Saturday, June 23, 2018

Wedding Whoopsies

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: As I mentioned in Monday's chat and yesterday's video compilation, this is the month for graduations and weddings. Today is a beautiful Saturday in June, and some of you reading this may be getting ready for someone's nuptials!

Like the run-up to graduation (but X100,) preparations for a wedding can consume first the participants, then their family, then friends, and finally a whole community.  I was married thirty-one years ago (in May, not June) and what was then a long checklist of appointments, reservations, to-dos, dates and menu items has become, for many couples, a task approaching the Allied invasion of the continent on D-Day. I blame Pinterest, and I thank God I tied the knot before the era of social media, Because, you know, no matter how organized the bride is, no matter how firmly her mother has things in hand, no matter the pristine reputation of the hotel/wedding planner/limo service, something is going to go wrong.
I was listening to the founders of THE wedding website The Knot on NPR, and they described their own wedding - on a rooftop in DC in July. When the temperature was 111F. Can you imagine? I was at a wedding with a similar, though not as drastic problem: the bride and groom were getting married on a terrace outside a hotel. Things were running late, then later, until finally it was a genuine delay. Never explained, but I suspect, from the frantic activity in the nearest function room, that the hotel had goofed and forgotten to set up the small party's reception. The sun got higher and higher, the guests got hotter and hotter, and there was no liquid of any sort on hand. Naturally, people began trekking back to the venue's main bar, and once you've gotten a glass of water, may as well get the party started with a cocktail or chilled Rose.
Needless to say, by the time the violinist began playing the processional, most of the guests were either flirting with sunstroke or half in the bag. On the plus side, it was a very lively reception, and everyone danced!

My own wedding had a notorious "whoops" moment. Ross and I had a small noontime ceremony - only about 45 people - on the front porch of my grandmother's Greek Revival house in the small town where my family had lived for over 200 years. You would think after all those years of residence, someone would have remembered that the town fire whistle blew - deafeningly - every day at 12pm. But we didn't. The priest had just said, "Dearly beloved," when the whistle went off to a chorus of my family's giggles. When the noise finally died away, the priest began again. 


"We have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony." He paused. There was another noise, growing closer and louder. Chugga-chugga-chugga CHUGGA-chugga chugga. We had also forgotten Saturday was garbage collection day. Our guests, seated on the front lawn beneath graceful old maple trees, turned around to see the garbage truck idling at the foot of my grandmother's drive, its occupants evidently debating whether to wait for someone to break away from the wedding in progress and bring the can down to the road, or to move on.

At that point, my Uncle Ron, may his name be a blessing, entered into family lore. "Lois," he said to my mother, his usually mild voice rising above the sound of the truck engine. "The caterers are here."

How about you, Reds? Have you experienced any matrimonial mishaps?



INGRID THOFT: I’m not sure it’s such a bad thing when there’s a wedding mishap:  It’s good training for life cause things go wrong!  My own wedding was 70 guests, and since we’re not big dancers (and sensitive to others who don’t like to dance or yell over loud music) we planned the event to be a dinner party at which we got married.  We hired two guitarists to play during the ceremony and cocktail hour, and then another musician to play during dinner.  Except the second musician never showed.  I don’t even remember the reason/excuse, just that the guitarists graciously offered to stay the rest of the evening.  The music was wonderful, and the poor guitarists left with bloody fingers and an enormous tip.  Good thing we really like guitar music!  






RHYS BOWEN : My own wedding was a very small affair as we were getting married in Australia with almost no friends or family. But my former roommate from Australian broadcasting had promised to record the ceremony for me as a wedding present. It turned out afterward that the equipment had malfunctioned! We had no record of the day. And she was one of their premier reporters..... Also we were leaving Australia on a ship the next day, sailing to the US and the American consul wouldn't give me my entry visa until I was officially Mrs. John. So after a quick toast and slice of cake we had to drive to his home in the hills beyond Sydney to get my passport with the visa in it.

My own daughters both had dream weddings: gorgeous dresses, lots of people, good food and dancing into the night, which certainly made up for my own sparse celebration.





