Have you ever seen wedding bloopers with your own eyes?
If you haven’t, don’t go thinking that things never go wrong at major events!
Don’t they – heck?!
If you haven’t seen any wedding bloopers for yourself, then you must have watched footage on YouTube or Harry Hill’s “You’ve Been Framed”. Grooms faint, children or dogs steal the show, the minister stuffs up, arguments break out, someone missed their cue critically … Of course, these tend to be extreme examples, but they do indeed happen.
However well-organised you are or how efficient the wedding planner may be (if you have one), there is a huge potential for things to go awry. Logistics are really not easy, especially if there are large numbers of guests involved.
Certain elements are particularly difficult to arrange, like the catering and serving, but misfortune can fly in from the least expected directions.
Who’d expect the bride’s father to get paralytically drunk? Who’d have expected that cloudburst that marooned some of the guests? What about the reverend who fell ill and couldn’t conduct the ceremony? Or the family member who made a scene because she disapproved of where she had been placed for the reception? How anticipate the ex who turned up uninvited and unannounced?
As a civil celebrant, I have obviously been part of many a ceremony, (although I don’t usually stay for the reception, so there may have been quite a few disasters that I have missed!). I have only personally experienced three occasions when things did not go at all as planned, so I guess I’m quite lucky.
Conflict of Interest
I arrived an hour early for an open-air wedding blessing in Enfield one Friday evening in August. The guests had arrived, the sun was shining, and all were looking forward to the 5 p.m. start. All? Well, not the Best Man.
It turned out that he had had to go to a job interview. It had gone on longer than expected and so he got stuck in rush hour traffic on the M25. We couldn’t start without him, so we had to wait until about 6.30.
Five minutes into the ceremony, after bride, groom and I been buzzed by a persistent wasp, the heavens opened … Oh, well ….
Too Much Responsibility
Joseph, the groom, had two jobs for the day, really. One was to get himself to the venue on time, and the other was to remember the rings. As his hotel was local to the venue, he could hardly fail to arrive in good time. And this proved to be the case. When I jokingly asked him if he had remembered the rings, the colour drained from his face … Oh, no! Hotfoot he went, back to his hotel!
Fashionably Late
Finally, I was standing with the groom, Jan, at the front, as we waited for the bride. It was very hot. We were all poised, in good time, expecting the bride. Time passed, and no sign of Carys. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes elapsed. No word. People tried to contact her, but without success.
Jan, understandably, was getting nervous, if not positively concerned. I asked him if he wanted a glass of water, and he gratefully acceded. Leaving him, I went to the back of the hall and poured him out a glass. That was the precise moment that Carys chose to appear. Off she went, marching up the aisle, with yours truly in exactly the wrong place!
A slick shimmy round the side, and I was up at the front before Carys reached us, but it wasn’t a comfortable moment!
Things don’t always go the way you plan!
Next time you attend a ceremony, don’t be too hard on those involved in doing the organising! It’s not easy to put together all the strands that go to make up an event. Things do go wrong. What matters is how they are sorted out.