Navigate to News section

Want Joan Rivers To Officiate Your Wedding? Just Ask

The online-ordained minister married a gay couple during her book signing

by
Stephanie Butnick
July 02, 2014
Joan Rivers on Feb. 26, 2014. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for GLOBAL GREEN USA)
Joan Rivers on Feb. 26, 2014. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for GLOBAL GREEN USA)

Joan Rivers, the patron saint of I Don’t Care What You Think, is also, apparently, a woman of god. The Jewish comedian got ordained online last year with the Universal Life Church so that she could officiate at a friend’s wedding atop the Empire State Building. Her ordination was called upon again this week at the decidedly less formal Barnes and Noble in New York City’s Union Square, the New York Post reports, when an attendee at her book signing asked if she could marry him and his boyfriend. Right there. At Barnes and Noble.

Rivers, of course, was game. Someone found flowers and the crowd of 400 (!) serenaded Jed Ryan and Joseph Aiello as they (I imagine) walked down the almanac or new fiction aisle, where Rivers (Reverend Rivers? Rabbi Rivers??) was waiting to officiate. (They went to the city clerk’s office the next day to get a marriage license, which Rivers signed.)

The “something borrowed” was the flowers, said Joan, adding: “Something old was me, and something blue was my legs…It was such a New York thing. It was great.”

Mazel tov.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.