JENN MCKINLAY: Julia, your Uncle Ron! Serious belly laughs here! As for me, I was blessed with no mishaps. Crazy, right? We had a church wedding with 150 people, with just my mom standing up for me and Hub's dad standing up for him, and then a reception in a fireman's hall up in the desert hills of north Phoenix. Hub's bands (yes, plural) played. Everyone danced and ate and drank and made merry. It was a perfect day. Or maybe, I was just so surprised that I was actually getting married (it was not really in my life plan at that point) that I was oblivious to any screw ups. I delegated most of the wedding chores because i wasn't really interested, so the cake, the centerpieces, the flowers, and the music played were all a lovely surprise!

HALLIE EPHRON: My wedding was pretty small - 40 people at my parents fairly roomy NYC apartment. The rabbi had gotten fired that morning (he was the Columbia University rabbi and he'd been demonstrating with the students) and arrived drunk. Wearing cowboy boot and a purple graduation robe. He was supposed to talk for 3 minutes, read a bit from Kahlil Gibran (it was 1969!), and pronounce us wed. He went on. And on. Finally my father piped up NOT sotto voce: "Is he trying to marry them or talk them out of it?"

My daughter's wedding on Peaks Island overlooking Casco Bay was perfect. Her older sister and the groom's best friend officiated. Everyone was on their best behavior. If anything went wrong, I did not notice.






LUCY BURDETTE: First of all, Jenn, I cannot believe that you of all people didn't care about the CAKE! Meanwhile, at my first wedding, the photographer, a relative of the groom, did not show. So, no pictures other than a few snapshots. (Oh, and the porto-potty in the back of the pickup truck tipped over. But I can see that story is too convoluted to report.)

 


However, a few years later, when my best friend from grad school got married to a man she'd been living with, it was also very low key. No attendants and a green dress with a white lace dickey. And they had me act as photographer. This was back in the day when you sent your roll of film off to be developed and printed and the photos came back in the mail. Only they didn't. The torn envelope came back but the negatives were never recovered. No photos, not one.

And two divorces ensued. Moral of the story? No photos, just stop the presses right then and there!


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I will skip the first couple of weddings, stories for another day. Jonathan and I got married in a little ceremony and a gorgeous suite at the four seasons. Family only. Everything was perfect, and beautiful (except the flowers, oh I almost forgot this, which I had SLAVED over, but were nothing like the florist and I had discussed. NOTHING! When I inquired a few days later about the PURPLE, (they were supposed to be all white and pale cream) he apologized, telling me he had been too hung over to do them the way he'd promised. Can you BELIEVE it?)



Anyway, the rabbi did not arrive. Did not arrive did not arrive did not arrive. We had no idea what to do, so we opened the champagne early, and everyone started drinking. Turned out the rabbi had been caught in some road race traffic. And because those were the days pre-cell phone, he had no way to tell us. It all turned out fine, and he showed up, and everybody was delighted.

The other thing: at the reception, which was at a glamorous and wonderful restaurant called Salamander. It was glorious party and everyone we knew was invited. (One couple brought THREE college age children saying they'd assumed they were invited too. They weren't.) But  at the end, after all the dancing and a cake made of cream puffs, when we stood up to say thank you, Jonathan‘s mom came to the front and said she had a couple of things to say.

I still have a picture of Jonathan‘s terrified face at that moment—his mother was famously unpredictable. Turns out, she read a poem she had written for her husband, Jonathan‘s father, at their wedding. There was not a dry eye.


JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What are the wedding whoopsies you've experienced?

57 comments:

  1. I love these wedding remembrances.
    John and I got married in February, which meant there was a good possibility of a snowstorm adding to the white stuff already on the ground, but we lucked out with the weather. Jean’s children, ages three and not quite two, were part of the wedding party; they held hands and walked down the church aisle together. Perfect in a gazillion practices. On the big day, the littlest one tumbled over as she walked down the aisle and, with a confused “what do I do now?” look, her big brother stopped walking and stood beside her. One of the guests reached out, picked her up, put her back on her feet, and they continued walking down the aisle as if nothing had happened . . . .

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    1. Awwwww...that’s what big brothers are for ! Xxx

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    2. That just adds to the cuteness factor, Joan.

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  2. I've experienced no mishaps as a member of a wedding party. And thankfully, I have skillfully avoided ever being a groom.

    But I do think I'm mostly a jinx if I go to weddings I get invited to. All but one of the weddings I've been to have ended in divorce.

    My sister's first wedding was screwed up by the place holding the reception. They had reserved one room in the venue but when we got there, they had changed it without telling the party and it messed up the seating chart and everything.

