An attorney I work with took his family on a trip out West a few weeks ago. Since they were flying into SLC and going to rent a car and drive to Jackson and Yellowstone, they decided to spend a day in SLC and tour temple square and the beehive house.

I was almost peeing my pants listening to his rendition of his tours. An older missionary couple latched onto them--they look so mormony anyway--mid 30s, white, professional, with young kids. The mishies got his contact info out of them and told them they'd send them some info that would answer all their questions. Bwahaha. Yes, they've been "sent" visitors already since they've been back. His wife was miffed that whenever she'd ask questions about polygamy at the beehive house, the subject would be changed.

But the funniest thing was listening to them talk about all the weddings. It was a Saturday in June, fer chrissake. Can you imagine what that place looked like to an outsider. They were so confused with all the couples waiting in line to get their pictures taken and they'd been told that they had ALL gotten married that day. So this is what he thought happened in the temple:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/world/asia/15moon.html

Yup, he assumed it was like the Moonies and they'd had a mass wedding and then had to line up for pictures. I laughed so hard. I said, he was not that far off, however, they each got their own little room for a few minutes. But the whole wedding party was probably not there, and many of them didn't even have their parents or siblings there. The brides all had to share a dressing/bridal room, they had no flowers, these outside pics were the only pictures they'd have of their wedding and most of the brides' husbands were seeing their wedding dresses for the first time at the same time he was--when they came OUT of the temple AFTER they'd already been married. So he asked me how come they couldn't get married in their wedding dress. I explained that most of them probably did, but why their husband didn't see it. He was like "Wow, I can't wait to tell my wife all this." She must have been under the Moonie impression also.

The funniest thing was I explained to him that to all those people he saw that day, it seemed perfectly normal--isn't that what everyone considers a wedding to be? Mormons have no clue how ridiculous they look to the rest of the world and what total nonsense they buy into.

Heh-heh! Heh! Heh. Mercy.

It's so sad, really. My TBM daughter got married in the SLC temple, and I was a mere "witness." They came over with a clipboard, and had me sign, gave it to the groom's bride, and he signed. To this day it was like I was signing over property on some sort of requisition. The ceremony was about 10 minutes long from the time we entered the cramped sealing room, after about 1 1/2 hours of processing and dressing. Looking back, it was so non-romantic and was a mere exercise in fetishism.

Hahahaha!!!

Nothing makes people cringe like hearing about a Mormon wedding.

When I was 11 years old we lived in Los Angeles and my never-mo parents took me on the temple open house tour. When I first heard about necro-dunking I thought it involved cadavers, much to the amusement of my parents.

I thought that too! Except I was in my 20's at the time...

Apparently they have some kind of model of the inside of the temple now at the visitors center. It shows all the rooms to scale complete with the murals and the baptismal font and the sealing rooms with the wonderful alter and eternity mirrors where you can see what you'll look like in your clown costumes for eternity. It's to show people "see there's nothing secret in there."

I'd never heard about this or seen it, but my co-worker described it to me. I was like, "yeah, it's like when they have an open house to show people that there's nothing weird about it. Notice there are no models of the people or any previews of the movies." They just don't get that there's nothing they can do to convince people that there can't be anything secret about a building you need a clubhouse pass to get into. When I sarcastically told him it's "sacred, not secret," he said, "I've been in many cathedrals that are sacred, but they let everyone in." I said, "yeah and they're beautiful too and don't look like a tacky hotel lobby."

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/scaled-model-provides-salt-lake-temple-open-house-experience

As you said: 'It's to show people "see there's nothing secret in there."'

Nothing secret... yeah, 'cuz it's so SAcret. LOL!