Last week I posted my rather "serious" thoughts on BEA. This week I thought I’d post a completely ridiculous BEA-related musing: What if my friend Tim had decided to host his Saturday wedding at the Javits Center? Sure, his forthcoming book might be about the Black Death, which hardly seems like a wedding-appropriate theme, but I think a BEA wedding would nevertheless have boosted his book sales. Complete absurdity = publicity = sales, no?

Here’s what I’m picturing:

The wedding venue: Either the Boyds Mills Press booth, as Front Street is Tim’s publisher, or (to accommodate a larger crowd) one of those seating areas where you can watch cooking demonstrations and the like. In either case, finding an aisle would certainly not have been a problem.

The guest attire: Wedding-themed badge holders

The wedding party: Costumed characters, which are never in short supply at BEA

The music: Compliments of Putamayo, which is always present at the show and has a grand reputation for partnering well with booksellers

The reading: Publishers could have competed to have their ARCs featured during this portion of the service.

The officiator: I think David McCullough might have made the best choice out of this year’s BEA attendees, but Stephen Colbert would also have been memorable in this role… Any other nominees?

The recessional: Did anyone give out promotional rice packets this year? Maybe birdseed? Those might be the only two promo items I didn’t see. Surely SOMEONE did bubble stuff.

The reception: Take your pick of any number of publisher parties that could easily have accommodated our crowd of wedding-watchers. A Spiderwick reception might have been cool. Then again, Holiday House sounds like an appropriate place for a wedding reception.

The favors: All the swag your commemorative totebags could carry.

The vehicle whisking the bride and groom away: the Harry Potter Knight Bus, naturally.

What pieces of the BEA wedding puzzle am I missing? You tell me. (No, really, tell me. I’m getting a genuine laugh out of this, which will continue until someone decides this is actually a great publicity stunt and DOES get married at BEA, at which point I will cry for ever having shared this ridiculous idea!!)