I knew the bride (when she used to rock ’n’ roll)

By Pat Fule Random Thoughts

We’ve just ended a summer season ripe with weddings, and I know there are many happy newlyweds out there. I like weddings, and some of my favourite memories come from the ones I’ve attended and ones where I was a groomsman.
I’ve also been lucky enough to be asked to be an emcee for some as well. These have, for the most part, gone well, and some have been hits. However, when I emceed one cousin’s wedding, I actually got heckled by some guy at the reception. This was the last thing I expected, and any joke I told he had to yell out crap. He was pretty drunk, and luckily, people in the crowd started turning on him and he eventually shut up. Another time, I emceed a wedding as a friend of the bride. When I went to touch base with the groom, he pulled out a butter knife.
“You embarrass me and I’ll cut you,” he whispered, brandishing the butter knife in my face (it still had butter on it). I went to laugh, because, well it was a butter knife. I didn’t know the groom very well and he said it again: “I’m serious; you embarrass me and I’ll cut you.”
I quickly got rid of a couple of jokes, made a mental note not to visit them often over the years and stumbled through the reception. I did wonder, though, how long it would have taken to kill me with, you know, a butter knife?
A few years later, my wife Debbie and I were in the bridal party for my brother’s wedding in our hometown of Canmore. This has to be one of my favourite memories because I saw a different side of Debbie. You see, one of my favourite songs is “You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon. Somehow, Debbie got a lot of us in a big conga line and we danced around the hall. Then she led us down the hallway, a huge line holding each other’s hips, and we all danced into the ladies’ bathroom! Each person in the long conga line would dance and knock on the stall doors as we slowly wound our way out. However, there happened to be an old lady in one of the stalls we knocked at, and I’m pretty sure she was mortified. I, as am wont to do, laughed hysterically. When the song ended and the line disbanded, the old lady came out of the bathroom, very rattled, and I laughed some more.
A few years later, Debbie was a bridesmaid for a friend from university. I was assigned a seat at a table at the back of the reception hall, just in front of the kitchen doors. I wondered what I had done; did they think I’d cause problems? Then the bride’s mother walked by, and with a smile said, “I see we found just the right place for you.”
Again, I wondered what I’d done? Well, as the evening’s festivities went on and I developed a rosy glow from whatever spirits I’d had, I had a great idea. I would round up some toilet paper and wrap it all around the newlywed’s car. Having collected enough rolls, I proceeded to run around the car, wrapping it like white, one-ply ribbon. That’s when I felt a slight contact and heard a tinkling noise. I don’t know how I did it, or how it could have happened, but I’d knocked the side mirror off the car next to the newlywed’s car. I’d killed the mirror; it was broken glass, but I’d killed it, for sure. That’s when the words of the bride’s mother hit me. I had done something dumb, something to upend the reception. I slowly shuffled into the hall carrying the mirror’s corpse and “fessed up” to the emcee. Did I mention the car belonged to long-time friends of the groom’s parents? Oh yeah, I’d taken out the best man’s parents’ mirror. It was a quieter Pat Fule for the rest of the reception, and luckily, the owners never made me pay, but I did avoid the bride’s mom for the rest of the night.
Both my kids got married in the summer of 2017 (not to each other, because we don’t live in Mississippi and we don’t make much moonshine here!). Breanne’s wedding was in her grandparent’s back yard in August. This town is Breanne’s “happy place” and we watched and laughed as she tried to get all Kody’s given names right – and failed. She giggled, Kody giggled, and the whole gathering had a great laugh in the outdoor sunshine of the ceremony. At Brennen’s wedding in September at the barn in Strathmore, his bride-to-be Abbey discovered to her horror that she’d forgotten her vows in the car. She desperately looked at her older sister who responded with a shocked, “don’t look at me, I don’t have them.” That’s when one of her bridesmaids bolted down the aisle and out to the car. Breanne, who was supposed to read later in the program, stepped forward and then inserted her reading. The bridesmaid found the vows and sprinted up to the front, and again, we all laughed.
If you’re still about to get married this fall or winter, or even next year, I hope you have a great day. Remember, the day may not go perfectly and there may be a glitch. But whatever happens on your day, it will be special because it happened to you. And as long as no one pulls a butter knife on you, or you don’t kill an unsuspecting mirror, you’ll be just fine.
(Random Thoughts is a slice of life humorous column that appears in the Strathmore Times, written by long-time resident, current mayor, husband, father and grandfather – Pat Fule. He is also a former town councillor, high school teacher and coach. If you would like to get in touch with Pat, you can send him an e-mail at Pat.fule@shaw.ca)