    Also, when they did that wedding party entrance announcement, they made me escort my grandmother in. We got lined up by the woman handling the details and we were third in line. She set it up and wrote it down. Then she started announcing it and skipped right over us TWICE. You can see the video where I explode and walk away. What you don't see is the groom being stupid enough to say something wise to me (he and his groomsmen were half in the bag from drinking in the bathroom) and me having to do an incredible job of not decking the pinhead. (Oh yeah, I thought the guy was a dink.)

    As a follow up to that story, there was a pool started on how long the marriage would last. Easiest $100 bucks I ever made. I got it exact. From marriage to divorce, I called it at 1 year. The divorce was final on the anniversary. :D

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    1. Ouch! I admit, I went to one wedding (no details mentioned to protect the innocent and guilty) where guests were making whispered side bets as to how long it would last. I said a year, and got it wrong by a mile - they were filing for divorce before the proofs came back from the wedding photographer!

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  3. Oh, boy. I shouldn't have read all this! My darling older son is getting married in September... but it'll all be fine. (fingers crossed) My own wedding was family only on the coast of Oregon in my husband's family beach house. The ceremony went well, but we got married AFTER our two sons were born. I had dressed them in simple white outfits. When it came time for the pictures, my little guy was napping, one four-year old cousin was in time out, and my four year old had mud all over his white pants.

    Not a mishap, but one of the loveliest weddings I ever attended was when two friends got married in college in 1973. It was in a public park on the bluffs in Corona del Mar overlooking the Pacific. The bride and groom were barefoot, and the reception was a potluck supper right there in the park. Low cost, simple, and happy.

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    1. Nice! Amd as I said above to Joan, when little ones mess up, it's an "Awwww" moment. Now if the GROOM was covered in mud...

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  4. My first wedding would have been fine if I hadn't foolishly decided to marry the first guy who asked. But as Hank says, a story for another day.

    Getting married the second time in Vegas was actually nicer than I'd hoped for, and no mishaps, yay.

    My oldest daughter's 18th anniversary is tomorrow, and they got married right down the street at a beautiful spot along the Ohio, part of an amusement park complex. It was a brutally hot, humid day. The florist goofed on the bridesmaids' bouquets, and there was one short. (Everyone important to my daughter was in this wedding. Everyone. The florist probably thought they'd miscounted.) All the other bouquets were cannabilized to make up the shortfall.

    The wedding--outdoors--went off okay, except for people in shorts heckling through the lattice fence separating the venue from the amusement park. I had to sit between my ex and my current husband, having massive hot flashes in the heat. I hope to never again be put in such an awkward position. My daughter and son-in-law, though, saw and heard none of this, luckily.

    The reception and dinner were held around a massive terrazzo dance floor, and they had a 13-piece swing band tuning up. Toasts were made by the maid of honor and the best man, and then my husband--to everyone's surprise--got up to speak. He talked of what a winsome child Christy was when he and I had met, and how much he had loved being part of her life and seeing her grow from all eyes, knees and elbows, to the amazing woman she was then. We were all in tears, which apparently had kept us from noticing the impending cloudburst. Everyone ran for what little cover there was.

    Afterwards, the staff squeegeed the dance floor and we all partied our socks off. I never did get anything to eat, though.

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    1. So... good wedding? There's a special place in heaven for mothers who keep their mouths shut and smile when asked to sit next to their ex - the bride's father.

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    2. It was a good wedding, all told. Everything was so beautiful, and even though my ex's current (insane) wife was being her usual nutso self, Christy and her dad and I ended up having a lovely, healing moment, and as we were finishing up the photographer walked by. We asked her to take the last photo of the three of us, Christy's only photo of her whole, original family.

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  5. My own wedding didn't have any mishaps. Well, the groomsmen wore black cowboy boots instead of the agreed-up shoes, and the singer did the Ave Maria (which was the entrance song for my bridesmaids) twice instead of once. But those are small potatoes.

    No whoopsies from other weddings I've been involved in, either. Well, my best friend's wedding - held outside on a hilltop - was held after a monumental downpour that morning. We had to truck the guests up the hill in a 4x4 and lay down wood planks so they could get to the pavilion. I saved a lot of dress hems spattered in mud with a pack of baby wipes that day.

    Mary/Liz

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    1. I know this is peripheral, but I could do a whole blog on the fabulousness of baby wipes!

