How to Guarantee Your Wedding Won\'t Be Boring

Weddings, like history, seem to be just the same damn thing after another but with different names to memorize. Besides the two people standing in the middle, the variations are slight at most (flavor of cake).

Rather than participate in the same-old-same-old, San Francisco musicians Rebecca Bortman and Bryan Garza started a band. It's called Love, Jerks. As you can see, they have precluded your cynical curmudgeonly dismissal of anyone so in love they had to start a band together.

Both Garza and Bortman are lead singers—for Scissors for Lefty and Happy Fangs, respectively—and the San Francisco alt-music scene has been influential in their romance. Last year, they got engaged onstage at a concert at Bottom of the Hill. Instead of patching together their musical life into their ceremony, they scrapped the ceremony and wrote a wedding musical instead. Rather, a martial rock opera.

"Imagine a Bowie concert," says Garza, "with hors d’oeuvres and cocktails and a donut tower." With a pause he added, "if people want dinner, I told them they better get some before."

Love, Jerks will perform their wedding an audience of 250 to 300 guests in two weeks at the Mission District concert venue The Chapel (fitting!). They have seven songs with one encore. When some fans reached out for tickets, the pair acquiesced and set up a fan application. As they wrote on their website, "OK! Sure! Just be nice to all our high school buddies and don’t slamdance our aunties."

The two songbirds/lovebirds spoke to me about their plans.

How was writing together? I know that collaborating can be a new dynamic.

RB: Other people might not know what a triumph these songs are, or for us to coexist [as musicians]. They might just hear fun songs, which I hope they do, but for us, this whole production is a gift to our family and friends: This is our inside life, this is what we’ve worked on for almost a year.

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BG: We both love it, even if we get a little upset in the beginning. Her input is crucial; everything Rebecca says is an improvement. It’s just hard to receive for the first few minutes.

RB: I’m starting to get better at delivering it.

How are the songs you write together different than writing normally?

BG: I would say: Let’s not get too metaphorical, let’s keep it forthright. Just say, “I love you,” over and over.

What's your family think?

RB: It makes sense. We were both the little kids who would sit our parents down and say, Watch me perform! Usually to Tina Turner music.

BG: We felt this pressure from people who will fly all the way over here who want to be a little more formal, so we said okay we’ll do a theme: Rockers vs. Dockers.

Tell me more...

BG: It’s also us. We’ve taken a lot of time off and been rock and rollers, but then there’s this reality of our day jobs. Like right now, I wouldn’t be seen in what I’m wearing: slacks and a dress shirt and a badge. We recognize there is a dichotomy. San Francisco is going through this now too, like the tech vs. the artists. We wanted to show the audience that the two can coexist.

Is there a lot of San Francisco in your songs?

RB: We live in the Castro; he lived way up the hill and we met in the middle at the Castro theater for the first [date].

BW: Seeing her for the first time, leaning against the wall, from my motorcycle as I’m parking it. It seemed so cinematic.

Is your life like a music video? Do people tell you that?

RB: I will say, that’s one of the things I adore about Bryan he makes like feel like a John Hughes movie, I’m just starring in my own romantic ‘80s comedy drama. But don’t tell everyone. Then they’ll want him too.

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