No, this is not my niece’s wedding. But it would not have been totally unexpected if it was.
So I went to my niece’s wonderful wedding yesterday. I started out the day a bit frazzled because I had to battle construction traffic on I-95 to get to her house on time (I was bringing an antique pendant that belonged to my mom for her “something old”.) The pendant looked perfect with her dress, and my niece looked even more beautiful than usual.
Now, the bride and her siblings, a creative and whimsical bunch, have a total of eight kids under the age of three, including a boy-and-girl pair of twins. A couple of the bridesmaids were carrying their babies as the wedding party gathered at the altar, while the priest greeted the congregation.
He talked about how great it was to have the sounds of children as part of the celebration, and how we had to “see as little children to enter the kingdom of heaven.” And then he proceeded to the vows.
And that was when the girl twin (who’s maybe two-and-a-half, and holding the hand of her little sister, who’s one) just sort of nonchalantly starts crawling up the side steps of the altar, pulling her baby sister with her. Everyone in the seats stops paying attention to the vows (you can’t hear them, anyway) and we’re fixated: What happens next?
Well, the two girls disappear behind the altar and their mother, who is the maid of honor, finally sees what’s going on and tries to catch them. But they’re too fast, and there’s some Three Stooges-esque running back and forth before their mom finally corrals them long enough for Dad to come get them. (By this time, I am laughing so hard, it sounds like I’m crying.)
I turn to my nephew’s wife and observe, “You’ll notice the priest isn’t talking about the happy sounds of children anymore.” And then I start laughing even harder.
Mercifully, it was a short service. And as we all piled out of the pews into the aisle, people were cracking jokes about how the church could always use a few women on the altar.
