Granted, the marriage lasted only around 20 to 30 minutes. Which, as far as I know, breaks the record for Shortest Marriage Ever, which I'm pretty sure was held by Britney Spears.

This whole marriage thing came about when the Hillsboro High School choral group Spirit-N-Celebration attended RenFest last weekend.

RenFest is an event that takes place in Bonner Springs-a suburb of Kansas City-every fall, and is basically like an amusement park, minus the rides, bright lights and asphalt, and plus-basically-dirt.

Essentially, it's set up to be as close to the Renaissance time period as possible, in both wardrobe and setting.

I'm assuming here that the Renaissance had Bud Light ads hanging outside taverns.

In case you missed the Renaissance, it spanned from around the 14th through 16th centuries, and is considered to be a time of enlightenment in Europe, and also a time of men wearing tights. And not a whole lot else.

Attending RenFest is really quite amusing to me, mainly because I find pleasure in seeing that I'm not the only one who does a wonderful job at making a complete fool out of myself in public.

You can tell just by watching that the people who staff the festival are die-hard Renaissance fans. They walk around in full costume, talking in Olde English dialect, and then embarrassing the 21-century-pants off those attending the festival by interacting with them.

A main event of the day is the royal procession of the queen, in which a bunch of people form a long parade-which includes, among other things, bagpipes, horses and very large feathers-through the festival, and block certain teenagers from getting to an eating establishment before they have to sing again.

Not that I'm bitter.

I managed to catch a glimpse of the queen and her daughters. From what I could tell, they all needed to spend some time at the Royal Health Club. That is, if they hadn't already eaten the Royal Health Club.

On the other hand, you never get to see the king. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that his wife has the total mass of a 1957 Buick.

During the parade, a lot of people were shouting the Renaissance exclamation, "Huzzah," which I assume translates into, "Hark! My tights are falling halfway down my knees!"

I said "huzzah" a lot.

The men's SNC costumes included tights, and I, among others, had problems throughout the day keeping my tights where they were designed to be. In the morning they started off where they were intended to go. But by the end of the day, they had slowly crept down to my lower-thigh.

SNC attended the festival in full Renaissance attire, and our role for the day was performing as singing minstrels. Although it sounds a lot more kosher to say that we were troubadours.

We sang madrigal music, which originated in the mid-16th century. This style of music has an extremely high tenor line, the notes of which usually go off the treble staff and into the stratosphere. I think this might also have something to do with tights.

Through an unfortunate football practice accident to the throat, the only other tenor in SNC temporary lost most of his upper-range several weeks ago, leaving me to sing this piercing part by myself. By the end of the day, I was pretty sure my throat was about to explode.

In fact, I would not be surprised to read a front-page headline in a Renaissance era newspaper saying, "Traveling troubadour's vocal chords detonate while singing 'A Maiden is in a Ring Now.'"

But my tights and throat were the least of my problems at the end of the day.

Our last performance was scheduled at the May Pole. When we got there, there was a group of high school-aged gypsies dancing. As we sat, waiting for our turn to sing, I made it a point not to watch, mainly because I felt embarrassed for them.

Before I knew what was happening, the music had stopped, and the dancers were dragging members of SNC to come and dance around the May Pole with them.

I was a victim.

Being a white, teenage, Mennonite guy, I have the complete coordination of a rock.

Sometime along the dancing process-during which, I should probably add, I muttered "huzzah" a lot-I agreed to being married to my dancing partner.

I'm still not sure how this happened, as she was-and I'm putting this as nicely as possible-a little psycho.

While my head was still spinning from attempting to learn the dance steps, the marriage ceremony took place and I, along with three other SNC guys-were wed.

And no matter what you may hear, even if it's true, video or digital photos of this event do NOT exist. So don't even bother asking for them.

After the nuptials (I have always wanted to use the word "nuptials" in a column), we sang our songs, ironically beginning with a piece titled "Flee, Oh Flee From Love's Desire."

And that was exactly how I felt at the moment.

Thankfully, due to scheduling, we had to leave the festival directly after that performance. Otherwise, my fanatic bride would still be hanging onto my neck in a death grip.

But even though I had originally planned to go through my day as anonymously as possible, I still had a good time. And as far as I'm concerned, the whole marriage thing was annulled the second I walked out the RenFest gates.

At least, I sincerely hope it was. Because I can't remember her name.

* * *

UFO: A Renaissance game much like football was played between villages. The ball consisted of an inflated pig bladder, which was stuffed with peas.

Don't ask why.