Ushering At A Wedding Is Like Playing Tetris

I recently ushered at a wedding. If you haven’t been on the staff side of a wedding ceremony before, ushers are effectively nuptial sheepdogs. It’s our job to escort people down the isle and seat them in pews, and to do so efficiently enough that the attendant congregation can fit into the chapel. This involves excellent organizational and geospatial skills, which is why ultimately being an usher is more important than those peacocking groomsmen who hog all the glory.

Groomsmen are the original bouncers of the wedding universe, invented specifically to keep Vikings from carting off women. Nowadays, with fewer vikings and better revolvers, groomsmen are mostly ceremonial. Although personally I intend to dole out weapons as gifts to groomsmen at my own wedding. My best man will receive a kickass broadsword, and the groomsmen will all get hatchets with their names engraved in the steel.

I’m not particularly worried about Vikings myself, and the Comanches have been pretty quiet in recent years, too. But grooms have fairly limited aesthetic choices in these matters and the two prerogatives which I am claiming in advance are that I get to wear a top hat on the way to the limo and my nominal best friend gets to hold a deadly weapon.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

As I said, ushers escort guests to their seats and do so in such a way that pews are filled efficiently. In this capacity being an usher at a wedding is a lot like playing Tetris. Guests invariably want to sit on the inside of the pew, blocking other couples from economically filling the allotted space. As an usher I am not about to let that kind of slip-shod seating occur.

One of the other ushers at the wedding I attended said that, if one half of the church started getting guest-heavy, we should escort all of the witnesses (irrespective of bridal or groomal affiliation) to the lighter side. To maintain balance.

Bullshit. All American events involve wholesome competition, and weddings are no exception. People are already holding hands, slopping flowers all over the place and weeping– isn’t that enough for you dewey-eyed liberals? If you don’t want a dose of healthy competition at your ceremony, do a destination wedding in some socialist “country” like Italy.

No, real weddings have two teams: Team Groom and Team Bride. This is important if, hypothetically, something goes awry in the ceremony and a bar fight breaks out. Don’t get me wrong– I’m rooting for everything to go swimmingly and for the couple to be happy and non-combative. But if shit does hit the fan, I know whose side I’m on and I want my team ready to carry the day.

So the purview of an usher has two dimensions so far. First, pick a side of the church and try to make it better organized than the other half. That’s the qualitative part of your job. The quantitative element consists in convincing ambiguous people who know both parties to sit with your team, thereby increasing your overall score. (Note: if you have prior sales experience, or have ever worked for Carl Rove, you will be excellent at marshaling guests to your side.

Once you’ve mastered these two elements you have an even higher goal to achieve: self-improvement. If you’re like me, most competitions become stale and boring over time because you are so clearly superior to your opponents. Not only were the ushers I played against sore losers, they refused to even acknowledge we were sparring against each other in the first place! In cases like that there’s only one person you can count on to be a respectable opponent: yourself.

Time yourself and try to beat your own record. For instance, halfway through the buildup to the wedding ceremony I effectively doubled my efficiency by escorting two ladies at a time, one on each arm. When I got the knack for that, I started thinking “big picture,” and purposefully stashed couples with babies at the back of the chapel, that way they could leave quietly if their baby screamed or exploded or something.