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  6. When my baby sister married her second husband (she was a young widow), the groom-to-be claimed to be a chef. They had a fairly small wedding and he did all the food in advance. Unfortunately, most of it was still frozen before the reception and the bride's family ended up in the kitchen, tending bar, wrangling kids....

    Best wedding I ever attended was a co-worker's. She found an antique evening gown from the 1920s with gorgeous beading for her wedding dress. Her groom wore a kilt and a piper piped them down the aisle after the ceremony. Bride shining, groom adoring, cake delicious!

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  7. What's a wedding without a mishap?

    My daughter's big moment came when she was seven. She was the flower girl in my cousin's wedding. That morning she was too excited to eat breakfast, so I plied her with some chocolate ice cream. Big mistake. Somewhere in the middle of the ceremony she turned green to match her dress and up came the ice cream, all over her and the maid of honor who had rushed to catch her as she fainted and fell.

    I got her out of the church, off to a friend's house where we washed and dried and ironed the dress, thanking God for polyester. Had her back and looking spiffy in time for the wedding pictures. It was a day to remember,

    Melinda's wedding was a small affair, outside my California town house, by the pool I had cleared it with the Homeowners Association, inviting any of the residents who wanted to come, both the the wedding and the reception. HOWEVER, there's one in every crowd. You know, that one who swam every single day of the Southern California year. Just as the ceremony began, she, whom we will call Jane, because that was her name, slipped into the pool and started doing laps right in front of the wedding party.

    However, nobody died. Jane came close however.

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    1. That's hysterical, Ann. The good thing about mishaps like Jane-the-swimmer? Everyone will still be laughing about it thirty years later. There are all sorts of details I've forgotten about my wedding day, but I can still hear that chugga-chugga-chugga garbage truck. And it's been a great story all this time!

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  8. not quite the noon whistle or garbage truck:
    Early evening wedding on a deck in the dunes at Hilton Head. The wind blew the bride's veil into the adjacent swimming pool and then the sprinkler system surrounding the deck went off and the wedding party and guests were sprayed. Thankfully, the reception was indoors.

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    1. That made me laugh, Margaret. Another case of not checking the timing of events beyond your control.

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  9. Hank, a cream puff cake! That is more or less what my daughter chose, a tiered Napoleon with tiney cream puffs on every layer. It's the only time I ever remember people returning for a second piece of wedding cake. You and Melinda have excellent taste.

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    1. Oh, that's wonderful! Yes, it was quite a hit..xoxoo

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  10. It didn't happen to me but to a friend. On the morning of the big day, the health department shut down the restaurant where the reception was to be. Mother of the bride scurried around and they were able to have a cake and punch reception in the church social room (basement). But when the cake was placed on a table the table crashed to the floor! Last I heard the couple was still happily married, almost 50 years later.

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    1. See, that doesn't surprise me. If you, as a couple, can get through the reception site closing due to the health department and the cake disaster, you can get through anything life will throw at you.

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  11. Our parish church was assigned a new Vicar a few months before the planned wedding. This was during the Vietnam war, and my husband to be was scheduled for a leave in March. The Vicar advised us that he could not perform a wedding during Lent. Fortune smiled and I found a loop hole:In the Episcopal Church, Sundays are considered Feast Days and weddings can be held. The wedding was scheduled for Sunday.

    The rehearsal went smoothly, but during the ceremony it came time for my Dad to give me away, then sit down. He (and I) had forgotten about the wide wedding train. I am told he hesitated, took a deep breath and stepped right on the train. I would have loved to have a photo of that footprint.

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    1. Your dad making a bold choice. I hope he didn't leave a permanent mark!

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  12. My "real" wedding was pretty uneventful. (First one had some drama, but it no longer seems important enough to me to recount.)

    But we have had a few doozies among family and friends:
    --The night before Bob's sister's wedding, the family went to the rehearsal with the large sheetcake that was to serve most of the guests the next day up on a buffet in the dining room. Which turned out to be not high enough to keep the family dog, a boxer, from getting into it.

    -- When Bob's brother Bill married, two things happened. First, before the wedding, their minister refused to marry them if they continued to "live in sin" leading up to the wedding. They refused to change their living arrangement (for many reasons) and a friend of theirs got certified as an officiant, and they found a church that would allow them to marry there. It had the most God-awful picture of Jesus painted on black velvet over the altar, and is known forever more in the family as "The Church of the Velvet Jesus."

