Record Breaking Bride

During my time as an organist I have played for hundreds (and I do mean hundreds) of weddings.

Early on in my organists career I remember when if you got married before April 6th you could claim a vast amount of tax back, consequently the Saturday before 6th April was a very popular time for weddings!

I recall one such Saturday when I had five weddings to play for, each one on the hour, commencing with the first wedding at 11.00 am. The vicar who had arranged all the weddings met each of the couples, and stressed how important it was that each wedding (and more particularly each Bride) was on time. He knew that one of the couples getting married were Jamaican's, and time to them seemed to be unimportant, so he said, If you are more than 30 minutes late you will have to wait until the last wedding is concluded before I will be able to marry you!

Their wedding was scheduled for 1.00pm, and the bride failed to arrive until 1.35! so, true to his word, the vicar told them that they would have to wait until all the other couples had been married, explaining that it was impossible to conduct a wedding service in 25 minutes flat!

The couple, and all their guests sat through the two following weddings, happily joining in the singing of the hymns, and were duly married at around 4.00pm!

This little story (which happens to be true) is a rather long winded way of getting round to what happened to me with two weddings I had to play for on Saturday last.

The first wedding was scheduled for 11.00 am and the following wedding for 1.00 pm. The first Bride didn't arrive in church until 11.56 am, (a record for lateness for all the weddings I have ever played) and because she was so late the wedding service was cut to an absolute minimum. One hymn was completely omitted, all the introductory sentences were omitted and there was no sermon or prayers. All in all the service took a record breaking 21 minutes! Before the service ended people were trying to get into church for the second wedding. The arrival time for the bride at this wedding was only marginally better - she was 34 minutes late!

In both cases there had been no hold up with traffic, or any particular reason for the lateness of the brides!