Welcome friends, grab yourself a ‘Cup of Joe’, pull up a chair and let’s chat about some of the wedding bloopers I’ve experienced so far this summer as a wedding officiant
As some of you will recall, I have been a wedding officiant since 2006 and have married hundreds of couples in the Windsor and Essex County area. This is in addition to the many couples that I married in the early 1980s when I was a Catholic priest here in Windsor, so I’ve witnessed my share of wedding bloopers!
In a blog I penned in early February I shared with you three of the more humorous incidents that I have experienced in my wedding ceremonies in recent years. In this blog I’m going to share with you, without names or identities, a few weddings from this summer that held unexpected surprises. I can go through 100 weddings where everything in the ceremony is executed perfectly as planned. But then, within just a few months, I can run into a few weddings where things go awry.
Wedding Bloopers #1
I conducted an outdoor wedding months ago at an area winery where the couple hired a photographer/videographer who employed drone technology. This is not the first time I’ve officiated a wedding where drones were involved. The advantage of drones used by professional photographers is that you end up with amazing aerial shots of the ceremony and the assembled guests, pictures not generally seen without the use of drones.
Whenever a drone is used at a wedding I alert the guests in attendance about its presence. I indicate that they will hear a low, dull humming noise, but nothing so intrusive as to negatively affect the ceremony. I also encourage the guests that when they hear the drone they should not look upwards at it. That would ruin the effect of using a drone.
Everything went fine with the ceremony until the very end when the operator of the drone lost control of it and it crashed not once, but twice, into the aluminum metal siding of the adjacent winery building. You can imagine the sound it made, metal on metal. It was a good thing this incident occurred near the very end of the ceremony, just prior to the procession out by the bridal party. I never did find out what, if any, damage was sustained by the camera mounted to the drone. And to top it off, the bride and groom’s recessional hymn was none other than Josh Groban’s, “You Raise Me Up”.
Wedding Bloopers #2
In a second wedding that I performed that same day I experienced something with a couple that I had never experienced in the 1000 weddings or more that I’ve performed.
After the couples exchange their vows I turn to the best man (and maid of honor) for the rings that the couple will soon exchange. I hold the rings in the palm of my hand and say a few words about them before the exchange. I then invite the groom to take the bride’s ring and place it on her finger and to repeat the words I say after me.
On this particular day I had not noticed that the groom actually took his ring and placed it on the bride’s finger. It was only when the bride was attempting to put the remaining ring – her ring – on the groom’s finger did I notice that the ring going on his finger seemed awfully small for a man. She struggled getting it over the knuckle of his finger, but ultimately succeeded in placing it all the way on. Only once it was on his finger did the groom look down with a perplexed look and exclaim, “you put your ring on my finger”. The bride then looked down at her ring finger and fired back, “well you put your ring on my finger.”
Laughter erupted among the guests and got louder when the groom realized he was having great difficulty in removing her ring from his finger. This laughter increased with that priceless moment when he inserted his finger into his mouth for lubrication. After a few moments, the ring finally came off and they handed each other the correct rings to put on.
Believe it or not, three weeks later I had almost the exact scenario play out again in another wedding. But this time I was watching more carefully and stopped the groom just before he had a chance to put the ring on her finger. Go figure, over a thousand weddings and I’ve never encountered this before, and yet within three weeks it almost happened twice.
Wedding Bloopers #3
And my last of the wedding bloopers to share with you from this summer is the best of them all which is why I kept it until the last. This one is actually a doubleheader blooper and it will surely be remembered by all the participants and guests for many years to come.
I was marrying this wonderful young couple on the third floor of the Windsor Art Gallery. They had the most adorable two-year-old son, whom I will call ‘Bobby’.
First a word about the venue and its configuration for a wedding. The room is long and narrow and tapers at the northern most point. It is modeled on the bow of a ship, leaving little room for a large wedding party to stand.
When I first arrived at the site I noticed there were two four-foot tall pedestals with four-foot high glass vases on them filled with water and beautiful flower arrangements. They had been placed in such a way that they would have interfered with the wedding party. So the groom and I carefully repositioned the pedestals back up a few feet where they would not be an encumbrance.
I was especially concerned about little two-year-old Bobby because not only was he experiencing the ‘terrible twos’, but he was missing his afternoon nap and had just been given some chocolate by his grandparents. He was wound up like the Energizer Bunny Rabbit, and I had visions of horror of him running into one of those pedestals.
As the ceremony began Bobby was running around and then wanted to be held, first by dad, and then by mom. As we approached the part of the ceremony were the couples face each other and join hands for the exchange of their vows, little Bobby was still in his mother’s arms. She attempted to hand off little Bobby to one of the groomsmen, but Bobby was having nothing to do with it. He wanted to stay with his mom.
As she attempted to pass him off he struggled wildly and in doing so accidentally swung his body and his arms in her direction, inadvertently striking the side of his mom’s face with a backhander that could be held heard throughout the room. It left a pretty decent red mark on the side of her face which fortunately was the side of her face not facing the people. As ths was happening the photographer was just feet away taking shots but completely missed the ‘money shot’ of all money shots – the moment Bobby backhanded mommy.
And now for part two of this doubleheader blooper. Remember that pedestal with flowers on it? Recall that we also had a ‘terrible twos’ two-year-old who was missing his afternoon nap and energized with chocolate. The perfect ingredients for a cataclysmic catastrophe. So you can guess where I’m going with this, right? Wrong. Yes, the four-foot high pedestal with the four- foot vase of flowers was knocked over and went crashing to the marble floor. Glass shattered everywhere and nearly five gallons of water emptied out like a flood running in the direction of the first row of guests, including the groom’s mother. She was wearing a floor-length dress. There she was with her legs lifted up attempting to stay dry. BUT, it wasn’t Bobby who caused this mess! It was the best man who accidentally stepped backwards into the pedestal and knocked it over. You should have seen the smile on Bobby’s face and the laughter coming from him and all those in attendance.
Well that’s it for wedding bloopers for now but I still have a number of weddings to perform before the end of 2016. While most married couples will remember their wedding day as one of the most memorable in their life together, it is not always for the expression and commitment of love they made that day to one another, but sometimes it is for the unexpected surprises that life springs on us.