    Then their wedding ended up being the hottest day of the summer, with the reception at an un-air-conditioned second floor hall. At first it looked like it would be a short party, but then people started slipping out, changing into cool, casual clothes and returning. The groomsmen all took off their shirts and put their bow ties and cumberbands back on, so all the photos look like the Chippendale Dancers were in attendance.

    -- Finally, Bob and I attended the wedding of an old college classmate who was obviously marrying into a very conservative family. The reception was dry, and the decorating featured "Precious Moments" artwork. The one table of the groom's college friends stuck out like a loud sore thumb. Then in the middle of the reception, the candle on the table caught the dried flower arrangement on fire. Our group, as though choreographed, jumped up, then leaned in and blew the fire out! Judging from the dirty looks and cold shoulders we received until we all left at the earliest polite opportunity, people assumed that we had somehow done that on purpose.

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    1. I want to go to your brother-in-law Bill's wedding, Susan. The Chippendale dancer groomsmen sounds fantastic!

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  13. Hallie here... Susan, your story reminds... the one and only, thank goodness, time I was a bridesmaid, I was onstage in the middle of the service with a candelabra behind me and my veil caught fire. Derailed the service. Just a bit. My poor friend.

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    1. I can't believe you didn't mention than in the chat! Veil catching on fire is definitely a wedding whoopsie.

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  14. Oh gosh! The garbage truck! LOL

    My wedding was a mess of mini-disasters. We got to the church and one of the ushers had been given the wrong tie. They were in morning suits with striped long ties and he had a bow tie. Oh well. The organist "told" me they were going to do the Our Father, which I had asked him not to do. Oh well. We had a church full of guests ready for a wedding but the groom's parents were nowhere to be seen. Twenty minutes late! (They got lost.) �� Okay, time to get started, finally. It was August, a hot stuffy church, a long Mass, and then my youngest sisters, one of the bridesmaids, fainted at communion. Now, I'm worried. She was fine. The wedding proceeded and the rest of the day went well.

    There are honeymoon stories but they can keep for another discussion. They're funny.

    Finally, the photographer was a client of my father and had agreed to take pictures in lieu of paying my dad a fee. You get what you pay for - they were horrid. I didn't get them until months after the wedding. My father was so apologetic.

    This was in 1974 and we are still laughing about all these things. I wasn't laughing so much then.

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    1. Time has a way of turning lumps of coal into diamonds. Your sister fainting - I was waiting for you to say it turned out she was expecting. At my sister's second wedding, both she and my mother guessed I was pregnant because I didn't drink anything at the reception!

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  15. Oh my goodness. These are funny stories - good to be able to laugh about such mishaps. Our wedding was small, in our house, no mishaps. Just pure happiness. I hadn't known one could feel so happy. And, mostly, that happiness remains.

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    1. May you be blessed with many more years of it, Amanda.

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  16. We had friends who spent the equivalent of a down payment on a house for an extra-fancy wedding. Why? They said they wanted it to be a special day they'd always treasure. They were divorced in three years, and in the anger at the time she destroyed all the wedding pictures. What a waste.

    Our own wedding was at the Old Courthouse in Santa Ana, California, a beautiful red brick building. My best friend and his wife were the witnesses, it was paperwork and a small "ceremony", then lunch at a favorite restaurant, just the four of us. We wore casual clothes out of our own closet, the whole thing cost less than $100 and it was a happy, memorable occasion. We used the money we saved to help pay off the mortgage on our condo.

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    1. Smart! I have a theory, borne out of many, many similar stories, that couples with modest weddings are more likely to have successful marriages. After all, it's not about "one special day," but all the days that come after.

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    2. Julia, I agree. One of my best friends married at the courthouse in front of a justice of the peace. Two couples attended because they were far from most friends and family--a luncheon followed at a nice restaurant. She's still married, their children are grown, and they seem just as happy now as back then.

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    3. Every rule needs an exception to prove it: married at my parents’ lake front home; me, the groom, best friend for each of us as witnesses, my parents, his parents. Divorced on 3rd anniversary. Good life after:-).

