The Wedding Day Part 2

The Wedding Day Part 1 is here.

When we arrived at the church, everything was as it should be. The lovely, elderly woman who had volunteered to prepare tea and coffee for our reception was puttering around in the Fellowship Hall. There were several large, stainless-steel urns making loud bubbling and blurping noises. All the paper plates, napkins, etc. had been set out the night before by Ken and I. Our good friends J. and K. (a couple engaged to be married soon themselves) were ushering guests into the auditorium.

I have to pause here and say how grateful I am to the woman who made the tea. This is how sweet people are at our church: she hadn't even been introduced to us, but when she saw the announcement of our upcoming nuptials in the church bulletin she immediately called the pastor to volunteer her services. Words fail me here. How many people would step up with an offer like that for a couple they had never met? Would you? Would I?

I puttered around in the Fellowship Hall while the auditorium filled up, periodically stepping out of my shoes to rest my feet. After having been on my feet for over an hour at the Allan Gardens photo shoot, my toes were in pain. Shape of shoes: triangular. Shape of feet: rectangular. Ow.

Pretty soon I got my cue. Go time! The pianist played, the doors swung open, and all heads turned to watch the wedding party walk up the aisle.

We had arranged our wedding with the elder of the two pastors at our church. He's a white haired, bearded gentleman with a peaceful demeanor, somewhat reminiscent of Santa Claus. We had had several meetings to go over what he might say during the ceremony, and to clarify which vows we wanted.

Ken and I both agreed that we wanted traditional vows. Pastor B. offered us a few different wordings of traditional-style vows, and we selected one. Ken requested one change: instead of "for all the days of our lives" he wanted to say "until death do us part". He's hardcore like that, and I guess I am too because I agreed.

We'd gone back and forth with the pastor on the vows, not because we couldn't make up our minds, but because he kept getting the different vows confused. We'd say "OK, we agreed on Vow A" and he'd come back to us three days later saying "I'm just confirming that you wanted Vow B" and we'd have to go over it all again. Each time he forgot which vows we wanted he offered us a different alternate. That morning, I said to Ken "I think we might get random vows today." He agreed that it was likely. Oh well, what can you do?

However, Pastor B. got the vows right, and all was well.

Then Pastor K. stepped up to speak. Yes, we had both pastors at the wedding. Pastor K. had asked if he might be there to say a few words and support us. Again with the volunteers! Of course, we were happy to have him participate. The more the merrier.

Pastor K. said a few things about the sanctity of marriage and this and that. I was having a little trouble concentrating because my feet were distracting me. He was all "On this most important, momentous day in your relationship" and I was busy fidgeting my toes, which had gone numb inside my pointy shoes.

What was that he was saying as I tried to work some circulation back into my poor pinky toe? "So many marriages end in divorce. Half of all marriages!" I thought to myself: why are we talking about divorce NOW of all times? Come on, not now! He had my attention. Then he went on a bit about how divorce was all Satan's fault, and I squirmed inwardly as I thought of all my atheist/agnostic/new age friends sitting in the pews. Pastor K. is a bit of a Bible-thumper, and he was getting revved up.

"What are they thinking?" I wondered. If it were me a couple of years ago in their shoes, I'd be rolling my eyes. Fortunately Pastor K. wrapped up his preaching in fairly short order, reminding us to centre our lives on Jesus to guarantee the success of our marriage. I could go for that.

We exchanged rings, kissed, signed the register and phew! We were done! Pastor B. introduced us as a married couple. "...until one of them lovingly lays the other back into the earth." In the moment after he said that I felt profoundly sad, and very impacted by the reality of the vows we had just made. But there was no time to dwell on it. Much more urgently, it was time for cake.

Around 50 people poured into the Fellowship Hall. There was much hugging, kissing, handshaking, and chatter. The piano player livened up the atmosphere. The cake and two tarts were cut and eaten. The guestbook was signed.

The only two people who didn't bother to greet Ken and I along the receiving line were my new mother-in-law and younger brother-in-law. Yeah. I don't know what their problem was. They both avoided me until I went to each of them to say hello. A small sour blot on an otherwise perfect day.

At 4:45 pm the last folks were saying their goodbyes. By 5:00 pm Ken and I thanked our tea and cake volunteers once again, and headed out. The perfect weather had lasted until just about the time that our reception ended. As we left, the wind picked up, the clouds rolled in, and rain wasn't very far behind. But we'd had our perfect wedding day. What more could we have asked for?