Week two without a wedding - such is December. A couple considering me for new years has decided they want a male officiant which means this is the first new years I'll have had off in a while. And that? Is perfectly okay.

Occasionally I see trends in weddings, things that couples seem to do and then stop doing, things that are a concern and then not, en masse. It's kind of odd. For a period of about six months a few years back, EVERYONE was tipping. I conferred with DJs and musicians and they noted the same phenomenon, and noticed when it stopped too. I hardly think that that many different pros shone that brightly and stopped without noticing it, and think it had something more to do with the economy at the time. Two summers ago, Pachabel's Canon was at every wedding. Three summers ago, every other wedding wanted Pablo Neruda's Sonnet 17. It defies any sort of average, these waves of specific trends, so I've deduced that couples getting married during a set time period are actually linked subconsciously and making decisions as a group. Only thing that makes sense.

This years trend? The pre interview. Before someone wants to write me in as their official officiant, they want to meet and screen me, not just chat on the phone. I've done this in the past - three time in six years. This past fall? Five interviews in two months. Some had bizarre horror stories that had propelled them to screen their officiant, like clergy who hijacked civil ceremonies into fire and brimstone lectures half way through, and others who came with their own (unexpected) smoke machines. Others? Had decided (and rightly so) that the person doing their ceremony was an important choice, one they wanted to make in an informed way. While I totally agree with this, it does leave couples interviewing 5 - 20 clergy, some of whom are wonderful and some of whom are crazy, resulting in most times too many options. I don't mind meeting people (and love feeding them cookies) but I wonder how long this trend is going to last. It's apparently localized to Toronto.

In other news, Nanowrimo? No big smokey finish there, got 52% of the way to the glorious 50k in words. However, what I have is more novel shaped than any other time I've attempted this so...that's good. Happy making. Finding my own working outside of cubes, loving the new launch into film editing. That's pretty much it for now.