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  17. We married in Metairie, LA in August, 1972. The era of polyester and bad fashion. We asked the Episcopal hospital chaplain who'd been so wonderful to officiate at my parents' house. The minister of the church they attended was a blowhard and I did not care for him at all. I managed to find myself and my two sisters dresses at end of summer sales. All mini dresses. In our pictures all I see are legs! My groom had purchased a blue knit polyester suit with some sort of design in it. And white shoes. Truly awful. He was finishing summer school in Austin so could not make it to Metairie until a day or two before the wedding. Louisiana law required just a statement from your doctor saying you were healthy to get a marriage license. Frank (still my husband despite everything) wrote a doctor cousin in Thibodaux and asked him to supply a letter and mail it to me. I hadn't received anything and there was a very narrow window in which to get the license for it to be valid. I called Frank to tell him; he called his relatives. One of them went and checked the doctor's mailbox and sure enough there was Frank's request. Unfortunately the doctor was out of town. I had more unknown soon to be in-laws calling and giving me advice. I wound up asking my gynecologist to supply a letter that my groom was healthy. Yeeesh. My middle sister made the trip with me across the river to the parish office to get the marriage license. So romantic. The day before the wedding I was boiling and peeling about 20 pounds of shrimp for our "reception" in the dining room. Shrimp, cheese and crackers, actually catered tea sandwiches(!), and wedding cake. And champagne. We managed to make it through the ceremony. We did not kiss because no one said you may now kiss the bride. We turned around and walked to the dining room and collapsed against the wall. And started the unplanned reception line in that fashion. My family was represented by my immediate family minus big brother, two uncles and an aunt. Most of our family lived in Texas and it was just too far or they were too old to make the trip. Frank's family was overrepresented by virtually all his relations in Louisiana and Mississippi. To this day I do not know who all were there; I forgot to get a book for guests to sign. Oh well. After being maid of honor in a friend's big church wedding I knew I did not want to go that route.

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    1. Well, Pat, something must have gone right if you're still married 46 years later!

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  18. My now-husband and I already had a toddler when we got married in 2003. Thinking I was super efficient and saving lots of time, I decided to take a bath with my son on the morning of our wedding. For the first and only time in his life he pooped in the bath with me, massively and loosely, of course, thus using up all my saved time cleaning up both of us and the bath. I doubt many brides had a baby poop bath on their wedding day. In a way it was great, though, because it started the day off with laughing, and when the hair stylist was two hours late and my bouquet was so heavy I couldn't carry it without leaning sideways I was already in a serene, "relax and go with whatever" frame of mind. :)

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    1. Ellen, I think you win this round of "wedding whoopsie." I don't see how anyone can top "pre-ceremony baby poop bath!"

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  19. OMG, Julia and Hallie, those are the best wedding stories I've ever heard! Thank you for starting my day with a laugh.

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  20. My own wedding had only a bursting open of my wedding dress zipper as a whoopsie (but it was at the reception and my long hair and a safety pin solved the problem.) Other weddings in my life have included: groom fainting, and finishing the service in a folding chair (didn’t last); two attendants in another fainted, with the best man being helped back up the aisle between the bride and groom as they exited; a minister backing up into the candles and lighting his jacket on fire (no one noticed because we were watching a soloist across the room, he was just suddenly inshirt sleeves); and the reception at which the cake cutter’s hair, lacquered in spray, caught fire AND the cake table tipped over as the cake slid off the side.

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    1. Forgive me, forgive me, I just burst out laughing. xox

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  21. Julia, I share your theory about the correlation between amount of money spent and longevity of the union. So many people, especially brides and/or their mothers, spend far more time and money on the wedding than they do planning for a shared life.

    My youngest daughter was married the first time in an elaborate (though small) affair, but the marriage did not stick. She remarried last year, out in their Virginia backyard overlooking a lovely valley at sunset. It was the two of them and a friend who is an Army chaplin, my son-in-law's two children, a friend of his daughter, and my husband and me. We included one daughter via Skype, and the other one via FaceTime. The FaceTime daughter sobbed audibly throughout the three- or four-minute ceremony until the officiant made a humorous comment about it. We all got a good laugh, went back down the hill to take some photos, and then all ate a nice steak dinner cooked on the deck.

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  23. Any mishaps at our own wedding were our own fault - we decided to get married in Sept and wanted to do it in Nov, before the snow started flying in my way-upstate-NY hometown.Why wait? we said. My folks were troopers; mother in law to be not so much. However, I do have the flip side of Julia's story about a sizzling wedding at 111 F on a rooftop. Daughter of old friends. An outdoor ceremony on a hilltop deep in a state park with a mansion and views over both ocean and wetland. Spectacular. In Masschusetts. In November! All the guests sat there in coats and the strapless-dressed bridesmaids froze. But the reception was indoors and it all turned out to be lovely. And memorable.

