According to something on Yahoo called “Shine,”

Last week, Nadine Schweigert married herself in a symbolic wedding ceremony. The 36-year-old divorced mom of three wore blue satin and clutched a bouquet of white roses as she walked down the aisle before a gathering of 45 friends and family members in Fargo, North Dakota.

She vowed to “to enjoy inhabiting my own life and to relish a lifelong love affair with my beautiful self,” reports Fargo’s InForum newspaper . After the ring was exchanged with the bride and her inner-groom, guests were encouraged to “blow kisses at the world,” and later, eat cake.

Schweigert, who followed the ceremony with a solo honeymoon in New Orleans, claims the wedding was her way of showing the world she’s learned to love and accept herself as a woman flying solo.

“I was waiting for someone to come along and make me happy,” she told reporter Tammy Swift . “At some point, a friend said, ‘Why do you need someone to marry you to be happy? Marry yourself.’”

This display of clueless narcissism was not universally approved by those close to Schweigert. Among the critics, her remarkably clear-eyed eleven-year old son:

“He said, ‘I love you, but I’m embarrassed for you right now.’”

While there is a history of what might charitably be termed “stunt” weddings (e.g., being married while jumping out of a plane), and while it’s difficult to tell just how seriously all this was intended, it’s certainly no sign of health that the matter was taken semi-seriously by the folks at “Shine.”

They even had an informal debate over whether single people should be able to marry themselves, with the reporter taking the pro-self marriage position and her editor taking the no-self marriage position.

The arguments were written at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek. (You can read them here.) But it isn’t clear that they intended the whole thing entirely for laughs.

And, of course, neither one of the debate participants displays any clue of what real marriage is.

Regardless of what the Shine folks may think, if Schweigert performed this act as anything other than a total joke (and the New Orleans self-honeymoon on which actual money would have to be spent suggests something other than total joke) then it displays an appalling degree of clueless narcissism.

But then given the current debate over whether homosexuals should be able to marry each other (an intrinsic impossibility) demonstrates a similar failure to understand what marriage is.

(For the record, “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament”; CCC 1601).

It ought to be obvious to everyone that self-marriage is an impossibility due to the very nature of the institution.

According to the British science fiction program Doctor Who, even the 51st century Anglican Church opposed self-marriage.

As one character quips, “If you think about it, the Church had a point. The divorces must’ve been messy.”

Here’s a thought: Given what this woman has done and what kind of message it sends regarding marriage, should the former husband be allowed to have whatever custody rights he requests, all things being equal.

What do you think?