Do you take ….
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds…
Shakespeare
In a Reflection a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that two friends asked if I might say some words at their wedding. That happened last Saturday. A gentle day of celebration for the happy couple, their family and close friends. People were truly kind with their comments on the words I spoke.
It all served to jog my memory of events that happened at a couple of past weddings I have attended as a guest.
I was ten years old when I went to my first wedding. That of my brother and I remember the wedding for three things.
The first is what seemed like a platoon of soldiers (my brother was in the army) that stayed in our small three bedroomed terrace house before the wedding. To make room for all I slept in a single bed with my dad (no easy feat given he was on the ‘generous’ size). My mother and sister slept downstairs in the ‘room’ (there were only three downstairs rooms — the kitchen, the ‘room’ and the bathroom). My mother scared herself the first night when she thought she saw a ghost. It turned out to be an embroidery of the Sacre Coeur in Paris hung on the wall and that no one realised had fluorescent thread.
Secondly, I wore my first suit, and it itched like hell.
Finally, the traffic accident involving my brother and his wife as they left the reception. My memory is that I was playing on a slot machine in the building in which the reception was held when my father passed me at pace. I followed him. Fortunately, my brother and his wife were OK. But a lorry involved crashed into a wall trapping the driver. My mother ushered me away from the scene. However, I remember my father climbing into the lorry cab to administer aid until the ambulance and fire service arrived.
Another wedding that sticks in my mind was one I attended in the mid-1970s. The bride was a friend of my first wife. You could sense the tension between the two families from the moment my wife and I arrived at the church. This was not the Montagues and the Capulets. But it was a close-run thing. The wedding being over, all retired to the reception, and the two families stayed distinctly apart. Each keeping to their own side of the room in almost separate celebrations. The ‘happy’ couple doing their best to evenly spend their time with their guests by moving from one side of the room to the other. It was after the newlyweds left the violence erupted. Tables went over, drink spilt, and people tumbled as whatever feud existed burst to the surface. My wife and I felt escape to be the better part of valour. I never did find out what were the family differences and how the evening finally ended.
A year or two later again my first wife and I attended the wedding of some mutual friends. Midway through the reception, we noticed many of the guests disappearing through a doorway on one side of the room. We knew it was not to get to the bar as that was happily fulfilling its role on the opposite side. Then the bridegroom too disappeared, followed moments later by his bride. Our curiosity peaked, my wife and I decided we would investigate.
The door in question led down a short corridor. From a room at its end, we could hear animated voices. We peered in to see the absentees clustered around a TV. On that was the Grand National. Many in both families were avid gamblers. Even a wedding was not going to stop them seeing if their horse ‘came in’.
I am pleased to report that at last Saturday’s wedding the married couple did not end up in a traffic accident nor did they or their guests disappear to watch TV, nor did it end in a punch up. Instead, it was as it should be. A happy couple declaring their love for each other supported by their friends and family.
I won’t share the words here that I spoke last Saturday, but this week’s music offers a hint. It is the late and great Bob Marley. Songwriter, singer, and philosopher …
