Weddingbee Blog

It was five minutes before the ceremony was scheduled to begin. After getting ready and going downstairs, a friend told me, “Half the people aren’t here yet. The backyard is practically empty.”

My first thoughts were, “$(@!&!beeeeep@!!!#$&$%beeeeep*&@()$#!” Luckily the photographer and my soul sister, Tam T. Nguyen, is a pool of serenity. In the calmest, kindest voice, Tam turned to me and said, “Mrs. Glasses, you look beautiful. It’ll be okay. Why don’t we take some bridal portraits?”

I’m not going to bore you with my glamour shots, because lets face it, I’ve been sneaking ’em in where I can get ’em in other posts. After taking bridal portraits, we were 15 minutes late for the ceremony. I decided it was time, regardless of who was or wasn’t there—I knew the most important people were already waiting, especially Mr. G!

Poppa G and I walked out to the holding area where our ring bearer was waiting. A friend was on stand-by around the corner running the iPod for our ceremony music, and she was signaled to start the music.

Unfortunately, nobody got a shot of this little guy walking down the aisle with our rings!

I’m told it was very cute. But a new problem had cropped up—we hadn’t rehearsed very thoroughly and didn’t think to time a music cue for my signal to go down the aisle with Poppa G. I whispered over to him, “When should we go? How do we know the ring bearer is finished?”

Before I knew it, Poppa G released my arm and bounded out into the backyard. I could hear him telling the guests, “SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHEN TO GO! WHEN DO WE GO?!”

Poppa G is crazy like that. I heard all the guests chuckle. I hissed at him to come back, as I heard the music start over again. That’s just peachy, I thought. I waited for the music to get to a dramatic point and told my daddy, “Let’s go!”

We reached the wedding arch and the plan was to hug. Instead, my father turned to the crowd and said, “She ran down the aisle so quickly. She just wants to get rid of me!” Always a comedian. Thanks for that special moment, dad. As he was walking to his seat I said to him, “Bye daddy!” and waved. Oh lord. I WAVED, people! Hot. damn. mess.

As I approached the arch, my “something blue” wedges caught on my petticoat and I stumbled. I heard the crowd gasp but I managed not to fall. Our down-home shindig was turning into quite the big fail. But as cheesy as it sounds, seeing Mr. G smiling at me under the arch made everything seem better.

I so wanted to run to him and have him hold me. I wasn’t happy about the way things had been going so far. But we had a ceremony to start. BIL, our officiant, started, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today…”

BIL did a short introduction and a reading by Thomas à Kempis.

“…Nothing is sweeter than love,

Nothing is stronger,

Nothing is higher,

Nothing is wider,

Nothing is more pleasant,

Nothing is fuller or better in heaven or earth…”

BIL finished his reading and before calling up the next reader, I whispered to him, “Can you tell everyone to sit down?”

We had written our ceremony from top to bottom and neglected to add a line in the script asking everyone to be seated.

“What?” BIL whispered back.

“Everybody is still standing…” I said sheepishly.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you may now be seated!”

And to think, all of this could have been avoided if we had just hired a DOC.

All images by Tam T. Nguyen.

Missed something?

• The girls got ready.
• We set up our backyard wedding.

Did you have any cringe-worthy moments during your ceremony?