Wedding season survival guide

Once, I watched an entire wedding party — bride and groom, pastor, bridesmaids and groomsmen — fall through the cheap paneling comprising a makeshift stage. After a few shaky laughs, the ceremony resumed, and at the end, the bride and groom were husband and wife. Mission accomplished.

On another occasion, a bridesmaid decided to be the one who stood up during the obligatory "Speak now or forever hold your peace" segment of the pastor’s delivery; she chose that moment to reveal the torrid fling she and the would-be groom experienced in the days leading up to the wedding. The angry bride nailed her betrothed with a roundhouse right and stormed out of the church.

End of ceremony. Mission aborted. I got great pics of the punch, and not the kind floating in a bowl next to the cake.

Some people call this time of year "Wedding Season." Yes, it’s actually a thing. I suppose it’s because so many young couples plan their nuptials for early summer, whether it’s so they can have an outside wedding or plan a beach honeymoon. Whatever.

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Personally, I couldn’t figure out why anyone would refer to these couple of months as a "season," but then I remembered: You have to have a license to get married, same as if you’re going fishing. Fishing season. Wedding season. Same difference. Someone caught a keeper and refused to throw him or her back.

I’ve attended more weddings than I can count. I’ve been a best man, a groomsman, a member of the honor guard for military weddings, a photographer and a plain old attendee.

I’ve witnessed every type of ceremony from the outrageously extravagant to the smallest of gatherings. What sticks with me most is how stressed out people grow over trying to get everything to turn out right. Brides, already anxious, tiptoe around on the verge of tears. Moms — they’re the worst victims — teeter on the edge of nervous breakdowns.

The grooms? Not so much. As long as there’s cake afterward, everything’s good.

With all the experience behind me, I feel qualified to offer a few survival tips for those young brides and grooms — and the parents who are trying to make the event perfect.

First, forget "perfect." It ain’t gonna happen. I guaran-dang-tee you something is going to go wrong. Sometimes it happens when there are eleventy billion details involved with the ceremony, significantly increasing the chance of mishap; but mostly it just happens. Fate can screw up a two-step wedding just as easily as a 100-step ceremony. Plan on it, and don’t let a perfect rehearsal fool you. Wedding rehearsals: Where they have grown men and women practice walking. The same people who nailed their spots the night before will on the big day wander off-course like a boat with no rudder.

If you have a small child as a ring bearer, said child will likely perform perfectly during the rehearsal only to break off and head rapidly in an entirely different direction during the ceremony — if he or she moves at all. I’ve seen petrified little tykes freeze up completely, or begin wailing loudly enough to drown out the wedding music.

Other "disasters" included the brides’ appearance. The Gods of Pimples and other Blemishes choose the big day to show up uninvited and guarantee the entire marriage is going to be tragic — at least according to the bride. Many’s the dad who wanted to pop the zits with a ball-peen hammer and get on with things rather than see his daughter change the schedule to a better "face date." He must have had a lot of cash riding on the event.

Sometimes, freak accidents show up like uninvited relatives. One young lady, bless her heart, stepped on her own dress on her way down the aisle and ripped it all the way up the back. Her ensuing scream of anguish sent the already-terrified groom into near-cardiac arrest and the old priest calling for a young priest.

In yet another good-intentions-gone-bad moment, a well-meaning mom, hoping to calm her terrified daughter, gave the young lady a glass of wine in the dressing room, thinking it would calm her child’s nerves. It was a first for the young lady; otherwise, Mom would have known her kid was allergic. Thankfully, it was a small wedding, so pushing everything back a couple of hours worked far better than watching the bride stagger and slur her way into holy matrimony.

There are outside forces at work as well. Sudden, non-forecasted thunderstorms unleashing themselves over an outside wedding? Been there. Swarms of insects attacking everyone in attendance and ruining the cake? Done that.

I’m not trying to scare you, brides and moms. I’m just hoping to allay some of your fears — namely, the ones making you think everything is going to go exactly as planned. I’m here to testify: It probably won’t.

But in every single one of the above-described near-catastrophes — OK, except for the brawling bride and groom wedding — the end result was the same. Nary a mom ended up in a nervous hospital, and the couple left the premises happily married.

They were married, which is why there were there in the first place. Marriage has its share of speed bumps; during the wedding is as good a time as any to grow accustomed to them and learn to avoid elevating them to insurmountable object status.

Remember, it won’t matter what the wedding did as long as you get to the part where you say, "I do."

After all, those two little words are the reason for the wedding season, right?

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