I’m Only Here For The Cake
I WENT TO A WEDDING LAST SATURDAY. A lovely couple, a lovely setting, and everyone wondering who in the hell I was and what I was doing there. The answer to that question was that I was the Rev. Dawn’s Roadie, Security, Driver, and – oh, yeah – her husband.
The Bride and the Groom I knew from church, as well as the Bride’s young daughter from a first marriage. This was a second marriage for both the Bride and the Groom. After that, everyone one else there could have been just a bunch of people waiting for a bus. They looked at me, sitting by myself off to the side, with a quizzical look in their collective eyes. Was I the caterer? Was I the florist? Was I a wedding crasher? I understand their concern. What with the world today a stranger showing up at a wedding could easily be a car salesman.
After a while as we all sat there, sweating like pigs, I moseyed over to a nicely dressed woman whom I deduced to be the Mother of one of the principal players. I smiled and I didn’t have a business card in my hand so I looked harmless enough. I nodded and sat down next to her.
“Is there anything to the rumor I’ve heard?” I asked her in a sotto voce manner. Her eyes narrowed into a squint like she had been expecting something to go amiss.
“Why, what have you heard?” Her voice was just above the hiss from a rattlesnake with a bad back.
“Well, the organist was in a bit of a dither, you see, because he didn’t have the proper sheet music for the recessional.”
“What’s the song?”
“All My ‘Exes’ Live in Texas.”
It took a few minutes to get her down from the ceiling.
I went back to my seat in the far corner and kept my mouth shut.
I love going to weddings. They can be such fun if approached with a glint in your eye.
All of this business about what music is appropriate for what event started me thinking – and that is when I usually find myself with my fingers in the wringer.
My wife, the lovely and thoroughly wedded, Dawn, and I have had our wedding so there will be no more planning in that area. About the only big event remaining that might require my input is my funeral. The possibilities are endless.
Many people like to pick the music that will be played at their final services. I think I should do the same. I have yet to run this past my wife out of fear that it might hasten the need for my services.
I think a mixture of classic songs and more modern music would be nice. How does a chorus or two of, “Dem Bones,” sound? “The knee bone connected to the leg bone,” et cetera. Follow up that with, “Dust in the Wind.”
If there is going to be a cremation involved I think that a video of Marilyn Monroe singing, “We’re having a heat wave – a tropical heat wave…” would set the proper tone.
However, the time comes for everyone to leave the stage and make room for the next act. For my send off I think everyone in attendance should sing along with the Willie Nelson classic –
“On The Road Again. I Can’t Wait To Be On The Road Again.”
Down the Hall on Your Left 
I think many have been to weddings such as you describe. I dislike weddings, and funerals. At most of the funerals I’ve been to of friends and some that were acquaintances, friends of friends…..everyone seems to be so sad. It’s depressing. They are that way even when before passing he or she has pleaded with them to, ” Rejoice, for I go to a better place”. I tried that “Rejoice” thing once at a funeral. The Barbershop Quartet I was singing in at the time was asked to do two songs. One song to be a little solemn, the other to be what is termed an up-tune. We got through the first one Ok, and actually the up-tune. However, after we finished there was a (pardon the pun) dead silence. So, dummy me says, “Are we having fun yet?”, my feeble attempt to lighten things up a bit. That wasn’t the best thing I could have uttered I found out. Didn’t go over to well with the family, even though someone in the back did yell, “Attaway guys!”
Weddings? All I can say is most of those I’ve attended, where his family sat on one side and her’s on the other, and were suppose to be a happy and joyful hour, seemed like a funeral.
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Great story.
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