I don’t want to frighten you, but it is true: There is no such thing as a perfect wedding. Wedding glitches? You can count on them. Weddings are planned, and carried out by people—therein lies the problem. We make mistakes. And, we are not omniscient. That is, we can’t see around those proverbial corners, we aren’t privy to weather patterns, and we can’t predict those occasional and inevitable quirks of nature. It is best to subscribe to the advice offered by the poet Max Ehrmann in his famous Desiderata. Mr. Ehrmann wrote: “Whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.” Keep peace with your soul, then, maintain a healthy optimism, and if you are a soon-to-be bride or groom, be grateful that you have love in your life.
I officiated at a wedding yesterday, that is, April 9th, 2016. It was unseasonably COLD and the service was outside, because no one dreamed that the temps would drop to a 48 degree high for the day! Friend Derek Tobler who served as DJ for the wedding was a noble soul. He arrived at 3 p.m. for the 5:30 wedding and went right to it– setting up his equipment. He stayed outside for the duration—that is, until the end of the service, at 6 p.m. At least he had the foresight to wear a topcoat and hat. Sadly, his hands were chapped, though, by the cold. He could not move the knobs on his soundboard and push the keys on his two computers wearing gloves–so he weathered the weather, gloveless.
The wedding took place at a lovely venue just outside Richmond in Glen Allen, Virginia. The venue is called Wyndham, but yesterday it could have been called WIND-ham. The wind yesterday was blowing fiercely; so fiercely that there were power outages throughout Charlottesville and Richmond; and so fiercely that trees were downed. The wind tugged the bride’s veil from her head and sent it flying as she took that first step down the aisle toward the love of her life and her future.
The bride and groom though were all joy and happiness—not feigned, for sure. I did not hear one complaint cross their lips. And of course, their attitude warmed our hearts, if not our bodies! The bride had thoughtfully provided shawls for the bridesmaids, which definitely helped stave off the cold. There was hot coffee available, too, in an urn near where the wedding took place. A save for some of their shivering guests.
The cold and the wind were the major wedding glitches. There were two others I mention here. One of the groomsmen complained of eye problems, after a night of partying at the rehearsal dinner. He had to be driven to an emergency care center the morning of the wedding. Turns out he had scratched his cornea. He was given an eye patch to wear and numbing eye drops so that he could survive the wedding. The one other of the wedding glitches I will mention here was the 2 year old ring bearer. He decided he did NOT want to walk down the aisle carrying a stupid pillow!
Believe me when I tell you that this is par for the course. I have officiated at enough weddings by now to know that it is just the way of things. Hopefully, those wedding glitches will make for good stories in the years to come.
And remember: “whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.” There is solace and promise in that.
Happy wedding planning!
Your wedding preacher for hire
Leave a Reply