Get me to the church on time
Eternity. My niece and her fiancé were supposed to pledge their lives to each other in just a few short minutes and here I was, with the ring bearer and bible bearer, trapped by a funeral procession that slowly marched in front of us for what seemed like an eternity. I suppressed a violent urge to repeatedly honk the car’s horn and wondered if there was any polite way to hurry them on (and not get haunted). I flirted with the idea of lowering the car window and breaking out in Lerner and Loewe’s Get Me to the Church on Time from the classic Broadway musical, My Fair Lady…
I’m getting’ married in the morning!
Ding-dong the bells are gonna chime!
We’ll have a whopper, pull out the stopper!
Get me to the church on time!”
Fortunately, my wife slapped me back in my seat just as a tiny crack in the procession opened up and allowed us to zoom away. It had been a crazy morning and we were running seriously late. We were so behind that even before we left the house, my daughter and son were already monotoning “We’ll never make it…” in true Glum fashion (remember that pessimistic Lilliputian in Gulliver’s Travels?). They added, “Dad, even if you go speeding, we’re not going to be able to march. Let’s just go straight to the reception.” I understood that the groom was a bit nervous on his big day and, based on my own experience, I felt bad at the thought of raising his heart rate beyond the HRmax. Although I was so early for my own wedding that I had to check if I had the day right, I can still remember being so uptight that I thought we forgot to get an organ player for the wedding march. I spent the next hour asking the guests that trickled in if they could play an organ until I got reassured that our musicians were complete. What if the bride and groom got into a spat and called everything off because their well-planned wedding was ruined by their uncle who could not bring the ring bearer and Bible bearer to the church on time? What if instead of repeatedly kissing the bride at each clink of the silverware against the wine glasses at the reception party, the groom would be sadly crooning I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face all by his lonesome? Okay, okay, I know that’s overly dramatic but that was roughly the gist of what we told the guard at the subdivision gate where the church was located when we recklessly cut ahead of a long line of cars.
Of course, it would probably have taken a lot more to break up my niece’s wedding. From everything that I’d gathered, they have all the right ingredients for a lasting marriage. They’re obviously very much in love. Just looking at them stare at each other’s eyes reminded me of the lyrics of On the Street Where you Live, yet another song from My Fair Lady…
And oh! The towering feeling
Just to know somehow you are near.
The overpowering feeling
That any second you may suddenly appear!
People stop and stare. They don’t bother me.
For there’s nowhere else on earth that I would rather be.
Let the time go by, I won’t care if I
Can be here on the street where you live.
But despite their passion, they took their time before they decided to tie the knot. I’m glad that they tried to really get to know each other well first (if I heard their friends correctly, over 50 dates before they even went steady). While I do believe in “love at first sight,” I take a much more guarded view of “marriage at first sight.” They appear to be both pretty patient people, too. I think this is significant as I believe that patience is a close second to love in making a marriage last. After all, no one is perfect and we all make mistakes. Lastly, they understand the importance of God as a part of their married life. In this day of wedding planners, Hollywood-style videography, and gourmet catering, the fact that the ceremony at its core is about God uniting two people sometimes gets lost amid all the glitz.
After the exasperated guard let us through, we flew over the humps and screeched to a halt in front of the church. My wife and children quickly jumped out of the car and rushed in. We made it in the nick of time. By the time I parked the car and followed them inside, the kids had already marched and the bride was just about to make her grand entrance. What can I say? She looked beautiful and her eyes sparkled that I could almost hear them sing I Could Have Danced All Night.
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