn game and caring for him was killing my mom.

I’d actually gotten a call a few weeks before. A missed call. Warren— my hot, young boyfriend—and I were in church and so my ringer was off. I saw the missed call, checked the number. New Jersey area code. A call from NJ on a Friday night could only, I guessed, mean one thing. “I think my dad’s dead,” I said to Warren. “I think he caught wind I was in a church and it killed him.”

In fact, when I returned the call, I’d discovered he was still alive, though Last Rites had been administered. My trip to church hadn’t killed him after all, possibly because I was only there, at St. David’s, to hear Will Taylor and Strings Attached perform the songs of Patty Griffin—I was not there to re-convert or confess or anything. (But I must say the call from Jersey combined with all those sad, sad, sad, sad, haunting, haunting, haunting PG songs, with all those dark, dark, dark, dark lyrics about dying and trying to get over shit, especially performed in a church with strings… well that was a nice touch.)

Where was I? Oh, at a Persian wedding, the day after my father died. Rehearsal was the same day as the ceremony, and it was during this time I learned a wonderful expression from one of the groomsmen: Once you go Persian, you won’t try another version!

That afternoon, in the bride’s room, I had a great time watching everyone get ready and giggle and put on makeup and pose in front of the mirror. I enjoyed the hell out of the ululating that accompanied the bride down the aisle, and all the rituals new to me, like the groom’s need to ask the bride three times if she does, before she says, “I do.”

I admit I did stumble a bit—unusual since, as I like to say, my weddings are typically so smooth they only go off with just a single hitch (harhar). And while there was that one bride once who had a pre-ceremony screaming match with her mother as they debated whether or not the groomsmen would float the keg before the nuptials were exchanged, that really had nothing to do with me. My job? I almost always get it just right.

But at the Persian wedding—and I’m still red-faced over this—I pronounced Iran as eye-RAN, instead of eee-RON so when the congregation laughed, I fear they were not (as I had hoped) laughing at something else, like maybe a flower girl sticking her tongue out. (I blame this mispronunciation on two things: the iPod and the Flock of Seagulls song, I Ran since that has all the same letters as Iran and is pronounced eye-RAN, as in eye-RAN so far awaaaaaaaay.)

I used to stick around after weddings, attend receptions, eat and dance. I hardly do that anymore—if I did, it would take up all of my time and I’d weigh seven hundred pounds. But Sunday, I stuck around, watched the fun, ate the food, able to enjoy the joy before flying back to that place I was born, to what I knew would be a pre-funeral circus (and it was), such high drama unavoidable when you come from Irish roots, and you have eight siblings, and when you are the black sheep, as I am, the designated family shit magnet cum scapegoat.

I wasn’t even going to go at all. But I did, because I love my mother and I wanted to be of use to her. About the fourth time one of my siblings came up behind me and said, STOP TALKING IN FRONT OF HER! SHE’S JUST HERE TO WRITE ABOUT IT! I even politely offered to leave before the service, help calm the storm. My mother—was she joking? I’m not sure—said I actually was helping, giving the angry ones a handy target, and that she really wished I’d stick around. And so I did, taking mental notes for the week’s worth of blogging I have planned because I’d hate to disappoint them.

When I saw my father in the box, it was the first time in my life I can think of that he didn’t tell me how stupid I was, or fat, or how bad my hair looked, or what a bad parent I was. In fact, he was, for once, very, very quiet. And then I left, about an hour after they put him in the ground, caught my flight back to this city I love. A few relatives asked, Do you have to go so soon?

I did. I do. Because my wedding clients—so many wedding clients— are waiting for me, eager for the chance to have me join their families, if only for an hour at a time.

Spike Gillespie blogs for LaunchPad Coworking for fun and money. She’ll be posting some juicy blogs at www.spikeg.com this week. And you can catch her and her friends putting on at a special matinee performance of The Dick Monologues, Sunday, March 30th, 2 p.m. at The Hyde Park Theatre. Email spike@spikeg.com for more info.