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Show lined up by the house while the groom's group quickly gathered around the shaken minister out behind the lilac bushes. The ushers hustled the groom's parents and me down the aisle in nothing flat. I sat smiling and nodding to all the guests who were still trotting up breathlessly. However, I was having a problem with the soloist who kept asking, "Shall I start now?" Shaking her off, I waited for the minister and groom to show up at the sundial. ..er, altar. They were still huddled out in the bushes. Turning to the nearest guest, I hissed, "Tell the minister we're ready to start. Pass it along." When the message reached the lilacs, the minister meekly trudged in, followed by four thoroughly confused young men. The vocalist, deciding it was now or never, leaped to her feet and with a nod to the accompanist, launched into the first song. Up at the house, the bride, my husband and the bridesmaids, who couldn't hear a thing, saw the groom and minister waiting and came out to meet them. As it turned out, all the guests thought it was a lovely innovation to have the wedding wed-ding procession while the vocalist sang. We did not tell them the organist had to scrap his processional. Then there was the matter of the . Continued on page 12 By MARIE DOTY Copley News Service Let us consider the planning of a home wedding. My advice is: Don't! Offhand, I can't think of anything more fraught with work, confusion, anxiety, panic - not to mention expense - than a home wedding. I'm convinced that only children "with an innate desire to see their parents cry ever have weddings at home. My youngest daughter's wedding was planned down to the last detail. However, we made some tactical errors. I decided to give our two bathrooms a final cleaning rather than watch the rehearsal. Advice to the mother of the bride: to heck with bathrooms, go to the rehearsal. As it turned out, I was not the only one missing. My husband was still milking, one of the bride's brothers (and usher) was running errands while the other brother-usher brother-usher was waiting at a train station for a bridesmaid. "I guess we're lucky you could be here," the minister told the bride and groom with a sigh. Later, he asked my daughter, "What kind of flowers are you and your bridesmaids carrying?" "None," she said. "Oh! Well...ah...er...a simple wedding is nice." What she didn't tell him - because she wanted to surprise her husband-to-be - was she and the three attendants were carrying parasols. The ceremony was planned for a garden area where roughly 3,000 pink petunias were planted, so at the florist's suggestion she wore only a single camellia on her hat. Advice to the bride: It's OK to surprise the groom but it's a mistake to surprise the minister. Five minutes before the ceremony was scheduled, I sent our youngest son down to ring the ship's bell. I figured five minutes was just enough time for the guests, who' were wandering around the farm, to be seated. What neither my son nor I realized -because we had not been at the rehearsal -was that it had been decided to ring the bell just as the bride and her attendants arrived in the garden area. And the Arriving in the Garden was to have been preceded by: --The vocalist's first song and --The entrance of the minister, groom, best man and groomsmen. It's hard to say who was the most surprised sur-prised when the bell rang: the wasps, who had built a nest inside the bell; our son, who had to run for his life when all those very cross wasps swarmed out ; the groom and entourage, who thought the bride was on her way; the bride and bridesmaids, who thought they had somehow missed the entrance of the men, or the minister, who was just driving in as the bell sounded and thought the entire wedding had started without him. I will say it certainly whipped everyone into shape without any dillydallying around. The girls and the bride's father 1 " Professionals cater Continued from page 8 for no charge, but you decide to rent table cloths which match your color scheme rather than use the white plastic cloths which come with the church's tables. When you are at the rental shop, the clerk asks for the diameter of the tables, which you are unsure of because you have always assumed that round tables are all the same size. The clerk suggests that the tables are probably 48 inch round, since they are the most common. However, on the day of the reception you discover very quickly that 48 inch cloths do not gracefully fit a 54 inch round table. Small problems such as these can easily be avoided when you have one person acting as your bridal consultant. A professional caterer can help you to have a memorable event that will represent the reflection of your love which you have for one another. He has the knowledge, expertise ex-pertise and equipment that is necessary to transform your ideas into a dream come true. |