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  24. I had the nice church wedding with family and friends, and all that goes with it. It was a lovely wedding, in spite of my husband having bad toothache and being on pain medicine. Maybe that actually helped him. My mother had insisted on the local wedding photographer taking a few pictures, and thank goodness she did, because my brother-in-law, who was an excellent photographer, was to take all the rest of the pictures, including the group one, and he found out later that something went wrong with his camera for the main pics. We had a brunch at the country club that morning, and of all things, I forgot to let my maid of honor know about it. The reception was in the church basement, and if I had to do that again, I'd had it at the country club, where there was more room and pictures from it didn't look like, well, like we were in a basement. We did have family and some friends back to the house later for beaten biscuits and country ham and transparent puddings and sweet tea. But, as I said, it was a wonderful day, and I was a happy bride. That is, I was happy until my husband and I left for our honeymoon, and I realized he hadn't made a reservation for that night, thinking we could just stay some place along the way. Well, University of Kentucky and University of Tennessee both had home football games, and there wasn't a room to be had between Lexington, Ky and Gatlinburg, TN, our final destination. So, we drove up the mountain and down the mountain all night long, had breakfasts at least twice, and when we finally got in our room the next day, all either of us wanted to do was sleep.

    Julia, you Uncle Ron must have been a treasure.

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  25. My brother's first wedding was fancy, and they were only married for 5 years. The second was at the Justice of the Peace's with a reception at her mother's. They were married until Bob's death last year. The thing I hated was waiting for the justice to be ready and looking at the Wanted pictures. Not a great atmosphere!

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  26. I love all of these stories. Thanks so much to everyone who shared. And I really loved the vintage pics you used in the piece, Julia! So perfect!

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  27. These stories made me sad that I never married and glad that I never married ....not in equal measure! Still chuckling over Uncle Ron and baby poop bath!💐

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  28. My parents got married at the end of August, and it was so hot in the unairconditioned church that the candles softened and were bending over. Dad's sister fainted. Those are the two stories I always remember hearing about their wedding.
    When brother #2 and his wife got married in the same church in the middle of August, the transformer flipped just before the service and the A/C in the sanctuary went out. Fortunately, the utility crew got there within a reasonable time and flipped it back. Then, instead of leaving, they waited so they could flip it once more shortly after the ceremony started.

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  29. Organist’s nightmare
    Weddings are fraught with nerves for all. As a seasoned organist, I thought I had everything under control one Saturday until the minister crept through the door behind me just minutes before the processional was to begin to ask if I had extra music. The groom had had a very good time at his bachelors party (note: do not ever have your bachelors party the night before your wedding day) and could not stop vomiting. I had played everything planned three times when the minister returned. As he opened the door near the organ, I could hear wrenching not far off. He said to keep playing. After I had exhausted every hymn in the hymnal with the word “love” in it, the minister crept in again to place a bucket under the lectern. Just in case. Thanks to a suppository, the wedding finally got underway. The rest of the service went smoothly (no need for the bucket after all.). The honeymoon, however, was postponed. I doubt it would have been much fun anyway.

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  30. My first wedding was tiny--18 people total--and I'm still good friends with my first husband, partly because I've known him for almost 50 years and partly because he introduced me to my second husband, Ross. They're both British, so for immigration reasons Ross and I had to get married as soon as my divorce from Henry was final. That wedding was six people wearing jeans and standing on a deck in Lexington, Massachusetts. The following year, Ross and I got married at Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire. We wouldn't have bothered, but his niece was nearly 12 and ageing out of the traditional age for English bridesmaids. So we had a "big dress" wedding for 30 people. Henry, his mother, and some of THEIR family friends were there. My siblings, who had behaved very badly during the divorce, were not invited. No disasters, the photos are beautiful (13th-century abbey ruins make everything lovely, even middle-aged brides), and the marriage has worked out well.

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  31. I attended a wedding as a child--for the daughter of my father's best friend--at which the minister called the bride by the wrong name during the vows. Very memorable. The bride maintained her composure, as I recall, and they carried on once the confusion was straightened out.

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  32. The day after our wedding my husband and I said repeatedly that there was nothing about the event that we would have done differently. Every aspect of the wedding venues was perfection. It was everything we hoped for - and more.

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