What makes you uncomfortable? A wedding is a holy moment. Guests are snapping photos. You try to explain this is a time when people are uniting their lives and being guided together. It’s not always a time for photos. I’ve had the bride and groom extend the kiss a little too long and that makes people very uncomfortable. Dancing down the aisle, however, is great.

Is there something you include in every wedding? I know rabbis who do cartwheels down the aisle after the pronouncing. I’m not like that. I’m warm, companionate and serious. Two weeks before a couple marry, I ask them to write a love letter to each other, which they open the morning of the wedding. I’ve asked them to send me a copy in advance. I always check to make sure they’ve read it, and I usually incorporate something from their letters into the sermon. Sometimes it’s funny; sometimes it’s serious. It’s an excellent exercise in communication for them and it gives me a bit of insight into their personalities. Couples enjoy doing it, and they like it when I use their own words during the ceremony.

Do you stay in touch with the couples you marry? Each year I mail or email 200 or 300 anniversary cards.

What marital advice do you offer? I encourage the couple to remember why you fell in love. What brought you two together, not what’s tearing you apart. It’s a life choice that you’re making. You need to forgive, have a sense of humor and to show love for the other person. The wedding is a half-hour in a person’s life, but it’s the marriage that’s important. The ceremony is going to be beautiful, but building your lives together is more important.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve experienced? I performed a wedding at the foot of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix and a rattlesnake slid down the aisle. Another time a bee kept circling my nose and on the ‘Amen’ I slammed the rabbi’s manual book together — with the bee in the middle of it.